A Study in Fragrance Pt. 09

Author's Note: Emily, a bright, overly confident, North American white 18 year old, has decided to enlist the help of one of the contractors doing a remodel in her home. She's discovered a secret room, The Study, that has been walled up since forever. In exchange for his help, not only in fixing up the room, but in teaching her construction and training her in sex, she's agreed to have sex with her however he wants. But she's discovering it's her fantasies that worry her, leading her to believe that the room's fragrance may be hazardous.

It was a running day, back by 8:30, the crew already working. She could tell just by the smells coming from the basement they were working on something dangerous. Burning. Soldering. Rinsed and dressed, thinking maybe if she just kept her clothes on she'd be less horny. Hasn't worked so far, but with Steph coming over, not much choice anyway.

She'd slept like a log, no weird dreams, and even though her body had been on fire, her exhaustion was like a blanket. When she arrived at practice, she felt energized and pushed herself. Coach wasn't pleased. Not because she was too slow; just the opposite. He didn't want her driving herself so hard.

9:00. Not enough time to put another coat on. She looked at The Study and wondered if she could figure out where Abby's fragrance might be coming from. They'd left the fan on all night to keep the stain from stinking up the house, blowing from the opening to the octagons away from the back stairs. She turned it off, the faint smell of the stained lumber wafting to her before the fragrance overwhelmed everything else.

She turned toward the cabinet, sniffing as she approached the doors. She was certain it was something from inside that must have broken open or spilled. The intensity didn't seem to change. The room was just steeped with it. Then she opened the doors and the fragrance enveloped her like it had every other time. She felt herself lighting up and quickly closed it. But even when that initial cloud dissipated, the aroma was ever-present in the room. It must be coming from there. It must be. She opened the left door again and looked at all of the drawers, remembering the bottom two that were stuck. Other than those, there hadn't been anything that would be a source of the fragrance. It must be inside one of those drawers!

She went down on her hands and knees sniffing at the two drawers, wondering if the smell would intensify. And, while she was down there, she sniffed at the floor thinking it might have been something Abby had spilled. The aroma seemed to increase, but no one place seemed to smell more intensely than another. Except when she opened the cabinet and the perfume floated out on an invisible fog, nothing rose above background intensity. The smell lingered, everywhere. She felt her arousal intensifying, rising up, her clothes felt too tight, her nipples hardening. Fucckkkk!

9:15. She remembered Cos had said something about lightly sanding the wood before the next coat. She grabbed the paper he'd set aside and rubbed it across the faces of the pieces still sitting on the sawhorses. Her phone buzzed. 10:05 and Steph was running a few minutes late. She'd finished all of the main pieces and the shelves, but couldn't face sanding the plywood by hand.

"Cos?" She shouted down the basement stairs from the kitchen. "Do you have the sander some place?"

He poked his head around the bottom of the stairs. "Yeah -- it's in the tool box on the bed of the truck. Why?"

"I'm done hand sanding all of the smaller pieces, but thought it would go faster on the plywood if I used the power sander."

He nodded. "Smart. Yeah. Here're the keys. But be careful -- just hold it lightly."

She caught his toss. It would be too late to finish before Steph arrived, but she'd get things ready at least.

"Hey! Perfect timing!" Steph had driven up while she was grabbing the tool from the truck. Em waited for her to come up the drive. "Thanks for coming over!"

"What's up?" Steph leaned in for a hug. "What can Super-scientist Steph help you with?"

"It's upstairs. I'll tell you about it when we get there." But Emily stopped before opening the back door, remembering what she and Caroline had talked about the day before. She didn't want to expose Steph to some weird chemical. "Ummm...before we go in...shit. Don't think I'm bat-shit crazy, but," in her head she ran through all of the ways she could tell Steph her concerns.

"What? What's the problem?"

Steph and Emily had known each other most of their lives, going to the same schools, been in the same classes. The past semester they'd been lab partners, which helped Emily a lot more than it did Steph, but Steph didn't seem to care.

"Okay. Here's the deal. I've found a secret room in the house. Yeah. Hold on. That's a thing, but not the thing. But when I opened it, I think I might have gotten exposed to a chemical, and it's...it's maybe an aphrodisiac?" Emily stopped there, staring at Steph, waiting for her to tell her she was commitable.

"Okay...ummm..."

"And I don't want you to get exposed to it without at least my having warned you."

Steph giggled. "You think it would spice things up with Robert?"

