Chapter 3

I was lost in my doubts and self-recriminations when I got home. My parents, Mom especially before she died, had raised me to be considerate and kind. I had blown that all to shit this morning. I wondered if Allison was going to report what happened to the police. Maybe she already had and the next knock on the door would be officers here to arrest me. My dad wasn’t around much anymore but Mrs. Jackson would be devastated, not to mention how this would affect Mandy. That creature in the forest that zapped me must have been some kind of infernal demon. I wasn’t trying to pass the blame but he had done something to me and Sara and I felt this was the result. He was probably trying to get me to damn my soul, not that I had ever considered that it was possible to be truly damned before this.

Time flew by while my thoughts spun in circles until I heard a key in the front door. Besides me, Mrs. and Mr. Jackson as well as Mandy had keys to the house but I figured it was Mandy coming in as her parents were infrequent visitors. It was Amanda and she looked quite concerned as she joined me on the couch. Once again, she brought with her the smell of rich coffee although there was none of the sugary sweetness that I almost feared, for which I was thankful.

“Hey” she said by way of greeting. “I heard you skipped out on school after second period. That’s not like you. Are you ok? Still affected by Friday night?”

Honestly, I was kind of freaked out about killing that guy on Friday but currently I was more worried about what just happened with Allison. I really wanted to talk to someone about it but the only person that I thought would believe me was Sara and we didn’t have that kind of relationship. I didn’t think Amanda would try to have me committed to the psych ward but maybe that’s where I belonged anyway. I finally decided to take the chance and tell her everything, including the creepy magic parts, but I must have been thinking about it for too long as she spoke up first.

“Whatever is going on, you can tell me. Best friends remember? No matter what it is I can help.” She scooted over closer to me and grabbed me for a hug. I was so wound up that her simple physical affection almost brought me to tears. I hadn’t really cried since my Dad virtually abandoned me but I could feel my eyes tearing up. She was the person who I trusted the most and felt closest to. I decided that I had to tell Mandy what happened.

After a moment she pulled back from the hug and I started talking. I slowly recounted the unbelievable parts of the story from Friday. I described the fireball and the demon including as much of what he said as I could remember. I described how the demon hit me and Sara with a jolt of something and how I felt afterward. I told her about the guy I overheard in the hospital and then started in on what happened that morning.

It wasn’t too difficult to describe the different scents I was now smelling from various girls. I even covered my findings from English class where I figured out how to pinpoint where each fragrance was coming from. Where I started struggling was telling Sara what happened in Physics with Allison. There were many false starts and pauses while I tried to get that story out. After going over what happened in the bathroom, I started in on how I felt about the whole thing and my concern that I had raped Allison.

Throughout my story Mandy just looked thoughtful which was better that looking at me like I was crazy and when I was done, she hugged me again. This time I couldn’t stop actual tears from falling and soaking into her black hair. She held me for a long time whispering “it’s ok, it’s ok” over and over. It must have been at least five minutes later before I got myself under control and we separated. There were tissues on the coffee table and I gathered some to wipe my face and blow my nose. Mandy looked lost in thought for a moment before speaking.

“I think I believe you, as strange as this all sounds. I also don’t think you raped Allison.”

“What?” I exclaimed. “I don’t want to have be rapist but why not?”

“Let me tell you about my day” she said. “Your story answers a lot of questions I had about things that happened today that had me confused. I know that both of us thought Sara was pretty but she wasn’t someone we would want to go out with, mostly because of her cheerleader friends. Well, today was different for me. I was sitting next to her in our World History class in first period and I think she affected me the same way you affected Allison.”

“Holy shit! Are you ok? What did she make you do?”

“Calm down Dave, I didn’t do anything. Let me finish my story.”

“Sorry, go ahead.”

“So, while we were sitting there, I noticed just how pretty Sara is and started to kind of fantasize about her.” Mandy blushed a bit when she said that. “I didn’t know what was happening but for the first time I wanted her, badly. I don’t know if she ever had an attraction to girls but I couldn’t stop picturing doing her or her doing me. I lost all track of the lecture and felt drawn to Sara in a way I never have been before. If we had been at a party or something, I would have made a move on her for sure but we were in class so I behaved myself.”

