SCENT

June - The Breathless (3)

The city stank.

I believe most normal people would agree. Big cities have their specific aroma, and it's far from pleasant. One could get used to it, or even become fond of it after time. Still, the aura was offensive, especially to a finely attuned nose.

A lot of people believe that the natural scents of human body are repulsive. Sweat, sebum, dirt – gross. Nothing more misleading in the world. We were mostly turned off by dangerous smells, ones that promised infection, poisoning or other harm. The natural scent of the human body was neutral at worst, pleasant at best.

It's the civilisation that produces the most offensive smells.

Most of our unpleasant smells don't come from our bodies. Humans are clean animals. Even if we aren't as compulsive cleaners as, for example, flies, we put a lot of effort into our hygiene. It's our clothes that reek. While it's easy to remove our secretions from our skins, our clothes get saturated in them.

That's why so many people find the smell of sweat offensive: They associate it with the moisture stuck in the fabrics. Clothes are not an extension of our bodies, keeping them clean is not an instinct. The result was a thick crust of organic filth, constantly decomposing and restocked, worn over our flesh.

To be fair, our sweat could smell awful depending on our diet and health. This day and age, our diet habits were downright deplorable. Again, we could only thank the civilisation for it.

Our decaying secretions paled in comparison to civilisation's exhausts, though. Gasoline fumes, metal, grease and rust. Concrete, alcohol, paints, synthetic and natural oils, glues, smoke from combustible substance, natural and artificial. Every structure, pave-stone, tree and living creature was corroded with this smell. Even if we disappeared from the face of the planet, the ruins would hold this scent for decades. Or rather, this chaotic mixture of myriad scents, each of them more unsettling than the last.

I'd tried to push through the scent of the city once as a child. I hadn't even scratched the surface, and I never found courage to do it again. It felt like staring into a chasm so deep the bottom was out of sight. It was certainly there, but I'd never see it unless I plunged myself down.

The overwhelming stench of the city was the same. Getting to the bottom of it would mean bathing in every toxin, cancirogen and allergen known to mankind, and some. A dive I had no hope of surviving. I was pretty certain I'd die of suffocation before reaching half way through.

I'd quickly learned to treat this stench as white noise, something to filter out and ignore. On some days, however, it forced itself into my nostrils. Whenever it did, I went into a primal, low dread. The mixture of unnatural toxins and pathogens screamed danger, urged the lower parts of my brain to run away. This place is dangerous, it said. Leave. Leave, now.

I always wondered if normal people go through the same thing without realising. Did they find the polluted cities instinctively threatening, too? Did it contribute to their health problems? Anxiety? An unspoken fear they had to suppress?

A muffled moan tore me out of thoughts. It came from a back alley to the right, the dark, empty kind leading to the unloading areas of the nearby shops. It was followed by the distinctive muffled slap and another groan. Then another, and another. The sounds of a fist punching into the flesh.

I instantly sprang into alert, all nonsensical musings vented from my mind like a faint scent on a wind. All my senses focused. My ears set on the sounds of violence. Eyes strained to pierce the darkness.

Before they did, I picked it up. Blood and sweat, thick with fear and agitation, and then – that scent. The scent of danger.

The smell of spandex soaked with sweat. Seething with adrenaline, endorphins and some secretions not found in any normal system.