Mothballs
Wyatt Cain walked into the house, breathing a deep sigh of relief to be home again. As he inhaled again, though, a sharp pungent scent filled his nostrils. "Adora, what the hell is that smell?" He shouted out, as he dropped his hard traveling case in the doorway.
A young woman stuck her head out from the back room. "Well, it's good to see you too, after a month off playing cops and robbers in the city!"
Cain sighed, and walked over to her. "It's good to be home, dear." He kissed her quickly on the lips, then looked around, his eyebrows furrowed. "Seriously, though, what stinks?"
Adora shook her head and returned to the bedroom. She held up an old sweater of his, showing him the holes that filled it. "Moths – they must have gotten into the chest this past summer. They've ruined half our clothes!"
He took the sweater from her, and poked his finger through it. With a hint of a smile, he held the ruined garment up to his face and looked out through the holes. "That still doesn't explain the smell."
She laughed and snatched the sweater away from him. "It's mothballs. They're supposed to keep the nasty little creatures out."
"Well they're going to end up keeping me out. Almost makes me glad I'll be going back to work in a few days." He walked out of the room shaking his head.
"What? Wyatt, I thought you were going to take a whole month off. Try look for work closer to home?" she said with her hands on her hips, as he brought his suitcase back in and set it on the bed.
"There's been trouble in the city. The 'coats are getting more suspicious. I have to go back, and... it might be a while before I'm able to come home again." He lowered his head and refused to meet her stare.
She sighed and began to extract the wrinkled clothes from his suitcase, folding them neatly and stacking them up. "I know how important your work there is. The resistance is just as important to me. I just wish we could all be together for more than a few days at a time."
"Oh, Adora," he stepped up behind her, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her tightly against him, "I wish I could be with you, too, but I can't risk having you and Jeb in the city. It's too dangerous, no place to raise a boy."
She forced a smile as he kissed the side of her head. "You're right. Of course. I know there's no other way, not if we want any sort of future for Jeb."
"Doesn't mean we have to like it though," Cain whispered into her hair. He pulled back and looked around. "Speaking of, where is the little rascal?"
Adora resumed her meticulous folding. "He's off hunting. He wanted us to have a really good dinner, since you'd be home tonight. He should be back in a couple of hours."
"Really? A couple of hours?" Cain said, a smirk forming on his face. He pulled her to him again, and let his hands wander a little further from her waist. "My, what shall we do to keep busy until he returns?"
Adora looked slyly over her shoulder, plucking the hat off his head and dropping it into the suitcase. "Well, I've got quite a few chores you could help with. You can start by spreading these mothballs out around the house." She held the bag up in his face, prompting him to start coughing and gagging.
"Damn the mothballs, woman. I've got a much better idea," he said with a grin, as he snatched the paper bag from her hand.
She stood back and laughed as he dumped the neatly folded pile of clothes, along with the bag of mothballs, into his suitcase, which he quickly latched and threw to the floor. Then he turned to her, and with a tender smile, guided her to take its place on the bed.
Cain staggered through the half decayed door, looking for anything that might be salvageable. His thoughts were barely able to move beyond the here and now, each stumbling step taking all of his willpower. First get clean, then kill Zero.
Get clean. Step. Find clothes. Step. In the back room. Step. In the drawer. Open.
But the clothes in the drawer were ruined, he realized with a start. Moldy, and riddled with holes, none of them were any more wearable than the rags that currently hung from his shoulders.
Another drawer. No better. Another. Again, nothing. The wardrobe, maybe.
As he started to cross the room to it, he tripped and fell over something lying in the floor. He laid there for a moment, his face planted against the rough floorboards, trying to regain the energy to move again.
Finally, he raised himself to his elbows, and looked over his shoulder. There was a wooden box, bound in leather, with a sturdy handle. He dragged himself across the dusty floor to it. It was almost familiar, in a way that caused a strange pain somewhere in his chest.
He looked at it curiously, then tugged the latches loose. The first thing he noticed was the horrible smell that came out of the suitcase. The second was the perfectly preserved clothes that lay inside.
Both sent him reeling into the past. He brushed a grimy, shaking finger across the soft cotton of a striped shirt. He could remember a set of small, delicate fingers, flipping the cloth deftly into neat folds and smoothing the wrinkles out. The same fingers, he realized suddenly, that had worn his ring, and stroked his baby's cheek.
Adora. For the first time in years, he had found a memory of her that didn't involve screaming, or bleeding, or worse, and he clung to that, breathing deeply his new-found peace.
But that very deep breath took him even further into the past. The caustic scent brought with it memories of that day, the last time he was with her, how they made love and held each other close, dreading their upcoming separation. In his mind, the scent of the mothballs mingled with her scent, just as it had when he had nuzzled his face against her neck that day. Later, it had mixed with the aroma of herbs and roasting rabbit, and the wild, sweaty smell of a little boy that he held in his lap, listening to his tales of adventure while Adora cooked.
There was a single mothball left whole in the corner; all others had turned to a fine powder which lightly coated the contents of the case. He reached in for the fragile white ball, and held it in the palm of his hand. Studying it as if it held the secrets of life, he barely noticed the tears streaking through the metallic dust on his skin and dripping off the end of his nose. One by one, they fell on the mothball, dissolving it away, until it, too, was merely dust in his hand.
It was an entirely different man who came striding out of the house so confidently. He held a stack of clothing before him as if it were a sacred relic. He took a moment to set it down carefully at the head of the small dock, then walked straight off the end, sending a column of water splashing into the air.
For the next several days, as he hurried his companions along, rushing to his destiny, he found himself sometimes dropping his head against his shoulder and inhaling the memories, as if the scent could somehow fill his empty chest.