Twenty-six days, that was how long it took. Wendell felt that was very reasonable of him.
Twenty-six days since they found the mould in the apartment beneath him (and ONLY that apartment: apparently it had originated from an ambitious fridge slime that had gotten too big for its britches and had made it as far as the microwave before being caught). Twenty-six days of antiseptics and antibacterial and antimicrobial soaps. Twenty-six days of feeling like someone had placed a can of ethanol inside one nostril and a bar of soap in the other.
That was how long it took before Wendell went to see the leprechaun in the building’s basement.
“I’m a brownie,” said the leprechaun.
“Yeah,” agreed Wendell. “A leprechaun.”
“I’m closer to a hobgoblin than anything.”
“A leprechaun.”
“Are you even listening to me?”
“I’ll make you a deal, leprechaun,” said Wendell. “Can you please, please, please, please, PLEASE take away my sense of smell? Because it’s worse than death having it.”
The leprechaun scratched his nose in perplexity at this. There was a lot of nose to scratch, both inside and out – it was not long, but it was broad and possessed a staggering depth to it, emotional and physical. “Look, leprechauns don’t cut deals. But brownies can, I s’pose. Stop calling me a leprechaun and I’ll have that nose off you.”
“Not the nose, just the smell.”
“Why do you care?”
“I like my nose.”
The brownie looked at it critically.
“What?”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
“That wasn’t nothing.”
“It’s a fine nose, I mean. Just. I’ve seen better, that’s all.”
“Take the damn smell,” said Wendell.
“Fine,” said the brownie. And he did.
***
That night Wendell went to bed early and fell into the true sleep of the blissfully exhausted and drifted too deeply for dreams, until the exact moment someone rear-ended someone else on Queen Street and the sirens and the howling and roaring and mangling and screaming grabbed his hindbrain and hurled it back into the universe in blinking terror.
“Jesus,” he muttered, and rolled over.
Ten minutes later a couple outside had a proposal turn into a breakup.
Ten minutes after THAT the tow-truck for the rear-ender got rear-ended.
Ten minutes after THAT the police showed up.
Wendell walked downstairs to the basement and nearly died sixteen times on the way due to forgetting to open his eyes until the third floor.
“What’s up?” asked the brownie, who was reading an old magazine of dentist’s-office age and stateliness.
“Can you do ears too?” asked Wendell.
The brownie’s eyebrows crinkled into highly disgusted shapes.
“Hearing. I mean, can you take my hearing?”
“I only do trades,” said the brownie. “And thank fuck because listen pal, those ears? Those are fixer-uppers. You got wax in there or is that tar?”
Wendell pulled off his right slipper and threw it at him, then went to bed and slept through his alarm clock by six hours.
***
Wendell’s sheets were tacky. Not as a matter of taste, but as a matter of sensation.
Sweat, mostly. Some dust. And the thread was bare and coarse enough that it trapped them easily. Now that he was getting a solid eight (minimum) a night, he woke irked from it. And breakfast wasn’t helping. Breakfast was oatmeal, same as always. And it tasted like nothing at all, but a little bit worse. Air tasted like nothing. Oatmeal tasted like lumps.
“Hey,” said Wendell to the brownie.
“Hey,” said the brownie.
“How can I still hear YOU?”
“You’re not,” said the brownie dismissively. “Don’t overthink it. Now what the hell’s your problem this time?”
“I hate my breakfast and I hate my fabrics,” said Wendell.
“Want new sheets? Some recipe ideas?”
“Can you just take my senses of touch and taste?”
The brownie sighed. “Sure. Why not. What’re you offering?”
“I’ll trade you my sense of touch for taking my sense of taste,” said Wendell, who had thought about this very carefully on the way down sixteen flights of stairs.
The brownie squinted at him. “Clever. Very clever. Too clever. Don’t try that shit again.”
Breakfast was peaceful then, aside from when Wendell almost bit his tongue off by mistake and only noticed when the spoon came out of his mouth bright red.
***
The wall to the left side of Wendell’s computer monitor was his worst enemy.
It was painted teal, but not really. It was grey, but not quite. It was almost the colour of a sullen sky, or maybe some sluggish water. It was rough from the wall’s texture, or maybe that was because it had been applied slapdashedly. There was a hole that might have been from hanging a picture or from a careless bump with furniture moving. A spider was living high up on it, unless that was a smear from something.
Data entry crawled along so slowly, so slowly because of it. Hours went by in which Wendell had nothing to do but sit and consider that stupid, stupid, stupid wall.
“Take my sight, please,” he told the brownie.
“Why don’t I just paint your wall?” the brownie asked.
“Take it,” said Wendell firmly, “and I’ll be happy.”
“Oh thank FUCK,” said the brownie. And although Wendell took some two hours to get back to his apartment and could no longer enter data at all, he felt great relief and comfort.
***
The next day he went down to the basement, which took only one hour but probably almost wasn’t very safe.
“You’re a ripoff,” he pouted. “I gave you my sight and we agreed I’d be happy and I’m not! I’m miserable!”
“That’s because you’ve been avoiding your problems by ignoring them instead of doing anything to fix them,” said the brownie. “Did you buy ear plugs? Do your laundry? Get a poster? Visit a friend? Do anything, ever? TRY something?”
“This is much easier,” said Wendell.
“Beyond the personal moral implications on your character, it’s also pretty rude to the blind and deaf communities.”
“This is all making me even LESS happy,” complained Wendell. “Fix it!”
The brownie shut his eyes, counted to six on one hand, and opened his eyes again.
“Alright,” he said. “You want me to fix you being unhappy?”
“Yes!”
“And you’re sure about this?”
“Yes!”
“And-”
“We had a deal and I demand you uphold it.”
“Fine,” said the brownie.
***
Wendell’s hospital bed was coarse, his meals rough, his roommate noisy, his neighbours loud, and his walls painted a dreadful vomit—orange.
But his brain was in a little jar in a basement in a brownie’s burrow, and so he smiled, and was not troubled.