bad smell (long)

[Kevin McNelis <kmcnelis@nmsu.edu>]

I knew when I bought it that my b72 TR6 was a rebuild from two other 
6s.  One had been one of the greens, and the other had been pimiento.  
I also knew that it had some electrical problems.  A couple of times, I 
would hear it start in the middle of the night in my garage.  bJust 
some freaky short in the ignition switchb, I thought.  I would go 
insert the key, turn the motor off, and go back to bed.  Now  I always 
park it in neutral, just in case it does start.  Well, today I drove it 
to work (lovely day here, 70, bright sunshineb&).  On the way home, I 
noticed some awful smell that I couldnbt identify, and could determine 
the source.  Parked it in my closed, locked garage.  Came in and 
changed clothes to work on it.  Went back out to my garage, and the car 
was gone.  I never heard the garage door open, and I never heard the 
car start.  It has a header and the Monza exhaust, so it is a noisy 
beast.  I canbt believe I didnbt hear it!  To top it all off, the 
garage door was shut!  It was as if the car had vanished through to 
garage door!  

Well, I immediately went inside to call the police, I figured it 
couldnbt have been driven very far in that short time- 15 minutes or 
so.  I fixed myself a strong  drink (Wild Turkey with enough water so I 
could tell my wife bsure I put water in it!b) to steady myself, then 
went back to the garage.  The garage door was still down, but my car 
was sitting right where it was supposed to be!  The engine was very 
hot, like it had just been driven hard.  And the stench was worse than 
ever.  It was something like I had never smelled before.   I called the 
police back, and told them it had all been a mistake.  They were not 
amused, and told me they were sending an officer by anyway to get the 
whole story.  

I rolled the car back out into the driveway to try to find the source 
of the smell.  I started it, and sniffed the exhaust.  Nothing abnormal 
there.  I lifted the bonnet, and sniffed all around the engine bay.  
Nothing abnormal there either.  It seemed the smell was coming from the 
passenger compartment.  I opened the heater valve and sniffed.  Nope.  
But the smell was stronger.  Then, as I was pushing myself up off the 
floor, I could tell the carpet was wet.  I pulled it back, and under 
the carpet was a BUNCH of fresh blood, and a lot of dried, black blood. 
 The stench was incredible!  And it was obvious that the blood, both 
fresh and decaying, was the source of the smell.

I vomited, then went back inside to call the guy I bought it from.  He 
told me that yeah, he built the car from two wrecks (he had told me 
that before, no surprise).  One of them, the one that destroyed the 
front end of the green car, had been a really gruesome wreck.  A large 
pickup had smashed into the passenger side, then went up and over both 
occupants, decapitating both.  I asked him when the accident had 
happened, and he told me bOctober 31, 2002b.

Happy Halloween!  Kevin

p.s.-  this is all fiction, of course.