Unbalanced: Wander's Oct 2010 Vignette

[Dr Archeville]

Time: October 31st, 2010 (Sunday). Morning.

Erin woke from uneasy dreams, nightmares still pulling at her even as she roused in the gray light of dawn. That was hardly unusual, but the strange thing was the smell that seemed to linger in her nostrils. It smelled like home, but not in a good way. The very faintest whiff of old death, of bodies rotting aboveground, of things that had no place in the Freedom City Erin knew. Sense memory, she decided, trying to shake it off. Dr. Marquez said that the sense of smell was the scent most responsible for triggering memories, so maybe memories could trigger remembered scents, as well. She dug out the tiny bottle of perfume Alex had gotten her for Christmas and sprayed just a little on her wrists. Her mother's signature scent chased away the vestiges of the bad smell, and made her feel a little better. Erin had way too much work to do today to be distracted by bad dreams and weird smells.

Even as she washed up and dressed, Erin felt like there was something going on, something she was missing. The feeling made her very antsy. Missing something was a very dangerous problem in her line of work. It was a bad enough feeling that before she went to breakfast, she leapt up to the roof of the dorm and took a look around, but there was nothing there, nothing but the normal noises and sights of the city. Except... the smell was still there. She closed her eyes, and for a second, she was back on EZO1, looking out on the city she'd learned well in her months alone there. No city noise there, just the whisting of the wind through broken windows and the shrieking of seabirds with plenty of nesting spots and more than enough to eat. And, of course, every so often there would be a shriek that was more human, and then she would have to go kill something. By the time she'd gotten to Freedom City, she'd considered it a mercy to put those starving, mindless, violent creatures out of their misery. She'd hoped for a long time that she would find living people, and for weeks she'd called out as she'd run through the empty streets, hoping to attract the attention of any real humans. It had gotten her plenty of attention, but no other survivors.

Opening her eyes, Erin snapped back to the busy, noisy, brilliantly alive present. This wasn't her world, she reminded herself for the millionth time. Maybe there was a factory doing something weird that was putting the smell in the air, but that didn't mean she needed to let it drive her crazy. And maybe it was just the time of year. It had been October when she'd left her dead world behind, her last view of that place had been in this weather, and this light. It was hard to believe that was two years ago now. Sometimes it seemed like a million years ago. Other times, when she woke up from a bad dream, it might as well have been yesterday.

She didn't want to have to go back to Dr. Marquez and admit that she was having some kind of nose hallucination, that was for sure. She'd been making progress steadily for months now, and she didn't want anything to get in the way of that. She needed to get better if she wanted a job with the Freedom League when she graduated. Any setback now could mean the difference between being a hero and living in her truck come next June. But there were people she could talk to now besides the doctor. People, well, one person, who she could talk to about anything, and maybe it was time for her to actually talk about it with him. Jumping down from the roof and landing neatly on the dead front lawn, she went to look for Trevor.