Emily dipped her head and eyes to the side. Why doesn't anyone take this seriously? "That's the thing. Maybe? I don't know. I don't know if it even exists." She realized too late that that sounded really nutso.

"Wait. What?"

"No. Sorry. I meant: I don't know if everyone can smell it. Caroline could, but, I mean, one of the construction workers couldn't, so I'm not sure what's going on."

"Caroline was here? How's she doing? We've been meaning to hook up. And you think it's an aphrodisiac because...?" Steph raised her eyebrows, waiting for something juicy.

"Because I'm having wild monkey sex with that construction worker," she whispered in her ear.

The two of them started giggling.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph," Steph said. "It's about time."

"Wait. What?"

"We've been thinking of putting together a pool to see when you'd finally get laid."

"Wait. What? Who? Shut the fuck up!" Emily looked at Steph's face not believing it. "Seriously? Who? You have to tell me!"

"C'mon. You've got to know. We've only been poking at you for a year. Like, 'Is Em going to date Hank, or maybe Melanie?' Seriously, girl, we've been wondering what you're saving it for."

"Seriously? You thought I might be gay? Really?"

"Actually," Steph interrupted, shrugging her shoulder and tossing her head, "we thought you might be asexual for all it interested you."

She didn't know what came over her, but at that Emily started laughing. So loud and so hard she couldn't catch her breath. "Oh fuck...hold on...hold on...fuck..." When Steph hears what I've been doing, 'asexual' won't be the word that'll come to mind.

"What's so funny?" Steph waited impatiently for Emily to get back to some kind of normal.

"Okay...just...just know you've been warned. Upstairs. C'mon." She pushed the back door open and invited Steph to go first.

"Wow," Steph looked into the room, seeing the construction and the windows. "Shit. You didn't know this was here?"

"Nope," Emily shook her head. "Discovered it in Fromier's civics class."

Steph shook her head, confused. "Say what?"

"Nothing. Just doing that research paper, I discovered it in some old plans for the house." Emily could smell the fragrance. "Take a sniff. What do you smell?"

Steph looked at her face and inhaled slowly and carefully. "Fresh wood. Some kind of chemical -- turpentiney -- and something floral. Wait. Let me get away from this lumber."

They both walked into the middle of the room, as far from the two openings and windows as possible.

"It smells nice, Em. Really nice. Mmmm...Gladiolas? Not roses. Hmmm. Flowery. Oregano? Something spicy." She kept inhaling, her eyes closing, trying to concentrate. "Really nice. So you think this is an aphrodisiac?" She paused for a heartbeat. "You are looking pretty hot to me right now. You want to go out?"

Emily set her jaw and shook her head. "Very funny, twit. All right. Well, at least the first experiment is done."

"What?"

"The guy downstairs who I've been all over this past week. He claims he can't smell it...But Caroline could, so, maybe it's a guy/girl thing?"

Steph scrunched her mouth, looking Emily in the eyes. "It's possible. Or something else. You know that experiment we did with asparagus and pee."

That had been so weird.

"Yeah, so if you don't have the gene, you can't smell it. Maybe it's something like that. I suppose if it's sex-related...the gene, idiot, not the act, then maybe only women can smell it."

"Well, anyway, at least there's that. That was really crazy when he said he couldn't smell it."

"Okay. Done. What else did you want to test?"

"Here's the deal, and I need you to be a scientist now Steph, not a girlfriend. I need you to be as objective about this as you can." She looked her in the eye. "I need to trust you on this. Can I trust you?"

Steph set her mouth and nodded. "Scout's honor. What's up?"

"So, like the gang had been saying, before last week, I hadn't thought about sex...like ever. I couldn't figure out what all the bother was about. Then, we started working on this room..."

"Wait. 'We?' We who? What?"

Emily took a breath. "The guy! Right?" Nodding downstairs. "Okay. So, I asked one of the contractors to help me with this project. I agreed to pay for the materials out of my allowance, but I agreed to pay for the labor by..." it wasn't clear how to say the next part, "by having sex with him."

"Ohmyfuckingod." Steph wasn't freaked out as much as amazed. "you're fucking serious. You're fucking the guy so he'll work on your house..."

"So...not yet. No fucking. But it'll happen. Soon. But everything else. At least as much as I know...maybe not. I don't know. It's the first time I've done any of this..."

