He's cleaned so many carpets. This one seems stubborn but that's alright because he's more stubborn. After all, he is the best at what he does, and right now what he's doing is definitely not pretty.

His mind wonders back in time to all the other carpets that have gotten this same treatment. In the end, it never matters. Friends, foes, lovers, innocent strangers that were in the wrong place at the wrong time. In the end, it's all the same. The carpet always looks the same by the time it's all said and done. Spotless. Clean. Sometimes he wonders if it's part of the whole mutant package, this ability to soak up the stains and make them disappear. Sometimes he wonders if he just soaks them up into himself, holding them deep in his soul where they wait to attack him in his sleep.

He knows that's not the case, though. Just like he knows he'll have to go to another hotel - get another room. Because no matter how clean the carpet looks, he can still smell it. The scent hangs in the fibers, clinging to them as if life hadn't fled long ago. Nobody else will ever know, but it stays there to make sure that he'll never forget. He scrubs and scrubs and scrubs until the sweat beads on his brow and runs in long drips down his face. He works hard to make it look clean so that they won't see. He doesn't want them to know because then they'd worry, and he wants to protect them from that.

Of course, they worry anyway. They always worry about him. Usually they just worry how close to the edge he is, and that's ok too. It's better that they worry about that fine, sharp knife edge than worry about what the stains have done to him. He has a hard time explaining the double-edged sword that he always walks on, but it would be impossible to explain the stains. They'd say it was past, or it wasn't his fault.

He was protecting someone.

He was protecting himself.

He didn't know.

He couldn't be blamed.

He knows what they'd say, but still the stains would be there. And in their fumbled attempts to erase them, they'd only make them fresher. So he scrubs with untold years of practice until the carpet is clean again. Pristine. And when he stands up he's pleased with his work. Packing never takes long, and as he walks away he doesn't look back. He doesn't have to. The smell follows him as he closes the door and moves silently down the hall. The scent clings to him just as it clung to the carpet fibers. And when he finds a new hotel and a new room, when he's soaking in the shower watching the water run clear as he scrubs his own body, he knows that this won't be different from any other time. No matter how invisible the stains are, the smell never leaves.