Yeah Write, Challenge #489

Photo by Joyce Panda on Unsplash

Mandatory Prompts:  Supernatural smell; potato

“Chip?”, Des asked

I glanced at the proffered bag. Well, let’s be honest, my nose was doing the heavy lifting. It latched on to the grease-streaked bag-Crisco peanut oil-and then the chip.Sebago, from Idaho, a good choice. It was picking up the farm worker’s sweat as well; he needed to cut down on the garlic.

“Tom! Tom!”

I came to. “What?”

“You were standing in a daze for, like, two minutes. I asked if you wanted a chip.” Des sounded peeved.

“Um, no thanks.” The smell was overwhelming enough from two feet away. To bring the chip within inches of my nose would set off an olfactory chain reaction all the way back to my childhood. You see, I love spuds, always have. I love their smell (not that I have much choice), their knobbly tuberishness, their versatility. Now, you might think, so what? What’s the big deal? You don’t suffer from hyperolfaction, the [dis]ability to detect all scents, not only over huge distances but also from periods in my past.

My nose has settled on the potato as my Achilles' heel. Even the most tangential solanacaean reference might put me in a fugue state, which can be dangerous, not to mention socially inconvenient. Given the right combination of circumstances, my nose will assail me with every olfactory memory it can, from my earliest memory of taters through to Des’s infernal chip.

“Mate, I have to go”, I mumbled. The truth was my nose had been picking up more and more spud related cues lately; my work was suffering; my girlfriend was complaining; even my friends were starting to avoid me.

Careful to avoid cafes and fish and chip shops, I walked down the high street. All I could do was pinch my nose, a band-aid solution at best, and one guaranteed to prove awkward if I ran into a friend or acquaintance.

I slowed to a stroll. Perhaps window shopping would distract my nose and give me a breather. I browsed the window display of a music store, with its array of guitars, flutes, trombones, violins and...a tuba. My nose quickly picked up the smell of the freshly turned earth of my Dad’s vegetable garden as he revealed its tuberous treasures: Kipflers, Dutch Creams, Pontiacs, Desirees, Sebagos. I clamped my nose just as a woman stopped to browse. She shot me a filthy look and stormed off.

“It’s not you”, I countered lamely.

I entered a bookshop. Steering clear of the cookery section, I found a chair, grabbed a book from the shelf, and tried to immerse myself in it. It was a book on macroeconomic principles. If this doesn’t distract me, I thought, nothing will. Just as I was settling into Schumpeter’s description of opportunity cost, two women entered the aisle.

“What are you looking for?”, one asked.

“That new novel about Louis XIV. Actually, it’s more about the Dauphin.”

My nose vibrated so hard it almost put a crick in my neck. It took me straight back to my girlfriend’s birthday, two years ago. I opened the oven onto a golden field of dauphinoise potatoes, the scent of their subtle waxiness mingling with the steam driven wafts of garlic and cream. I launched out of the chair and fled, holding my nose, my eyes pricking with tears.

I spun around in the street. Suddenly, prompts were everywhere: a record store was advertising a new mashup by a prominent electronic artist; “Hard drive fried?”, asked a poster in the window of a computer shop; a travel agent was promoting cheap fares to Peru, Potato Central.

Desperate now, I held my nose as I ran home. I poured a drink and slumped into a chair. I couldn’t go on like this. My sense of smell, long a hindrance, was becoming an outright menace; something had to give. I went out to the garden shed and rummaged through a box of rusty tools. I found the secateurs and held the open blades beneath my nose. You might think it a bit extreme, but sometimes cutting off your nose to spite your face makes perfect sense. I closed the blades.