Steph grabbed her by the shoulders. "Okay. I want to hear all about that, but I want to make sure you're being smart. Condoms. You're on the pill..."

"Steph! Stop it. Thanks. That's not the point. I'm fine. I'm more than fine. I'm...that's why I'm asking you here. I'm. Out. Of. Control." She took a breath. "At least, I think I am. I don't know. Maybe everyone does what we've been doing."

Steph stopped. Waiting. "What? Wait. What? Wait. What have you been doing? Hold it. I definitely want to hear what you've been doing, but not yet. Oh! Really? You're trying to figure out if maybe this smell has turned you into a nymphomaniac?"

Emily looked at her and nodded. Serious.

"And you asked me to help you figure this out...how?"

"I don't know. I don't know who else is as smart and thinks like a scientist like you. I just wanted to talk to you to see what I might do to test it or figure it out or?"

Steph's eyes crinkled when she smiled. "You know I think you're the most amazing person don't you? You know I can't think of another person in our school who's as talented and open as you, right?"

Emily didn't know where this was coming from, nodding. Shit. Is the smell getting to her now too? "Thanks, Steph...uhhh, maybe we should talk about this downstairs or outside." She looked around the room.

Steph stopped and smiled again. "Hah! You think I'm telling you all that because I've succumbed to the smell!" She shook her head. "I'm fine. We're fine. No. The reason I'm telling you that is because I can't think of anyone else I know who would be willing to talk about this as if it were a regular conversation, like 'Steph, what do you think of Stella's downtown? You like their food?' or 'Steph, I was thinking about buying a new bike, and I've been looking at all these different types, what do you think?' only it's 'Hey, I've just been having hot monkey love with the contractor hunk for the past week, and I'm trying to figure out if the smell I'm smelling is an aphrodisiac. You want to help?'"

But her tone was so genuine and her face so loving, Emily knew she wasn't teasing. She was really being a friend. "Yeah. Like that."

"Sure. Let's sit outside and figure out what's going on with you."

Sitting in the yard, Emily started listing all the things she thought she could do about the smell.

"Wait. Hold on. Hold on." Steph held up her hand. "You're not thinking about this the right way. Let's look at all the variables." She pointed her finger up. "One: you're 18 years old. Two: you've got a hunk in the basement. Three: your folks are gone for the summer and you're alone. Four: you're heading to college. Five: you're 18 years old with raging hormones. Six: you're practicing for the triathlon. Seven: you've got a hunk in the basement. Eight: you're an 18 year old fertile woman, which, from a species perspective, is almost over the hill. Oh and nine: there's a smell in the house."

Emily couldn't help but laugh. "Okay, asshole. Fine. You think this is all normal, or explained away by hormones. Let's look at the data: One: when I leave for any period of time, my raging hormones settle down to normal...errr...what's normal for me. Like when I go out to train, or saw my folks last weekend. I didn't feel like having sex. At all. But when I come back here, boom. I'm ready to..." she stopped, "let's just say, I'm ready to do shit even the hunk in the basement doesn't know about. That's two, by the way: I'm better at whatever it is we're doing than he's ever seen...and I'm a virgin, remember? He doesn't believe it. He's never had sex like this. No...no don't look at me like that. You know I can read people. He's serious. He's never had sex with anyone, virgin or not, like he's having with me."

"Okay. Okay. But let's see. Maybe you guys just clicked. Like you've got chemistry...what?"

Emily snorted. "That's what he said, only I think it's a different kind of chemistry. Abby's chemistry."

"Wait. Who?"

"This room? This room belonged to a card carrying witch. That's three. Now let me finish Steph. I'll show you her stuff. It's upstairs. Potions, apothecary, pharmacy, whatever. She was a master gardener and knew her flowers. She published sex ed for women in the late 1800s."

Steph sat back, her face blank. "Wait. Whaaat?"

Emily nodded. "I'm thinking she did something in that room. Made a potion or mixed something up and when I opened the room up, it got to me. But I can't figure out where it's coming from or what it could be." She started to talk about visqueen when Steph stopped her again.

"Hold on. Back up. What makes her a 'witch' exactly? She was a gardener, and she grew her own herbs?"

