The Fifth Scent

I wrote a weird psychedelic fairytale for an Elastic Magazine submission. The theme was "inner species". It was not selected.

She found the perfume on a rainy Wednesday, in a shop that hadn’t been there the day before.

It occupied a space that felt more like a seam than a storefront. A narrow green door, pulsing ever so slightly, like the gills of something sleeping.

She entered.

Inside, the air was warm and wet, and the floor beneath her feet had a faint give. Shelves of crystal bottles trembled with strange internal light—some fogged, some glowing, some humming softly. And behind the counter: him. Amphibian in nature, skin glinting like moonlight on wet stone, webbed fingers laced with veins of gold, and eyes wide and steady. He moved with ancient grace and smelled of moss and deep-rooted things.

“Looking for something… familiar?” he asked.

She didn’t answer, not with words. Instead, she drifted toward a small crystalline vial labeled with nothing but the number 5. The scent was nostalgic, magnetic, like the warmth of fingers once intertwined.

The amphibian man tilted his head, voice low and rippling. “That one’s different. Made of fungal breath and kelp pollen”

She smiled. “I like different.”

The first night, she dreamed of a paper sky that tore open to reveal another sky beneath it. A liquid landscape: koi fish drifting through clouds, a tree humming in a language she somehow remembered. She danced with a woman who was part flame, part rain. They kissed, and she tasted iron and orchids.

When she woke, her skin smelled like something not hers, but not unfamiliar. The perfume.

​​Night after night, she returned. The perfume invited her into dreamscapes that bent time and identity. Sometimes she was herself. Everything and nothing. Sometimes a creature, and other times, she was no one.

She passed through libraries where books read her, a mirror that showed not her face, but every version of her that could have been. It was a pleasure and a mystery. She felt expanded and vivid. She began to keep a notebook, but the ink would blur by morning.

Then came the memories. Not surreal, but real. A scraped knee. Her mother lifting gravel from the wound. Her first lie. Her first bleed. An awkward kiss in a field. The scent of a rubber basketball, and a heartbreak, sharp and hot. She witnessed these from the outside, as if a ghost circling the edges of her own life. Unable to intervene. Unable to look away.

Still, she returned. Because the perfume showed her futures, too.

A train to Bordeaux. A man with thick hair, reading A Gentleman in Moscow, their knees grazing. Falling in love. The press of time in a room with low amber light. Applause and admiration. Failure and shame. A child, small and golden-haired. Cold hands, warm coffee, weed smoke, and early parenthood. Mourning. Making peace. Making love.

She began to nap just to go back. Her days dimmed and work faded. Emails went unopened and invitations unanswered. Her life narrowed to the line between dreams.

One morning, the dreams began to warp. Faces blurred like rain on glass. A child walked ahead, messy hair and untied shoelaces. Something was shifting. The perfume still worked, but the threads were fraying.

She returned to the shop, frantic.

“I’m losing it, it’s all fading” she said.

The amphibian man, older now, his gills pulsing slower.

“You stopped living,” he said. “The scent connects to memory. But memory is fed by presence. Without experience, you fade.”

“I need more,” she said. Her bottle at home was dwindling.

He turned. From beneath the counter, he produced a heavier bottle. Silver and opaque.

“This one is final,” he said. “One spritz, and you’ll sleep. You may live there forever, if that’s what you prefer.”

She took it.

That night, she placed both bottles side by side on her bedside table. She stared at them, thinking of nothing. Her phone buzzed.

It was her sister.

“Come to Bordeaux with me. Please? Tu me manques. We leave at 9 am, sans faute!”

She twirled a strand of hair around her finger. She saw it: the train, the book, the window, the man.

Her eyes quickly shifted towards her night stand. “Yes, ok.”

As she hung up, she remembered something. The dreams didn’t need to be chased.

After packing her bags, she lay down and her eyes found the perfume bottles. Twin moons in the dark.

One last time?

She reached for the vial, dabbed it on her wrist. Inhaled deeply and rubbed it gently across her neck, as if preparing for a date with destiny.

The morning came. A young woman waited on the platform, Danish in hand, scanning the horizon. The train had arrived.

Elastic Magazine

I had fun writing this. I hadn’t written a short story in years. I’m curious to see what pieces were selected in the next issue of Elastic Mag. It’ll be their second issue. The first was magnificent. And they’re a Canadian bunch. Woo! Check them out:

https://www.elasticmag.com/