FILTHY TALES
The House That Assaulted All Five Senses
My adventures in sensory hell.
The house assaulted the senses like a tidal wave.
It was March 2023 and I needed a place to stay for three months as I ducked out of Canada to renew my visa. I’d met Skye (not her real name) whilst I’d been holed up in Cancún a couple of years prior during the global pandemic, and we’d established a friendship. On hearing of my desired return to the Riviera Maya, she offered a room in her four-bedroom home for a really good price.
Excellent! That would make saving money for my return to college so much easier.
The house was slightly chaotic when I arrived but I soon settled into my work, teaching English as a Second Language online, as well as my established exercise routine. Walking is not only good for the body, it allows me to become familiar with the area I’m frequenting as well.
Skye had two other housemates when I arrived, one of whom had been living with her since she had signed the lease on the villa a year before and who tidied up after her thus mitigating the true extent of the sensory assault.
Two months into my three-month stay, said housemate left to live on her own. I couldn’t blame her!
The Five Senses
Visually the place was a tip. Stains on the couch from God knows what, sunglasses, loose change, clothes, shoes, and food were strewn about everywhere. Whenever Skye came in from one of her jaunts, everything she was carrying was laid down somewhere near one of the two entry points.
Pots and pans were cleaned after a day or two, counters were sticky and crumb-filled, and dirt covered the floors. My feet felt the constant presence of soil and dog hair, everything they touched offending the more than 200,000 nerve endings that reside in the average foot.
I walked around the house with socks on to protect the uncomfortable feeling but even walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night produced dirty feet.
Skye had a nineteen-year-old cat who had peed on her furniture its entire life. I never understood why she hadn’t trained him not to until I lived there and realized that she didn’t train any of her animals —the errant behaviour didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest.
She also had a dirty dog who reeked, filling any space with a putrid dog smell.
Between the constant odour of the cat pee-infused couch, the litter box that was only changed once a week, and the smelly dog wandering freely through spaces, my olfactory cells worked double overtime in being aggrieved.
Adding to the assault was the fact that Skye was a smoker. I smoked from the age of eighteen until thirty and understand the habit. Whilst I have no problem hanging out with smokers, I struggle with the smell in closed spaces. With doors wide open and her favourite spot to puff on the nicotine sticks located directly under my bedroom window, Skye’s cigarette smoke pervaded the house like an unwanted visitor.
There was yet another unfortunate failing of the three-floor house, the noise distribution. Skye had removed all the furniture from the second-floor landing and had put it in her bedroom on the third floor creating an apartment-like environment for her and her dirty mutt. With a queen-sized bed, ensuite bathroom, walk-in closet, couch, coffee table, and small balcony, she only needed to come downstairs to cook or forage for food.
This wouldn’t have been an issue if the removed furniture hadn’t been a buffer for the sound bouncing off the walls from downstairs. You see, three bedrooms, including mine, led off the second-floor landing.
On the occasion when she sat on the couch to watch Netflix shows on her small TV, the sound bounced up the stairs, ricocheted off the wall and came screaming into my room. Even with headphones on as I taught international students our language, I could hear the scripted shows almost as well as if I was seated in front of the blaring electronic box.
It appeared that Skye was going slightly deaf.
To top off the auditory and olfactory assaults, after disappearing into her “apartment” each evening, music and cigarette smoke blasted down to my oasis on the second floor.
I sighed as I climbed into bed each evening, too tired after a long workday to rouse any form of self-righteousness.
Visually, auditorily, olfactorily, tactilely, the assault continued. Whilst I refrained from licking any of the surfaces, wandering out of the bedroom in search of my morning elixir I could almost taste the pungent air thick with cat pee that had settled in overnight.
The cleaner was only scheduled when one of Skye’s friends was due for a visit, and despite keeping my room clean, I didn’t have the time or desire to take care of the rest of the house. Working forty-five hours a week has a tendency to do that to a person.
I dreamed of my little Canadian basement apartment with its clean floors and sweet smells produced by an array of candles, incense sticks, and oil diffusers.
Oh, how I longed for its sensory embrace.
Whilst I was immensely grateful for the low rent and much-needed opportunity to save money for college, I couldn’t get away from the House that Assaulted all Five Senses fast enough.
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