It starts out the same everytime.

With that horrible smell. Thick and metallic, and clingy. That’s it, it’s a clingy smell. The kind you can still smell later even after you’ve showered and changed and sprayed some sort of fragrance to try and mask it.

It’s the sort of smell that even though it’s been days, and surely you’ve cleaned everything possible to clean by now, it’s still there. You turn your head and it’s all around you, choking you. Pointing you out.

You know that if you can still smell it, and so strongly, that so can everyone else. At work, you know that they know. They watch you, and you leave the scent behind you as you walk away. Everyone must know.

It always starts out the same. The horrible smell that clings to you like a invisible stalker that’s waiting for the moment to prove you’ve slipped up. Afterwards, you start throwing clothes away, worried that the blood didn’t really wash off. It’s still there. It must be, you can still smell it.