Emily sighed. "Yeah. She wrote a weekly column directed at women. I've been reading her pamphlets. She was probably gay, too. Amazing drawings of her lovers, all associated with flowers. So many flowers. And she has recipe books! I glanced at one of 'em, but it's filled with weird symbols. And they're not like school-girl doodles or shit. It's code of some kind." She stopped for a breath. "Oh! And get this: she wrote these pamphlets with all this flowery language that I'm sure was some kind of code to her women subscribers. Shit like: the willow bends in the wind, switching to and fro, or the blade of grass may be bent by the heel, but grows ever skyward. It's gotta be code and it's all about how to be an independent woman in a male-dominated society. At least as far as I can make out."

Steph's jaw had dropped, her mouth wide open. "What the fuck..."

"Yeah. That's what I've been thinking." She remembered something else. "And the flooring? Did you notice it? Well, there's this gorgeous inlay...I looked it up: a Celtic love knot." She shivered at what she'd done on that inlay the night before. "I...let's just say, whatever is going on, it has something to do with that too."

Steph shook her head, trying to make sense of whatever Em was saying. "I mean. Still, that doesn't mean you're under some aphrodisiac spell from beyond the grave. Emily. That was how long ago?"

"Over a hundred years."

"Right. Over a century ago. Any idea how...what's her name?"

"Abby."

"...how Abby could concoct something that could have that effect 100 years later? That sounds super-scary if it were possible."

Emily looked away, nodding her head. "I dunno. I dunno."

"You believe in magic, Emily?"

She shook her head.

"Me neither. I took that AP class at Uni this past year, right? Cultural Anthropology? Professor talked about societies where magic played a big role. The accepted thinking is that it's only present when people are desperate. It's the act of a desperate person. We got some other opposing views, but the idea that magic itself exists was not on the table."

"You saying I'm desperate?"

She laughed. "No! It doesn't sound like you're desperate at all! It sounds like you're getting it. A lot of it. And maybe that's too much to process. Like one day nothing, and the next the full Monty. Or whatever."

Emily looked skeptical but this was Steph. She couldn't have found a friend with a more brilliant mind.

"Can I see the room again? Smell it? See her stuff?"

They trooped back upstairs.

"Holy shit."

Emily had opened the secret cabinet.

They both stood, silently taking in the meticulous organization of bottles, jars and the drawers, the fragrance enveloping them.

"Can you smell it?" Emily turned to see Steph nodding. "It's intense, isn't it?" She could feel her arousal building, her nipples pushing against her shirt. She had to know. "Do you...feel anything?"

Steph looked back at her and shook her head, but Emily thought she saw a flicker in her eyes.

"Have you looked inside?" Steph was reading the labels on the drawers, her breathing shallow, as if she was being careful not to inhale too much.

"Yeah. Caroline and I went through 'em. Candles, candle stuff, mortars and pestles, chemistry stuff. But the fragrance. It gets so much stronger when I open this." She looked back at Steph. "Anything? Nothing?"

Her friend shook her head, kneeling to read the labels of the drawers on the left side. "Jesus, Mary and Joseph. This looks like an encyclopedia. It's in Latin. Of what, I don't know. Plants?" She stood up and looked at the jars. "Fucking amazing, Em. A-fucking-mazing."

"Yeah. I've got her books upstairs. I'm thinking of trying to decode this shit sometime this week. If I can stay focused long enough." She nodded to the lower left drawers. "We haven't been able to get those open yet." And she remembered that she had meant to get Cos to help. The fragrance had seeped into her depths, her skin felt golden, her arousal, still simmering after yesterday's scene with Cos, lit up with every breath. She didn't want to embarrass herself with Steph. Caroline was bad enough. So far, though, Steph, like Caroline, didn't seem affected. "Take a look over here." She closed the doors, the intensity of the fragrance cut in half. "What do you make of this?"

Steph stared at the inlay in the floor, tracing it with her eyes. "It's beautiful. A 'Celtic Love knot'?"

Emily nodded. "Yeah, but beyond that, I have no idea. I haven't had a chance to look into it, or see if Abby's journal says anything about it." She could feel the need to kneel, the floor tugging at her, but Steph wasn't in the picture. It was still Cos. Still his erection she was facing.

"Hey. Hello?" Steph had waved her fingers in front of Emily's eyes. "You still here?"

"Fuckkk. Yeah. That floor. The pattern. The smell. I...need to leave." She looked at her phone. "Oh fuck! Hey," she turned to Steph as she walked to the door. "Do you have a little more time? I need to run to the lumber yard and I'd like to keep talking."

She shrugged. "Why not? I've got nothing til after lunch. Can you get me back here by noon? And, hey? Do I get to meet this guy?"