It’s been months since we released a new scent. And now, mistakes are being made. People are getting sloppy. God help me, I don’t know what to do.

Yesterday, there was an explosion in Bay Seven. Three Fragrance Auditors went immediately nose deaf. The doctors said they didn’t feel any pain… Alfonso is still touch and go, with the right nostril at about 40%. I pushed them too hard. Oh god… I will burn for what I’ve done. And what I must do still.

You think this is easy? Waking up everyday, knowing the public will have your head on a fucking pike if their living room doesn’t smell exactly like the morning dew after a Northern California thunderstorm? I’ve thrown together everything I can think of… Holiday/Fruit mixes. Vacation/Laundry mixes. I mean, for christ sake, I was experimenting with patchouli the other day.

Jesus, we are fucked.

I would crack open a Fresh Cut Roses® and sit back, letting the gossamer raindrops of each petal melt away my stress… but, of course it was created by the great Gene Kilmartin! “The Golden Nose.” He also was the “Golden Shitty Father.” Goddamn him. If he hadn’t gotten sick, I’d still be in Kansas City, probably a Regional Manager at Walgreens by now. But no, he had to have someone ”carry on his work.”

Nothing I’ve ever done has been my own.

I wish he was here. He’d know what to do.

Sure, I’ve had my own hits with Balsam and Cedar®, Margarita Time™, and Orange Dreamsicle™, but the scented candle community is an insatiable churning beast, like a thousand writhing maggots on the floor of a slaughter house, screaming “FEED US!!” If we don’t get a new product off the line soon, people are gonna start asking questions. Like “Where exactly do we get all the ingredients that make my shit bag studio apartment smell like a fresh cut pine tree?” HAH! If they only knew. The stuff we put in the Waikiki Melon™ alone makes Chernobyl look like a Macy’s perfume counter.

I’m tired… I keep thinking I’m being followed. There are times I wish these lurking shadows would just overtake me, the stench of my rotting soul given as fair trade to invoke the next Clean Cotton™ or Pumpkin Ginger Bark® in a Tulsa mid-century open house.

This bottle of cheap scotch is almost empty. And so am I. One last home run. One last Island Spa™. That’s all I need. Then I can roast easy, the devil’s own Lance Kilmartin®, filling hell with the malodor of failure and compromise for all eternity.

God is dead.