the living dead

Just listen.

Yesterday I am working (I work as a receptionist for a massage/spa place) and this guy comes in, he is a new client. He looks a little gray faced, and all around un-well, which I notice. I ask him if he would like water while he fills out some forms, he just shakes his head and asks for the rest room. I show him the way and shortly after he is escorted to his massage. 

When he comes down, I try chatting with him, saying he looks relaxed and ask if he enjoyed his massage. He nods his head, attempts to smile and again asks to use the rest room. I cash out his gift card (given to him by 'The Philips Design Group' , he uses the facility and then leaves. Minutes after, I use the rest room. While I am in there I smell this awful fetid smell- I have smelt it before, but I can't place it. It definitely was not the normal odiferous splendors that one would smell in a loo, but something more awful. It was chemical, and earthy, if at all possible. I wanted to say a cross between burnt chocolate, rat piss, and some kind of pungent cleaning solution. 

I wash my hands and walk out into the kitchen where three of the massage therapists are eating lunch. Jackie, who was Martin (the man's) therapist is there but not eating. I am so sick with the smell that I say something about it. I am trying to explain the smell and she looks at me wide eyed...

Was Martin just in there? she asks (in her beautiful scottish accent)

-Yes....

My god, do you know that in the fifteen years I have been a massage therapist, I have NEVER smelt such acrid odor? I nearly passed out and vomited from the smell. Never have I had a client with a smell that just radiated and lingered the way his did.

We all stare at her, and I believe it. The whole back hall leading up to the bathroom was drenched in his stink.

It was rotten, and just what you described... You know what I think it was? I think it was formaldehyde. 

She goes on to tell us how she had taken this anatomy class in which they had to dissect a cadaver. I knew she had pin pointed the smell exactly from tenth grade biology when we examined preserved cow hearts.

The therapists go into another appointment, and while Jackie is waiting for her client to undress she says

The thing that is really baffeling, is his skin texture. It was as if the man had no 

elasticity left in his skin. Truly, bizarre.

At this point we are all a little freaked. We go about our day, all keeping Creepy Martin in the back of our heads and the tips of our noses. The stench was nearly impossible to air out. But the more I thought of him the more the pieces didn't fit. He was middle aged, could have been any of my friends fathers, or even one of my professors. And the skin slag! I have possibly read too many books detailing the decomposition of a human corpse, how after the rigor subsides, one is left with wilting flesh. I then am transported to daymares of this walking cadaver coming into our spa, using a found gift card to cash in for one last humanly indulgence. ::shiver::

I google him - Nothing.

I type in the design firm who had given Martin the gift card - Nothing.

On the form he filled out he lists no ailments, he is on no medication (which can sometimes attribute to a person smelling funny - just think of your grandma's home), and has no places in particular he would like the therapist to focus on.  Fucking weird. 

I reiterate my findings to Jackie who has come up with some theories of her own. 

Maybe he is an undertaker who works with advanced decomposing bodies.

-He got it from a design firm.

Damn. Well maybe he is on medications?

-Nothin'

Shit. Drugs, maybe he is a meth chef?

- A meth chef Jackie? no. I mean did he seem like he was a drug user?

No... no, not at all actually. Then what on Earth?

-Not on Earth. Maybe he is dead. 

I had said too much. 

Nothing has come about for our mysterious Martin, but I am still convinced he was a part of the living dead.