Two Senses Clash

A perfect fresh morning on a perfect spring vacation with my daughter in New Mexico skiing. The fire provided a nice ambiance to my perch on the soft leather couch. Contentment filled my soul and my toes inside the traveling red shoes. St. Francis was in attendance passing on his blessing. The coffee was good. I had switched to my second tumbler of decaf.

I was seeking the smell of burning piñon, but the fire was gas and the logs were fake.

Tap tap tapping away at my keyboard, I was most certainly in heaven.

A smell emerged lightly that I couldn’t identify or locate from my warm moment. The pungency grew and I had a flashback to the dentist’s chair and nitrous being administered. This was the smell of nitrous oxide. Or a cleaning fluid of some sort. I still could not see the agent of smell but I could hear a vacuum running just down the hall.

I was in my own little multiverse. Partially in a blissful morning looking out on the snowy foothills. Another experience dawning on me, the euphoria of nitrous and also harbinger of pain and soul-grinding noise. And she was upon me, asking in Spanish if it was “bueno” for her to vacuum the carpet surrounding my morning ablutions. The direct sun had pierced the clouds and was overheating my face and creating a harsh glare off my laptop screen. “Como no?” I said.

I moved further into the hotel’s lobby to another comfy spot and continued my exposition, now blurred with bloody pain and the invasive smell of cleaning products.

Read more Short-Short Stories from John.