If that was similar to what I had done to Allison, maybe she could have controlled herself as well and she chose to pull me into that restroom. Before I could really think about it, Mandy continued her story. “Based on what you said and how I was feeling I bet that sweet smell you talk about is someone’s arousal or horniness level or something. After thinking about Sara all through first period it took me quite a while to calm down. Anyway, I had another class with Sara after lunch and my reaction to her was completely different. If she has the same kind of hunger you do, she must have curbed it somehow between the classes we shared. I still found her more attractive than usual but she didn’t have me fantasizing so vividly about her again.”

That was more to think about although I quickly came up with another possible reason for the lesser affect Sara had on Mandy in their later class. “Were you sitting as close to her after lunch?”

“We sit next to each other in History and I sit directly behind her in French. It’s about the same distance either way.”

“Thanks Mandy, that makes me feel better I think.”

“No problem Dave.”

We sat in silence for a while as I thought over what Mandy’s tale could mean. Maybe I had just made Allison excited and she took it from there. That meant that while I may have started the encounter and influenced her mindset, I didn’t force her to do anything. I felt quite a bit better after that thought.

Eventually Mandy left for home. It was too late to go to soccer so I did some homework before making dinner. The rest of the day went by fairly normally and it was soon time to head to school on Tuesday morning. I once again was bombarded by the tasty scents from many of my female classmates but the gnawing hunger I felt on Monday was thankfully missing. My biggest worry was how Allison would react to me in Physics. We were still lab partners and would have to at least get along for the rest of the school year.

It turned out to be anticlimactic and a total non-issue, mostly. She was at our table before I was and other than blushing a bit when I walked in there wasn’t much change in her demeanor. I tried to bring up our encounter from the day before but she gently put me off saying that it was fine and she didn’t want to talk about it. The only real difference I could pinpoint was that soft notes of coffee were wrapped up in the cinnamon and sugar I detected from her the day before. The three smells combined into a whole that was almost intoxicating. I worried that if my hunger came back I would have to avoid her somehow or I would have trouble controlling myself around her.

The rest of the week went by and I felt like I was settling into a new equilibrium. I slowly got used to scenting my classmates and my resolution improved. It became almost like a map in my head of those within my range. Without much effort I could track where each scent or combination of scents was located around me as well as the intensity of each. I came to believe that Mandy was right about the sugary scent correlating with arousal. Thinking about that seemed to stoke my already high libido and I found myself masturbating much more often than usual.

I was walking through the halls during lunch on Thursday and came across a blast of sugary sweetness that dwarfed other scent other than Allison on Monday. I was so intrigued that I tracked it down to another set of single use restrooms like I had used with her that day. As I reached the lockers just outside the scent fizzed and sparked like pop rocks candy on my tongue. As the fizzing faded so did the intensity of the sweet smell itself. It made me so curious that I leaned against the lockers opposite the restroom doors and pretended to be engrossed in my phone waiting to see who emerged.

About five minutes later Sara walked out. Her face and neck were flushed and when she saw me, she immediately looked embarrassed. She was alone but her face looked quite similar to the way Allison’s had looked after our tryst. I briefly wondered what had turned her on so much that she needed relief while school was in session until I realized that she may be experiencing something similar to what I was. If that was the case it’s no wonder she needed some private time. I thought about trying to talk to her about it but she scurried off before I could speak.

I still wasn’t sure what the other two scents implied. The only two people I came across smelling like coffee were Mandy and Allison. I wasn’t sure what they had in common to produce that particular scent. The intensity also varied widely between them. Mandy smelt very strongly and didn’t have the cinnamon that was Allison’s main scent. Allison’s scent also intensified each day during class. She would start out mostly cinnamon with a touch of coffee and sugar and would end class smelling strongly like a fresh baked frosted cinnamon roll sitting next to a cup of joe with extra sugar and cream.

The sugariness of other girls in school would wax and wane as the day went by as well. In contrast, the girls I got a cinnamon scent off of seemed to remain fairly constant. That scent did change a little day to day, but very slowly and some didn’t waver at all. Once again, I had no clue what it could signify as there was no rhyme or reason to connect those girls that I could figure out. Eventually I resolved to just put it behind me and chalked it up to a side effect of whatever that demon had done.