1-Stinky Lady
We’ve done it. We’ve finally done it. Here is the most annoying hobo in the café – maybe in the entire world. Stinky Lady, in simple terms, is an extremely malodorous woman who importunes everyone within a 5 miles radius.
It’s hard to explain just how terribly awful she smells so I’m going to try my best: imagine you’re a woman (if you’re not a woman already), imagine you hand-picked the worst-smelling car freshener in the world and imagine you shoved as many as you can in every possible orifice of your body, including some formed by your excess 75 pounds of fat. Then, imagine you bought the most noisome air freshener money can’t buy and bathed in it for ten days straight until the odor was so concentrated every single dog on Earth could smell it - but wait, I’m not done: imagine you shoplifted the absolute worst, the cheapest and the most disgusting perfume you could ever find on this side of the planet and injected every single drop of it on every single square inch of your body AND clothes. Finally, imagine that you bought some of the strongest-smelling candles (frankincense, cinnamon, peppermint and such flagrances typically reserved to churches and church-goers) and ate as many as you could as fast as you could; THAT’S how bad she smells, and THAT’S an odor that is so repulsive I honestly couldn’t imagine worse.
I know, I know: it’s kind of strange that the most disgusting odor would come from things that, originally, were designed to smell good, but believe me: there is nothing worse than the mix of twenty flagrances that are somewhat pleasing by themselves mixed in concentrations so high they are technically illegal. I mean, normally, you’d probably think the worst odor would be coming from a dump or something, but no: Smelly Lady has managed to outstink all of that, as if the precise mixture of dozens and dozens of smells that are by themselves acceptable manages to reach new lows in terms of repulsiveness. In other words, Stinky Lady has managed to create the perfect recipe for stinkiness and I’m fairly certain she holds the record for it now.
Stinky Lady is invincible, absolutely flawless, and you can’t do a thing against her. Against Meteofag, you can raise the volume of your music; against Staring Dyke, you can move to another table. Against Snoring Asshole, you can subtly wake him up by “accidentally” pushing a chair next to him, but against Stinky Lady, you can’t do a damn thing. She smells horrible, choking you to death and bringing tears of pain to your eyes, and there is absolutely nothing you can about it. Pinch your nose? Yeah, good luck writing like that. Lighting a candle? That would only make the whole thing worse. Stop breathing? That might be the best option, actually. Yes, dying is the only way to avoid her.
Her “odors” fills the entire place and sticks to your nostrils, killing your ideas faster than Silicon Valley butchers startups and ruining any chance of getting any work done. There is nothing you can about her but hope that she leaves: if you see her, you’re fucked, and that’s how it is.
She speaks in broken English, always ordering some $4 coffee (I think she gets her money when people pay her to leave) and sits to a table to do her favorite thing in the universe: read an Option Nationale magazine (some separatist magazine) and write on envelopes. On the first part – people thinking Quebec should separate from Canada – I have to admit that she is absolutely brilliant. Quebec’s independence has failed twice already, but Stinky Lady has a perfect plan: develop her magical formula on a provincial scale so that the rest of Canada kicks us out.
On the second part, I have to admit I’m lost. Every single night, Stinky Lady does the exact same thing: she writes on bank envelopes. Why? Well, after decades of research, I’m proud to say I have finally found the solution: because they are A) Free B) Easy to obtain, as you can just grab them from any ATM counter anywhere. Maybe I’ll write my next novel on them to save money. I can see them on eBay the day my novel becomes a best-seller: “Original copy of ‘The Penultimate Puzzle’ – written on envelopes as the author couldn’t afford the paper. Ah, the life of an author!” And as for the pencil to write, you say? Well, my theory is that she goes to a restaurant (takeouts, I don’t think they would let her eat there), asks to borrow a pen to sign the receipt and then steals it. Humble hobo or terrific thief? Partner in crime of The Black Lady or “You are reading this way, way, wayyyy too far, F.S.”? Your call!
She can write on her envelopes for hours, usually repeating single words over and over again and drawing zigzags and circles all around. I managed to snatch an envelope once while she was ordering (putting it back afterwards, obviously: I had no right to take her things, she is the thief, not me. Then again, I didn’t exactly have the right to look into her stuff, but it’s a small compensation for all the olfactory receptors neurons she has killed). On it, I could read:
“Lake. Blue. Tons. Far. Lake. Green. Car”
I think it’s her subconscious talking there: get the fuck down to a lake and wash yourself for once in your life, then buy a car, a green one, and drive into that fucking lake and drown yourself.
Stinky Lady is absolutely unbearable and whenever I see her entering the coffee, I get depressed and Tim Hortons suddenly appears under a much more attractive light. Hell, this is the paragraph I wrote about Tim Hortons one night as I saw Stinky Lady walking in; this is the paragraph that was originally supposed to appear in my “Tim Hortons” section:
“Tim Hortons is the most inspiring place in the universe (Note from the author: I was still working on The Final Puzzle). Servers are terrifyingly friendly and always up for fascinating conversations; they are genuinely interested in what you are doing and actively encourage you to work faster so you can get more work done. The low-light ambience create an intimate and personal feeling, engendering the most propitious conditions for success and subtly hinting at you to purchase “off the menu” services and “products.” Police visit every fifteen minutes to guarantee your peace of mind and ensure your perfect safety. Likewise, police officers definitely don’t observe you like you’re a criminal, but simply act as the good, caring parents they are themselves. ‘Why is this gentleman so focused on writing at 1AM? I should really buy him lunch or something so he doesn’t get hungry!’ The seats are slightly uncomfortable, but that’s okay because the originals were made out of silk, satin and some fabrics so comfortable they had to be banned. Like Shakespeare, Tim Hortons has reinvented the art of writing and I could stay there for days, crafting masterpiece after masterpiece.”
To tell you how bad it is, I once bought Tim Hortons shares by mistake while she was there. Really, against the Shitty Lady, there is very little you can do. There are one or two tables in the entire court where you will be far away enough from her and where her odor won’t make you vomit; if you see her entering, pray that such a table is available, or burn the inside of your nose.
Alternative Theory: Nobel prize winner in Chemistry
While trying to develop a vaccine for skunk sprays, Nobel prize chemistry winner Samara Louis accidentally sprayed herself with the most concentrated form of the product a few days before the ceremony. Even after trying the strongest chemical products known to men, Samara never managed to remove the odor or even lessen the strength it. Shunned by her peers and by the university, Samara has found solace at a local café where she can concentrate all her efforts on her favorite avocation: writing random words, which, under circumstances, would have been part of an incredible Nobel prize acceptance speech:
“Chemistry is like a Lake, a very Blue one. There are Tons of reasons to go Far in the domain, whether it is to clean a Lake or buy a Green Car with all the money you’ll make.”
Samara has managed to make her condition somewhat acceptable by covering herself in several layers of rare dried spices and plants to mask her new natural odor; sadly, the important financial resources deployed to make her situation somewhat tolerable have left her unable to afford paper or even pens, forcing her to write on whatever she can scrounge.
Be nice to hobos 🙁 😛