Written August 22-23, 2026 by MT Pearson.
The reciever shook as Sharon nervously gripped the phone, wails in the background piercing. "Hello? Hello? Please, I need you as soon as you can get here. Right away, if you will. Yes, yes, it's little Arnold again. You aren't going to believe it... yes, I have cash on me. Please, get here as soon as you can! We need help!!!!"
Then came the smell. It wafted itself all the way from little Arnold's room. It was nigh unbearable, threatening very actively to start peeling paint and wallpaper alike from the walls. Sharon rushed down the hall to shut the door. Before she could get it closed, she saw her little boy hopping around and feared the worst.
Moments later, a car pulled into the driveway. Julia hopped out. She was studying biology at college and needed the financial help any way she could get it, even if that meant forward-marching into the jaws of death, as it had on this auspicious day. She gently knocked on the front door.
As it creaked open, a frazzle-haired Sharon looked through the other side. "Oh, thank goodness! Come in, come in!!!," she said. Through panicked demeanor she fought to offer the key points. There was some awful, anomalous smell coming from Arnold's room. Julia's new mission: figure it out, and, if possible, take care of it.
And so back to the room she went. Her freshly-moisturized hand clasped the door handle and pushed it downward. It opened.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!" Arnold said, unleashing a mighty volley of crayons at the wall. Between him and his onlooker, there it was, right there, on the carpet...
"OH-" shouted Julia, bringing her free hand to her mouth, puffing her cheeks and swinging the door closed as she turned to make a mad dash for the bathroom.
As she was hurling into the toilet, Sharon brought her palm to her face and shook her head. Back to the phone.
Steven worked at a coffee shop in town, but money was tight this month, so he too needed the help. He was studying child psychology. He parked behind Julia's car in the driveway and moved on to the front door. It peaked open yet again, and a narrowing eye in a now-paled face met his gaze.
"Hello, missus Sh-!!"
"GET IN HERE NOW!!!"
The briefing went quickly. Steven boldly proceeded to the room, opening the door.
Arnold let out a guttural roar. Shock took poor Steve's face as his eyes drifted downward. He slammed the door home and proceeded to vault, elbows first, out of the window at the far end of the hall. He lowered them mid-jump, post-window shattering, and his face ended up leaving a solid crack in the dilapidated fence.
Sharon dialed and dialed. Pleas for help, guarantees of payment, cries of urgency, one and the same. She lit her fifth over the gas flame of the stove and sucked it down to the filter in three.
Samantha closed the door so fast it knocked her in the forehead, and Sharon, hair falling out as she moved, quickly dragged her into a corner of the living room, down for the count.
Jamil let out an "Oh hell nah" and jump-kicked the windshield of his convertible in, then hit a redline on his way out of the neighborhood.
The stink just kept getting worse. A closed door did nothing to stop it now.
Charlotte made it halfway down the hallway before astutely exclaiming "Ugh..." and dropping to the floor unconscious.
James was better prepared. His parents were doomsday preppers, and never let the house go without a fresh supply of gas masks and cartridges. He had brought one, already assembled, with him.
Unfortunately they did not do as much to filter his vision.
He rushed back to the kitchen sink and just began washing his face. Despite his apocalypse-certified equipment, he just stood there, washing and washing.
The parking situation by this point was growing untenably horrible, so Sharon's next call went to the city. Within the matter of 30 minutes, a crew of men were out in the field across the street from her house, digging up grass and pouring concrete.
One shovel-full of topsoil went flying into the passenger side forward window of Julia's SUV. She was, somehow, still throwing up. The smell, now having infiltrated the bathroom, was not helping much.
Another nailed Andrew's left headlight. Still, he washed.
Charlotte's foreign sports car was flattened into a foreign metal pancake by the cement mixer.
One week later and the lot was ready for use. The sitters came two-by-two, four-by-four, as many as they could fit in the vehicle on hand, really.
The city college was concerned at the incredible number of absences piling up. As many as seventy students simply hadn't shown up for class. Not that it was compulsory, it was just strange to see such a large absent group without the courtyard being trashed, or fraternity houses on fire, or sorority houses flooded.
Sharon could no longer bear it. She just had to see it again for herself, damned be the consequences or her rapidly balding scalp. She began crawling over the piles and piles of the unconscious, the paralyzed, and the shell-shocked. After an incredible amount of effort, she finally managed to reach her son's door.
And from inside... silence!
Could it be? Certainly he wasn't dead, as delivering his breakfast, lunch and dinner had become part of the job for any takers left. And there weren't many more of those.
She reached down for the handle, through piles of college students. Finding it, she pushed and pushed in monumental effort. It finally gave way.
There here son was, right in front of the door, his tiny pitching arm cocked and ready. Before she could react, a *whoosh* passed through the air. Susan's eyes shut hard, reflexively, which was for the best. But in this scenario, she ended up vehemently wishing her nostrils had done the same.
SPLAT!!!
The smell was on her now. The smell was of her. There was to be no escaping it.
Of the situation, little Arnold proudly exclaimed, "HAHAHAHAHAHA!," following up with a guttural scream of great pride and accomplishment.
Susan wiped the shit from her eyes and turned about upon the piles of those who could not bear it, her jaw quivering all the while.
Julia had just battle-crawled her way to the bathroom door, incidentally, over her own mountain of failure to climb. Panting and gasping for air, she looked forward, and caught the grisly sight of Susan, her face covered with her son's excrement.
Then she caught the smell, and with a ghastly "OH!", back to the toilet she crawled.
Susan's mouth opened slightly, letting the four now-extinguished cigarettes she had been smoking fall to the pile of the defeated.
She breathed in.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH" she cried, then collapsed onto the pile, landing face-first into the back of an extinguished philosophy major below her.
Arnold raised his fists to the sky in sweet, victorious sentiment. He had done it! There was a lot of poop to clean up around the room but none of that mattered to his two-year-old brain. What a throw!
This called for a juice box.
He crawled out, footprints of night soil left across each of his victims as he carried on. One made it right onto the back of mom's head.
He made it to the fridge, and opened it, retrieving his reward. He then crawled across the pile back to the living room where the TV was on and playing his favorite cartoons!
Cross-legged he sat, sipping the sweet orange-flavored juice box of victory over the vanquished.
It was a good day for Arnold the Conquerer.