Pine Level resident Michael Clements’ rancid breath can clean an oven, according to neighbors. “He’s always had horrifying breath,” claims neighbor Wallace Totten, speaking of the malodorous Doswell resident. “He stands too close and he breathes heavy when he talks, so you can’t help but be bombarded by stale, hot gusts of distinct putrified tuna fish and bubbling bad milk stenches.”
Other neighbors and acquaintances report similar, shuddering sentiments, some even claiming they can smell his breath when he drives by in his car. “His rotten breath actually seeps through his pores when his mouth is closed.” Says Totten’s wife Gert. “There’s always this humid and lethal miasma surrounding him, choking off other life forms. It’s quite remarkable, actually.”
“We walk by his house and we can smell his toxic breath, even when he’s inside. I hear it has a half-life literally of years, and the wind doesn’t disperse it – it just spreads it around. He’s a human hurricane, category 11 and gaining strength.”
Efforts by acquaintances to convince Clements to use breath mints and mouthwash are unsuccessful. “Offering that man an Altoid is like dribbling a spoonful of Voban powder on a vomit puddle the size of South Carolina,” claims Gert, who added that it is not uncommon for firefighters to receive complaints of gas leaks or toxic waste spills when Clements is in the vicinity. “He cleared the Ashland Strawberry Festival in 2007,” says Wallace, “he was laughing at a performing Chihuahua and word seeped through the crowd of either an overturned tanker full of raw, festering sewage on Route 1 or a pentoborane spill of some sort. The crowd panicked and stampeded, and the poor Chihuahua, well . . .”
Rumors of Clements’ breath having its own material safety data sheet (MSDS) are unfounded for now. “It would help to know how to combat a stink of that breathtaking magnitude,” says Hanover Fire Chief Russell McAllister. “I went into a Porta-John right after Mr. Clements at the Festival and his lingering breath actually overpowered the toilet odors. My eyes burned when I left. He’s a walking Chernobyl.”
