RE: STACH Short Story Contest #19: 199 words, 5 winners, 15SBD prize pool!
Can deathbed still harbour the spirit of its last occupant? When Dan and Janny brought a bed, in which a relative had died, to their home, it filled the room with what they described as "the smell of death".
Dan, a retired senior technical monitor described the experience as beyond rational explanation. The bed had been lent to Dan's wife, so that her father could be nursed downstairs. Shortly after he died on the bed, they took it back in.
"From then that room smelt of death," Dan said. "Whatever we did, we could not get rid of it. The smell became too bad that my wife, Janny, could not go into the room. We even resorted to taking the bed to another house entirely, but the trail continued"
"I knew it was my dad and would not hurt me, but the smell was oppressive that I even was afraid to stay alone in the house, " Janny confessed.
Janny was fed up! One night she walked upstairs and spoke into the air, "Listen Dad, you are dead, go and rest, we love you and will meet you again. Goodnight Dad, now leave us." That alone saved the situation.
I love your work too. Upvoted! I had a similar experience with my grand father's burial place. Actually he was buried beneath a living room. You can literarily smell death in that room.