She started to move, and Laney followed. They back-peddled slowly. Maybe they should have run, because apparently the skunk was now curious about the two strange creatures creeping back the way they’d come in ultra slow motion.
“What’s it doing?” Laney whispered.
“I don’t know.”
The skunk was acting weird. Turning around in a circle. Stamping its back feet. Stamping its front. It looked like it would flip over onto its face at any given moment. It didn’t make a sound, which was perhaps most frightening of all.
“Should we run?”
“I don’t know!”
The skunk stamped the ground again. Circled around. Stamped one more time.
Morgun’s hair stood up all over her body. “I think we should run!”
It was a good call. Right as she said the words, the skunk stamped one more time and it was game over. The stink bomb that hit took a minute to register, but when it did, Morgun gasped. She was running. Laney was sprinting beside her. They were peeling past the barn, back towards their stuff, but there was no escaping the cloud that followed them. Her eyes watered. Her nose felt singed. Her throat and mouth were thick with the ungodly smell. Her brain could barely process the horror of it.
“Oh my God,” Laney gasped. She made a choking noise. “Oh my God, it’s so bad! How is it that bad? Did we get sprayed?”
“No, I don’t think so. It’s just that bad.”
“There isn’t any wind!”
“I know. But when one gets hit on the road, you can smell it for miles and probably for days.”
Laney and Morgun started grabbing up their bags, the costumes, and their equipment. They both went running towards the car, which wasn’t parked far.
“I can’t tell if it smells or not,” Laney moaned as she bent to smell her bag.
“I can’t either. I think my nose is wrecked for life. I can’t get the stench of it out! I can’t smell anything but the skunk! Ugh, God, it’s making my eyes water. It smells like straight sulphur.”
Laney gagged as she opened the trunk. They threw everything in and turned at the sound of gravel crunching behind them. For one terrible second, Morgun was afraid the skunk had followed them, but it was only Silas. She was afraid he was going to be incredibly angry with them over the terrible smell, and she opened her mouth, ready to plead their case, to say that they hadn’t done anything at all to the creature to cause it to spray, but Silas just slapped his denim covered leg and let out a loud cackle.
“Oh, sweet lord, it’s plain you girls found yourself a bunch of trouble. Did you get sprayed?”
“I-I don’t know,” Morgun stammered. “I don’t think so. But your barn…I’m so sorry!”
“Don’t worry about it. Happens all the time out here. Always creatures going back and forth. I had two dogs, both passed now, poor things, but they couldn’t help themselves. Whenever a skunk came around, they were sure to find it. My black lab got sprayed I can’t tell you how many times. Sometimes twice in a night if there was more than one, or on back to back nights. It got to the point, when I had a family of skunks living out here, that I just gave up on trying to get the stench out of the dogs and let it dissipate on its own. It does fade after a couple weeks. The first couple days are the worst.”
“It smells like sulphur!” Morgun wailed. “I’ve never smelled anything so awful.”
“It is sulphur, I think, that comes out of them. That fades though, and then it’s just the skunk smell after a while.”
“I’m sorry again! We thought it was a cat and went to look. We were backing away and running when it sprayed. We weren’t threatening it at all.”
“I know. Sometimes they just get scared and spray, that’s all. Anyway, no harm done. The barn’s not too close to the house, and like I said, I’m used to it.”
Morgun was sure they wouldn’t get offered tea now, smelling like they did. She was sure she stank higher than high heaven itself. She was already planning on what she would do to get the stench out. She really didn’t want to have a tomato juice bath; maybe there was something else that would work. She’d have to look it up.
Laney’s poor car. The thing probably reeked too. She just hoped that the scent came out of it after they drove away. And their equipment. And the costumes!
Morgun felt like crying, but she bit her lip and reached into the car for her purse. She took out the two hundred dollars and an extra hundred that she’d thrown in just in case.
“Here!” She passed the cash over to Silas. His eyes widened when he saw it.
“That’s too much. We agreed on two hundred.”
“Oh, I know, but, well, the smell…”