Chapter 31: Red Bud
Surrounded by a stench so foul it choked the breath from my lungs, the young woman stood as if in a perfumed garden, enraptured by the scent.
“Isn’t it deliciously chilling?” she asked me. Or perhaps she was merely speaking to herself, for she continued without awaiting my response.
“I adore this smell. It takes me back to my innocent childhood. Those carefree, peaceful days. Nostalgia. Mirror. Summers with flamingos. Heart. The scent of coal. Black sun and firefighter and engineer. Blue rose. Stonehenge towering ten times my height.”
Disconnected words tumbled from her lips in strange succession. In that moment, she was a poet—the world’s most lyrical lunatic. Behind her vacant eyes, childlike wonder drifted serenely like glitter in a snow globe.
Only then did I comprehend what had transpired. What she had been doing at the dead end of that passage.
She hadn’t detected this connecting room, but she had sensed her beloved aroma emanating from beyond the wall. And like flies drawn to rotting fish, she had pressed herself against the wall for hours, bewitched by that scent.
I grasped the shoulder of the swaying student and halted her progress.
“Oh?”
Caught in my grip, her body tilted backward. A dull sound escaped her lips.