The Thing in the Closet: 5 Minute Freewrite Prompt: The Smell of a Dumpster

Drawing by my daughter @abyni (who is a brand new steemian herself!)

**Although this prompt very much made me think morbid, creepy things again, I purposefully challenged myself to NOT write horror this time. :)

The smell of a dumpster hit me like a ton of bricks when I opened the door to my son's room. Dear god. I was not up for this battle AGAIN. How many times did I have to tell him to at least keep it from becoming an actual toxic waste land? I didn't expect perfection, but damn. How lazy did you have to be to have this... stench? And to live in it all the time? I had obviously put this off for far too long.

I plugged my nose and flipped on the light switch, my eyes watering from the smell as I looked around his room.

The confusion hit as my eyes took in his relatively clean room. Yeah, so he had a small pile of dirty clothes on the floor. There was a stack of dirty plates on his desk, but since he only ever ate pizza or leftovers, surely those wouldn't be so bad.

What WAS that smell???

I walked in and closed the door behind me. No need to smell up the entire house. What was he GROWING IN HERE? Dear heavens. My eyes were burning as I walked over to the bed, nothing there. I leaned over the pile of clothes, but that wasn't it. Where was it coming from? I stubbed my toe on his guitar case and spewed a string of obscenities that my son would have admired and that's when I heard it. Something was in the closet.

That little bastard was hiding someone in his room! A STINKY, smelly someone! Ooooohhhh, he thought he could get away with that? Oh, hell no. Just as my hand hit the doorknob, it jiggled under my hand. I let go and screamed as I jumped back, but I had already unlatched the door. I was scrambling backwards when the door flew open and banged against the bedroom wall.

I had thought the smell in the room was bad, but now it was unbearable beyond belief. Of course I quickly forgot the smell entirely when the slimy, sticky mess of a creature landed on my chest.

I screamed bloody murder and tried to escape, sure it was going to eat me in one bite. I quickly realized this... thing... was hugging me and making soothing sounds. The bad smell was dissipating and I was quickly starting to feel some sort of motherly instinct towards this... creature.

It appeared that our family had once again grown a little bigger. I stood up, holding this thing like a little baby and walked out of my son's room. This little guy deserved better than a closet and he was probably starving. I headed to the kitchen...

Prompt: the smell of a dumpster
Set your timer for 5 minutes
Start writing
Use the hashtag #freewrite
Publish your piece and leave a link on the original prompt post

Thanks to @mariannewest for the challenges!

Other posts of mine that you may be interested in:

My Real Life Stories:

My #introduceyourself post

The Christmas that Almost Wasn’t (Broke Ass Parenting Win)

Living the Storm (a small story from our life on a sailboat)

My Kids First Time Swimming with Dolphins