Synesthesia: Chapter Forty-Six

serial fiction

Image: me

After the incident at the Olive Garden, after the explosion of glass and terror as the crumple-proof front end of a Cybertruck smashed through a wall into the midst of a crowded restaurant, I wasn’t sure if I would ever experience the scent of fear the same way again. I’d spent my whole life craving it, chasing it, even kidnapping and caging it. But then I’d nearly suffocated, surrounded by fear as thick as ricotta during those long, anxious moments under the table.

But the heavenly floral scent of the most delicate orange blossoms that drifted toward me on the canyon breeze—that settled the question for good.

Yes, I still wanted that intoxicating smell of fear.

And yes, I still wanted it more than anything else.

The aroma I caught the trace of on that trail into the mile-deep canyon was no ordinary fear, either. It wasn’t Jacob’s weak little odor when some danger, real or imagined, kicked his childish fear response into gear. It was something stronger, purer than Hoka guy’s terror-laden sweat, more powerful than the choking sobs of all the nameless hookers and forgettable, faceless women I’d picked up, taken home, and shut up in a dog crate.

The source of that perfect, sublime fear was somewhere down there in the canyon, and I wanted it.

Amber and Jacob had been in front of me when we’d started, with me trailing behind morosely, mourning the end of our trip, wondering how to say what I’d wanted to say. But when that orange-blossom fear hit my olfactory nerve, I’d sped up. Now I was several paces ahead of them, the gap between us widening as the trail sloped us further and further down.

“Zodiac!” Amber called from behind me. The fear was stronger here, passing through my nostrils, filling my lungs. I was getting closer, and I didn’t want to stop.

Amber called out for me again, her voice sounding farther away than before. My whole body was tingling now, drunk or aroused or both maybe, wanting only for that fear-smell to last forever.

“Zodiac, please!”

Fighting every base desire, every instinct in myself, I stopped. Her voice had sounded so helpless, so needy.

I turned around.

Amber was standing a hundred feet above me on the red dust of the trail, Jacob’s hand in hers, both of them so small I could hardly make out the details of their faces. Amber’s green eyes were up there in that pale blur of a face, but I was too far away to see them. Somewhere inside me, a hand squeezed my heart and held it.

“Let’s go back,” she called down to me. “Jacob’s exhausted.”

The little shape that was Jacob moved closer to the shape that was Amber, and I heard what might have been a whimper. Around me, the air hung completely still. The afternoon sun beat down on me, hotter here than up at the rim. I thought of Amber’s jungle-green eyes, their cool greenness like a welcoming leafy shade in the heat of the day.

I took a step.

Then a breeze kicked up, and the fear-scent laid its hooks into me again, tracing its way through my lungs and into my brain, into my blood, into the part of me that would push inside a woman, if being inside a woman were what I cared about in life.

“I’m sorry,” I called. I think I meant it.

I turned downslope again, closed my eyes, and sucked in a long, slow, deep dose of the fear-scent. I felt my lips part in ecstasy.

No, I could never give this up. Not for anything.

Not even for Amber.

I didn’t look back to see whether she was still there. I just opened my eyes and ran in the direction of the orange blossom scent, dust and rocks filling my sandals as I went.