Standing five feet away, I could smell it in the air. Acrid, damp, toe-curling—a memory from my past. The nose is a powerful historian, so it took only a few seconds to place it: the stench of the rat that died in the walls of my second apartment in New York City. Because management was hesitant to punch a hole in the sheetrock to retrieve it, the corpse dried out slowly, rendering one bedroom unlivable as my roommate slept on the sofa and recouped a few weeks of rent. It had been a long time since I smelled that smell. Most Proustian reveries originating in Bushwick won't transport you anywhere you want to go.

— Read more in A Stinky Pilgrimage To The Corpse Flower, With Notes Of Rat, Sweat, And Cheese at Defector.