I have been trying to fight it for a long time by now, but it is time. I have done everything I needed to do, there is nothing left to procrastinate. I have tried to play games, read a book, watch a tv show or a movie, I even did yoga today. Nothing worked. Today is the day. It wants to come out.
We are so used to read books and stories from writers who actually finished them. Embellished them. Writers who have something to say, but sometimes a story needs to be told no matter if the writer or the reader gets to the end of it. Sometimes the story is a story as long as both are interested in writing or reading it, and sometimes the end does not matter at all. The end of a story is just the starting point of the narration. It is the moment when a person becomes aware of it being a story and starts telling it. The problem is that we put too much pressure on how the story needs to be told. We try so much to look at it from an objective point that we forget to ask ourselves: did we enjoyed the story? Not the way it was told, not the way it was written, not the whole thing from the beginning to the end but rather from the moment we found it interesting to the moment it lost our attention. It is not the black and white version we enjoy; it is the nuances that make it lovable. Tiny imperfections like sprinkles on ice cream, and that is why we get so angry when we are unhappy with the ending of a book. Not because of the ending but because the story was not yet over for us and the writer robbed us from the rest of the experience. So, let us break those rules and tell an unfinished story. I am warning you beforehand to avoid you the pain of being unhappy with the ending. There will be none. Not as long as I live, but you can take something from it. I do not know what, still it will be worth the while.
Memories.
She never believed they fade with time until one day she was walking down the hall of a building built in nineteen-something and a somewhat familiar smell made its way to her olfactory epithelium. It smelled like summer at her grandma’s house, butterflies flying around, bees buzzing in the air and waking up in cosy puffed blankets on colourful sheets with a horned owl singing in the background. She smiled a little as these pleasant images formed before her eyes. She kept walking. As she passed another door a different smell came. Someone was cooking something delicious that reminded her of something she could not grasp completely. She saw brownish colours and sensed a more tense feeling that she could not identify. hu she thought that’s strange. She tried to go through all her memories only to discover most of them were gone. Big piles of heavy and boring worries took up almost all the space in her mind. She tried to think of her childhood which did not seem so far to her but only a few highlights good and bad were left in the few dusty drawers in her brain. How could this happen? She was only thirty years old. Still young. Still herself and yet almost nothing left of the time that shaped her the most. She stopped and inhaled deeply. Nothing. 404. No memories to be found. An error in her smell catalogue. She started walking again. She was already late, and the next smell of man perfume brought up a whole new set of images which made her forget she had already forgotten what was dear to her. Sadly, the bad experiences she had tried to cover up and forget so many times were still there. Not dusty at all and too big to go unnoticed for a long while.
Little did she know, behind the door she stopped in front of, there was a writer sitting at his desk. His laptop light shining on his face, the cigarette smoke passing unnoticed before his eyes. He had nothing to say. Nothing. His eyes slightly closed, his brain cells pacing back and forth to find that one unopened box in his brain. Nothing. He had written everything. Every childhood memory, every embarrassing moment of his teenage years, every rejection of his adult life, his marriage, his divorce, his dreams, all the pain… everything. Not even one single sarcastic comment left. He smirked while leaning back in his old chair well that’s ironic he thought. He had spent all his life writing about it that he had forgotten to live it. And now there was nothing left beside a few shitty books that no one wanted to read and a light nicotine addiction. I guess I can finally call myself a writer: I will die alone hoping that some day someone will discover the genius behind my books and my life will gain meaning after all, even though I will long be dead by then. He took a deep breath letting the nicotine flow into every vein, and slowly exhaled the smoke into the foggy room. He thought about this thing he read somewhere about having to write, even though you have nothing to say. It is supposed to help avoiding writer’s block. I guess it’s too late for that he was starting to get angry. He closed his eyes, slowly rubbing his temples. think!. Suddenly he smelled it. A strange but somewhat familiar smell. He could not place it anywhere, but it was pleasant, relaxing. He steadied his neck allowing his head to fall on his back, eyes still closed. And then he saw her. He saw a beautiful woman standing in a shabby hallway. She looked exhausted but determined. One of those people so deep into the fight against life, that they do not even realize how much they have achieved. One of those on the best way to success with no time to enjoy it. They know life is chasing them. No time to rest. No hope for luck. The gods are watching.
Aromatic deception 