The Adventures of Rambling Bob

Light twas my footfall as I chanced a stride over the mushy carcass of Curbishley. I shooed Jasper aside as I clasped my kerchief to my nose and peered at his pathetic frame in the half light.

The sun was rising over the Campsies and beckoned a new dawn upon the horrendous murder of this once proud and erect gentleman. A thin triangular toblerone of light cut through the dank, heavy curtains like a rapier through soft camembert and shimmered a little, sad morsel of life into one of his still opened eyes.

Being not forensically savvy, I could not offer speculated musings upon the manner of Curbishley’s demise, but I hedged a flimsy bet that the jagged shard of walking cane inserted seemingly violently into his perianal area did nothing to slow his passing.

I turned his body over, leaving the stick in his hinterhole. Jasper was lapping at one of his frontal wounds. I rapped him in his lion-like cat façade and examined the wound more clearly. In his upper chest, at the left side was a strange looking entry wound – a pulsating, bloodied gash no less! Strange was the implement that had forced entry into this old man’s body.

I was about to finger the hole to locate bullet fragments when I heard the pithy sound of a door creaking.

It had yet to occur to me that the perpetrator of this deed of horror: this occidare, may very well still be at the scene in the dim shadows of morning.

I had time to leap into the confined space between the refrigerator and the kitchen door before person or persons most foul began slowly to ease it open…

Unfortunately the stench hitherto mentioned in mine previous oeuvre has now permeated into my bedchamber and has taken on the disgusting odour of much ignominy.

As the dim shackles of night were cast asunder and the liberated dew of morning came running naked from its internment, alone was I in my hinterwear, nose pressed curiously against the vents of my vestibule and chamber assessing the extent of the arid whiffs of shame.

Deftly, I crept like an otter through the grey lit halls of my abode, past the horror knocking shop of old Mrs Fairweather as she brought another navvy to his hopeless climax for cash. Still the whiff endured.

I followed its calling down the steps, my hands groping against the banister and tiled wall. I felt my way precariously like a first time sex pest, grasping at petticoat and bloomers. A shard of sunlight cut through the darkness like a prism of contentment. The light fell on the door of apartment number 69 – old man Curbishley’s hovel.

Curbishley, a former academic and one time trustee of the now defunct Ramblers Engineers And Rotary Polemic And Skilled Structural Artist Group Endeavours, lived alone and ventured out only to pick up the Morning Star and whistle venom at the scantly clad milk white legs of priss school mams.

The smell, now almost knocking me out of my paisley patterned slippers, issued forth from under the door like a badly timed quip at a spastic fundraiser. Jasper, my erstwhile cat companion and procurer of much lols came between my legs and nudged the door ajar with his lion-like face.

I followed my cat inside. I turned into the kitchen and called Curbishley’s moniker into the darkness.

I heard a simple miaow as if Jasper had reached the conclusion of a letter chock full of heartache from his sweetheart back home whom he pined endlessly for in some muddy trench in Europe. But this was no noise of wartime cat heartache. This was Jasper’s oft used croak to inform your humble narrator of some great ill.

I met the source of the rotten pong at last -

- the badly decomposing body of Charles M Curbishley.

RB

That’s right; I said there’s a rancid fucking pong in my vestibule.

It’s been there for around sixteen minutes and it is driving me to utter distraction.

Unfortunately, it reeks not of mint nor embergrass nor wild spunk flowers but is more reminiscent of stale crayfish sprinkled with the mushy stomach bile of a victim of Ebola.

I am simply at mine wit's end as to its origin. In my youth, I spent several years as a farm hand and am no stranger to pongs universal. However this acrid stink is tearing me from my merry musings.

Must find the source.

Smells like shit cheese.