Scent Trails

Fiction by Jeff Harrell

Four in the morning. Four in the goddamn morning. Again. You don’t even know what day it is. Tuesday? Friday? It’s all the same. All a blur. In five hours you’ll be back at work, stumbling through your day in a fog, stumbling through imaginary time, waiting to get back to real time.

But right now, it’s four in the morning, and your second speedball’s buzzing in your brain, and it feels like anything can happen.

The club’s a wash out. You move through the crowd like you’re Moses parting the goddamn Red Sea, but she’s not there. She was there, you know she was. You can smell her, that combination of sweat and cigarettes and pheromones. It’s on your clothes, it’s on your sheets. The sheets you haven’t washed in a month because you don’t want to lose that smell. It’s in your head, in your brain, and you think you’ll never get it out.

But the trail’s cold, hours cold. You ask Jojo behind the bar in that subtle language of the street, a nod, a raised eyebrow. He nods back, shrugs, jerks his chin toward the door. She was here, but now she’s gone. Two, three hours ago.

The trail’s cold.

You stumble out of the club, and everything’s vibrating, spots of static around your peripheral vision from the rush, everything’s moving and you’re moving and your feet are a thousand miles away but they’re moving and you’re moving and then you’re down the block, down the block the wrong way, following a scent trail that’s only in your head, only in your mind.

But it’s not even you any more, you’ve been disembodied, you’re not in the driver’s seat any more, no, man, you’re not calling the shots here. You’re riding a rail, and the only choices are forward and back and you know she’s not back there so you keep going, your thousand-mile feet keep carrying you, and the scent’s in your brain and it’s mingling with the speed and the rush is out there somewhere you just have to get to it it’s somewhere where is it.

You’re not sure how you got there, but it’s another club, a different kind of club. There’s no dub here, no beat, no rhythm. It’s dark and smoky and quiet, and there’s a crowd, there’s the buzz of a crowd, but it’s a different kind of crowd and a different kind of buzz and it’s not right at all but you’re there and you go in because that’s where the scent trail leads and you’re on a rail, man, you can’t stop.

Inside, past the bored-looking girl at the door who doesn’t even look up, past the empty bar where the bartender keeps wiping the same spot over and over until the finish comes off and it’s just bare wood beneath.

There’s a spotlight, and under the spotlight is a girl, and the girl’s holding a guitar. An acoustic guitar, too big for her tiny body, she wraps herself around it like she’s trying to stay afloat.

There’s a crowd, but it’s not her crowd, she’s not here, her scent’s here, but she’s not here, she’d never be here. It’s not her scene, man, it’s not how she rolls.

And then the girl starts making love to that big old guitar, and you stop. You just stop, man, like somebody threw on the brakes. You just stop.

And then this girl, this tiny little girl with her hair in her face, she starts to sing.

It’s words, you think it’s words, but the speedball’s buzzing too fast for you to follow them, every one’s drawn out for an hour, it takes a year for her to sing a verse, the song lasts for eons, and you’re just rooted there. Listening to this high, small voice as it washes over you, washes into you, penetrates you, violates your soul and leaves you wanting more.

And she’s singing, man, she’s more than singing, it’s a sexual act, an orgasm out of her mouth and out over the crowd and over you and into you and into your head where it crashes against the speed and the rush and it all explodes in a slow, soft, gentle supernova.

And then, just when she gets to the last line of the last chorus of the last moment of your old life, she picks her head up and her eyes are closed and she’s praying and she’s praying to you and you’re her god and she’s your universe and then she opens her eyes and they twinkle and she sees you and you see her and it all just fades away when she smiles.

Copyright © 2007 by Jeff Harrell. All rights reserved.