Prompt no. 1
Our very first club assignment!
Savannah Hollow Horn BearWrite a story about someone who can actually smell fear.
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Fear was a bittersweet sword to the senses.
Waking up to the sweet scent of vanilla and maple, seemed like any other June 21st morning. Rose in her bed with her mom down stairs making the most delicious birthday breakfast. Taking in the delicious smell, Rose stayed in bed marinating in the memory as if the smell got stronger with each second. Until the air of the most sweetest smell sang side by side with rancid odor of rot and decay, then sweetness again.
Ignoring the smell, Rose leapt out of bed and raced down the stairs to the kitchen as quickly and quietly as she could....But her mother was not there as anticipated. She ran to check her mom's room and saw nothing out if the ordinary. She called out to her mother and again, nothing.
Then she realized the most delicious smell she thought was her birthday breakfast was coming from the garage. As she got closer and closer the smell became stronger and stronger. She opened the door as a sharp gasp broke her concentration and she felt the weight of her little sister, Lily, colliding with her body and an uncontrollable cry left Lily's lips. Suddenly the air lost its sweetness and became still. It was then she saw the garage door open and the pool of blood near the back of her mother's car.
Sweat stinks. Or rather, the sweat that comes leaking out from your hot little pores begins to stink when bacteria that lives on your skin begins to eat the fat and protein in your sweat.
This is what you mean when you say you can smell fear. A nervous body sweats extra. It's just part of our flight-or-fight response. A generalized whole-nervous system reaction to our brain deciding that we just might have to run very very soon. When a nervous body sweats, the society of bacteria living on its skin begins to chow down on the yummy yummy sweat, and this bacteria party produces an odor that you recognize as fear.
This is not what I mean when I say that I can smell fear. When I settle down into the dark of a movie theater, with the cool air passing over my skin and snacks both salty and sweat at my finger tips I smell each and every hint of anxiety, concern, or terror the patrons of the theater feel.
It's a scary movie of course. The scariest that's been made for a long while, say the reviews. I don't care as long some people in here get properly worked up and i get a good wiff.
After the first good jump scare i close my eyes to focus on smelling. As people shift in their seats whiffs pass over my nostrils.
What does fear smell like to me? have you ever had a huge crush on someone who wears very nice perfume and is completely indifferent about you? Have you ever been trapped in a chalky sweaty room doing tedious exercises and caught whiffs of fresh baked goods through the one open window?
The movie didn’t seem to be so scary. The fear I smelled was transient and mild. The audience seemed to find some sort of solidarity with each other, screaming performatively at jump scares, and disarming scenes of tension with jokes that made each other laugh.
So leaving the movie I’m disappointed. I might go and try and see another showing. Hmmm but what’s that?
It was your typical pre-dawn Wednesday morning. Ralph crawled up through the storm drain and onto the sidewalk on 2nd and Mazatlan, where he usually basked in the delectable aroma of the Johnsons’ early breakfast bacon, sizzling in a pan. He knew this would mean a smorgasbord of satisfying goodies come 10 o’clock, haphazardly tossed into the organics waste bin. The Johnsons clearly didn’t believe in leftovers. But Ralph sure did. And, no one would be the wiser until discovering a mess after garbage pickup. The city waste employees always endured the blame for tidbits strewn about in the gutter, which tickled Ralph to no end.
He crossed the street, traversed the front lawn, leaped up onto the wooden bench on the front porch, and peered stealthily into the Johnsons’ kitchen window, his shiny black eyes camouflaged by his bandit mask. He sniffed enthusiastically, hoping to catch a delectable whiff of the bacon, though he knew the smell would torture him until later, when he could upturn their bin and devour whatever they’d thrown out from breakfast.
But something was off today. Something was different. His whiskers twitched this way and that. His ringed tail stuck straight out in alarm. This was no bacon smell. What came in through his tiny, black nostrils reminded him of his mother, back when Ralph was just a baby. He remembered the scent that came off of her when she threw herself between Ralph and an angry German shepherd that was intent on a furry snack. That smell was fear. And he smelled it now, coming through the screen window of the Johnsons’ kitchen. His fur stood on end as he focused his attention on Mrs. Johnson, sitting on a kitchen chair. Strangely, she had a bandit mask too, but hers was of white cloth, covering her crinkled eyes, and there was something stuck in her mouth. Her veiny hands were tied behind her back, and she was shaking. Ralph saw a large man standing behind her with a knife, at her. The hungry raccoon barely gave himself a chance to think before barreling through the window screen, screeching and baring his sharp teeth. The large man, caught off guard, dropped the knife, just as Ralph leaped at him and sunk his teeth into the man’s neck.
