Dead Body Lying in my bed at 1 am, I struggled to stay awake, insistent on enjoying my last night before school resumes for the winter quarter. Unfortunately neither the back-to-school jitters nor the powerful odor emanating from the heating vents in my apartment were enough to prevent me from enjoying a long winter’s nap. I drifted off to sleep before I even set my alarm clock, fairly confident that I would wake up in time for my first class of the day at 3:30. I didn’t wake again until 11:30 am. I reasoned that 10 ½ hours was a decent enough sleep so I stumbled out of bed, anxious to see if my malfunctioning computer had magically healed itself overnight. I stood poised before my desk when I heard someone pounding furiously on my door. Still groggy, I did not move, but rather froze in place as I listened intently. I next heard the door open and a man’s voice yell, “Hello!! Is anyone in here? This is the police!”  Before I could respond, the voices were inside and the knocking was now on the other side of my chamber door. My chamber door! I regained the ability to move my legs and quickly opened my door and said, “What? Hello?” There they were. The fuzz. In my home. Two uniformed police officers were bombarding me with questions before I had even brushed my teeth. “Are you alright?!” “Is there anyone else in the apartment?!” There was no longer a door between us, but they were still yelling and ending sentences with “?!”.  I was confused. “Uh I’m fine. No, not now. No. What?” I answered, trying not to sound guilty of whatever crime they were probably here to investigate. “Okay ma’am, we were just checking.” The first cop replied, easing up on his alarming punctuation. “Your landlord called us to come in because he thought you were dead.” I assured them that I was not dead. Evidently, the maintenance men from the rental company had visited my upstairs neighbors this morning to investigate a foul smell. They guessed that it was something downstairs traveling up the vents, so they knocked on my door. There was no answer, so they proceeded to enter the apartment. Upon opening the door, they got a noseful of the putrid smell I have been living with for several weeks. They assumed the apartment was empty, so they poked around, looking for a pile of garbage, dead rodents, or a pot of forgotten sauerkraut somewhere. When one of them noticed my closed door, however, the unpleasant smell took on a whole new implication. The man, not wanting to see for himself what was inside, called his boss over to investigate. The boss knocked on my door, and finally, bracing himself for the worst and wielding a crucifix (or so I imagine), opened it. As I slept soundly the sight of my lifeless, pallid body combined the with the overwhelming stench of death prompted him to call the police.  I had called the landlord a couple times and described the smell as rotting vegetables, but I was mistaken. The police agreed that it smelled like a decomposing corpse. Now I know. And don’t worry about me. We have rectified the situation so that it now smells like death masked by scented candles and glade air freshener.