“A Man With An Unusually Sensitive Nose” won First Place in Pelican’s second Flash Fiction Competition of 2024.
By Kimberly Yee
Do you know why angel food cake is my favorite dessert?
Because the smell isn’t too strong or overpowering. It’s faint, but sweet. With just a hint of cream.
Since I was a child, doctor’s appointments have always been especially hard for me. Every time I stood up, I would get overwhelmed by the medicinal smell of antiseptic and faint. My pediatrician thought I had anemia and made me take several blood tests that left me dizzy with the scent of iron.
Finally, I was referred to an ear-nose-throat specialist.
“Your ferritin count looks fine,” he said. “Actually, you just have too many olfactory nerve receptors. That’s why everything smells so intense to you. Normally, the receptors decrease stimulation when there’s an overload of chemical signals. But yours don’t, and it’s messing with your proprioception.”
“Is that bad?”
“Not at all. Some people acquire hyperosmia as a side effect of Lyme disease, but you’re perfectly healthy. However, I would recommend that you keep this information to yourself.”
“Why?”
“Well, people don’t like the thought of being smelled. Smell is an intimate thing, it gives away too many secrets. I’ll prescribe you some Vitamin B12 supplements and maybe it will go away.”
He eventually ordered me to stop out of fear that I might give myself a blood clot. But now that I understood what was different about me, I kept to myself. I didn’t tell Clara why I had to wear a mask every day and couldn’t take it off. I didn’t explain to Mum why I couldn’t visit her dogs. I didn’t come to Jake’s wedding. I even skipped my own graduation.
I’m sure there’s a job market for people with this condition, but I just can’t seem to hold one down. I can’t clean houses with bleach, I can’t flip burgers. Working at a bakery seemed the best option, but I started to hate chocolate.
So now, I work odd jobs. Mostly as an unofficial private investigator.
“On Saturday, he stepped in some dog poop and tracked it inside of her house,” I read off my notes. “On Tuesday, he went for a jog and bought two drinks…a Corona for him, a cherry Coke for her. Then on Thursday, they shared the same gluten-free pasta linguine.”
My client’s face crumbled. “I see,” she said quietly.
I was worried that she might cry. Crying people are always difficult because I never know how to comfort them. Sometimes when I put my hand on their shoulder, their smell ends up transferring onto me and I have to shower several times to remove it completely.
“It’s alright,” she sighed. “I always knew that he didn’t love me. He always measures things by the worth that he assigns them, not their inherent value. Everyone always told me that I was too beautiful for him, so I thought my beauty would be enough collateral for him to cherish me. I was wrong.”
“I’m sorry,” I said awkwardly.
She shrugged. “I envy you, being able to read others so easily. It would save me a lot of pain.”
“I doubt you would want to wear this mask everywhere.”
“At least you can exist just as you are. If I did that, I would be practically invisible. People only like me because of my face.”
I thought about it for a second.
I knew that people acted nice when they wore certain synthetic perfumes, and that they became cross with each other when they were dirty. I had never paid much attention to appearances. But it made sense that if people could treat each other differently based on how they smelled, they could also act differently based on how they looked.
“I wouldn’t even know what it means to be invisible,” I admitted. “I’ve never lived life any other way.”
The woman stared at me. “Would you like to know what it feels like?”
“How?”
“You can sense things if you remove your mask, can’t you?”
I hesitated.
If I took my mask off, there was a possibility that the information would be too much for my nerves and that I would faint from the overload of new sensations. I could hear the doctor’s voice in the back of my head, warning me.
Against my own better judgment, I reached up with trembling fingers and lowered the mask.
Suddenly, it wasn’t just smell anymore. Laughter, tears, vomiting into strange dark alleyways, holding hands and kissing under a sunset. I tasted grief and anger, the violent scarlet hue of being a teenage girl. I fought against my body. I cried over men. I was a mother, and then I wasn’t anymore. I fell in love, and my best friend disappeared with the man I wanted to marry. A cat, small and weak, crawled into my lap. A homeless man chased away my stalker for me. I looked in a mirror and liked my skin for the first time.
When I finally came back to myself, the woman was staring at me bewildered.
“Are you okay?” she asked, concerned.
“I’m fine,” I told her. “It is a little late, though…I’m sorry, I have to leave.”
With that, I started to walk home by myself. Above me, the moon cast a pale silver glow.
After looking around twice to make sure nobody was there, I slowly lowered the mask and stuck out my tongue.
If a passerby saw me, they would probably think I was crazy. But I was determined to try something new. This was for everyone who had walked this route and never stopped to look up. For every person that could only see, and not smell or taste what was in front of them. For the me that had lived for years without ever taking off the mask, both out of fear of other people and myself.
I closed my eyes.
Just as I suspected, I was right. A taste lingered on my tongue, slightly sweet and silky.
With just a hint of cream.