This is a piece of Flash Fiction. The topic: a second-person account of an individual who picks up an almost empty can of air freshener.
Air Effects
You are in your upstairs library, you appear to be reading Proust. Your thoughts, though, are not on the text. Let’s begin there.
Things seem normal until you put down a half-eaten madeleine and pick up a can of Febreze (old book smell can sometimes be overwhelming) and then…well, then things get stilted and awkward. As you slowly squeeze the nozzle, you can see each individual droplet as it slowly exits the cylinder. You not only smell them, but you can also feel each unique sphere. Preoccupied with childlike innocence and amazement, you do not notice that the walls are beginning to lean in. Even worse, the heat suddenly radiating from your chest begins to overwhelm you.
Are you having a stroke? Probably not, you seem healthy enough. Maybe you fell in love, and that is what this is all about. Ahhhh, yes…love is powerful enough to warp matter and slow the flow of time. Didn’t you read that somewhere? What was straight and plum becomes slanted, geometrically unstable. Do you really need me to tell you that you are in love?
You must listen to me: Time and space are part of the same thing, separate them out at your own risk. The fact that everything is in slow motion and the walls are warping is no coincidence. The warmth in your chest? That is probably part of the same deal, at least you better hope so.
You…you and your logical mind, is all this too much for you? What, you think you are some sort of Vulcan, Spock incarnate? Look around you, the walls are closing in, they are bending at strange and severe angles. Do you even realize it is also getting darker? Open your damn eyes, it is getting darker.
It is totally dark now. Not regular dark but intense blacklight dark. It is pervasive (how unusual); the light seems to be piercing you, invading your essence. You feel it…you don’t like it…not even a little.
The smell, that’s it! It is the smell! The scent of the Febreze reminds you of what Chris’ apartment used to smell like. Unfortunately, your deep insight isn’t helping matters. The walls are so close that you can reach out and touch all four, five, six, seven (what…seven walls?). You wonder how this is possible. There were only four walls here a few minutes ago, weren’t there?
You realize the scent that initiated this fiasco is dissipating. In your troubled mind, this means that Chris is also fading away. Even though you do not know it, people like you are wedded to metaphor; in a certain sense, you live by it and for it. Do you even realize the can is still in your left hand? You do? Then squeeze the trigger. Try again…press harder. What? It is empty? Oh no…
You have just seen and experienced something rare, an unimaginable (almost inconceivable) moment in space and in time. The Fifth Dimension, the one reputed to be of hope and ecstasy, opened up (ever so briefly) around you. What are you supposed to do now? I know precisely what you are going to do next, you are going to buy more Febreeze.
