Title: Scent
Genre: LOCI
Format: a response to a prompt
Note: if accepted, would be for on_thecouch prompts (prompt: 20.3 Scent, where the premise is the character is talking with a shrink)
Alex wrinkles her nose as she sits down. She’s often amazed at how sensitive she is to scent. In her line of work, with all of the hideous smells she encounters, one would think she would’ve become desensitized. In truth, she feels she is even more aware of the scent of different things.
“How are you today Alex?” she eyeballs her shrink, she hates his question. An icebreaker, he calls it. She hates icebreakers and meaningless chit chat. But she sits, pleasant façade in place. Well, that is except for the wrinkle in her nose from a smell she is still trying to place.
“Fine,” she manages to articulate a reply, just as the scent registers in her mind. “Is that hazelnut?” she compresses her lips slightly as she asks the question. She watches her shrink raise his eyebrow questioningly.
“Hazelnut?” he asks, looking at her, looking around the office.
“That smell. Hazelnut,” she repeats, she is positive of the smell.
“My coffee, from this morning,” he replies, shifting his posture slightly in his chair. Alex looks around the office, IDs the offending coffee cup in the trash can. “You can smell that?” he asks, the coffee is at least 6 hours old, and mostly gone. Just a splash remains in the cup in the trash can.
“Can’t you?” she asks, she likes that she’s made him a bit uncomfortable. “You like hazelnut in your coffee?” she continues, to see if she can get him to shift in his seat again. She smiles as he does, as he momentarily closes his body posture to her.
“You have a sensitive sense of smell,” he says, she recognizes that he just deftly turned the tables back around, taking the questioning back away from her.
“I suppose,” she replies, not meeting his eyes, she’s looking again at the trash can, at the coffee cup. She remembers being on scene yesterday morning, holding a similar coffee cup of her partner’s. Her partner does not take hazelnut in his coffee. Sugar sometimes, rarely anything else. So, as she held his coffee, it simply smelled strong and dark.
“Decomp,” Bobby Goren had muttered to himself upon entering the apartment. Alex had gagged slightly, she smelled it as well. They were there to chase down a suspect, apparently someone else had beat them to the punch. Bobby followed the awful smell of death into the back bedroom. Alex made her way toward the kitchen area. She could hear her partner continuing to call out bits of information from the bedroom, confirming their suspect was deceased, positing some likely causes of death. Alex was not paying attention to Bobby. She was standing in the kitchen, holding Bobby’s coffee, concentrating on the other smells. Pizza, she could still see the box on the counter. Soap, that was the smell of her own hands. She could also smell bleach masking the unmistakable metallic smell of blood. Those were coming from the sink. She took a step forward, and looked into the blindingly clean sink, freshly bleached. She eyeballed the clean dishes to the side. Some plates, a few glasses, some table utensils, and a knife. Murder weapon she thinks to herself.
“Stabbed to death,” Bobby comes to stand behind her and retrieves his cup of coffee from her hands.
“I know,” Alex replied, having figured it out by simply standing in the kitchen. “Murder weapon,” she gestures to the knife.
“Alex,” her shrink brings her back to the present by calling her name. “What were you thinking about?”
“I was thinking I don’t like hazelnut,” she replies with only part of what she is thinking. In truth, she is thinking she does not like the smell of decomp, of bleach, of blood. Also, she’s thinking she does not like the smell of holding her partner’s coffee.