—-Whoops! I was in St. Louis all week so I didn’t get much of a chance to focus on this and I forgot to post it. Do I love it? No. But I def didn’t have time to write anything else so here we are. I’ll try my best to post on time and without caveats next time! 🫣—-
It was nauseating. The scent was sour like something left rotting in the hot sun. Pungent and impossible to ignore, but Lorelei tried anyway. It had taken her a week to figure out what the smell was coming from after the first time it assaulted her nose. No one else seemed to notice it. Maybe it’s my imagination she had hoped. Quickly, it became clear that the scent was very real and for some reason, she was the only one who could sense it.
Lorelei groaned. She was bored and sitting on a hard chair for hours made her back ache. Being forced to watch one interrogation after another had made her wonder of it might be less agonizing to be the one getting interrogated. There was a steady flow of people in and out of the room in front of her and her mind was drifting. She was only paying just enough attention to be able to do her job. It’s not like she cared about it anyway. Once the Enforcement Agency was tipped off that Lorelei was a Whiff, she had no choice but to render her services. Whiffs were people who could smell an emotion. Only one emotion. Usually, it was a pleasant emotion like happiness or contentment, but there were rare exceptions. Lorelei was one of those exception. She could smell fear and that kind of ability was desirable.
The next person being interrogated was man who looked as uninterested as she felt. She probably wouldn’t have noticed, except that each subject had arrived to the room with apparent confusion or anger, and to her irritation, they all shared an undercurrent of fear. Maybe this man was just good at masking how he felt, but Lorelei should still be able catch some of the sour scent only she could detect. The weird thing was that she couldn’t. Not a single note of it was polluting the air as she took a deep breath in through her nose. That was unusual and what made her truly look at the man.
He was the kind of person who was forgettable upon first appraisal. Slightly tanned skin, dark hair, and light brown eyes. If she hadn’t been determined to inspect every detail of his appearance, she probably wouldn’t have noticed the devious glint in his eyes or the way he subtly tapped his fingers with impatience on his thigh. How unusual, he’s not like other boys she thought and snorted to herself. He whipped his head to the mesh screen Lorelei sat behind and she clapped her hands over her mouth. He couldn’t see her, but he certainly could hear her. It was similar a one-way mirror that also allowed airflow. The mesh was necessary so she could smell when fear was felt in the room and normally, noise wasn’t an issue. She simply pressed a button whenever there was a new wave of the fear smell. But this was the first time she had been curious about anyone sitting in the chair before her.
His name tag read: R. Swindle. The “R” stood for Robert, but he’d never been called that. As a kid, everyone called him Bobby. Then, when he turned twelve and started the 7th grade at Conway Middle School, he insisted on being called Rob and would ignore anyone who still called him Bobby. It didn’t take long for people to get with the program, but with a name like Rob Swindle, it was no surprise that other kids liked to tease him. "Hey, Burglar Boy, the fuzz is comin' to get you," they'd say. Or they'd call him names like Grifter or Sharkey, their favorite, but it never really bothered him. In fact, he thought it was pretty funny back then and even funnier now, at age 36, considering that he was an officer at the Conway Police Department. He still got lots of shit from his coworkers about his name, but it was all in fun, and nobody at the department doubted his integrity and abilities as an officer. After 18 years of service, he had more than proved himself to be a “good cop.” In fact, he was considered by the C.P.D. to be one of their best. Rob had a way of quickly assessing the most contentious or violent situations and getting them under control in minutes. His fellow officers were in awe of him. He'd been asked many times, "How do you do that?" Rob would just shrug and smile, but he knew how. He had a special skill; he could actually smell fear. It smelled like moldy bread with undertones of burnt hair and cumin. As a kid, he assumed everyone could smell it, but eventually he learned that, no, they sure as hell couldn't! And it turned out that being able to smell fear was very useful as a cop.