Cassandra.
For Lucy Carpenter.
Words: Importantly, Inaudibly, Sewers, Bottle of Perfume.
Written by Tino Prinzi
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The bottle of perfume was Cassandra’s most valuable possession. Without it everyone would know her most embarrassing secret; people already knew enough about her without them finding out about this too. She carried the perfume everywhere she went and, most importantly, she never let it run empty before she replaced it with another. If she did let it run out before she replaced it then again her secret would be revealed; the moon would sooner plummet to Earth than Cassandra would be without her perfume.
She was the type of person who was always prepared. She was a planner. When she woke up every morning she knew exactly what she was doing; her bath towel and three types of body wash would be on the chair at the end of her bed, her clothes would be laid out beneath the towel, the kettle would be full of water with her mug and coffee already stationed and, to the left of it, the cat food a little further to the right ready to feed little Gwendolyn. This would all be accomplished within the first twenty minutes she’d be awake – she was not one to mess about. Cassandra had a plan for the rest of the day, the week, the month, the year. She had a two year plan, a five year plan, a ten year plan. Her unrevealed secret was sole reason why she had become such a precise planner of her own life
The only thing she didn’t plan for was the bus hitting her this morning.
She knew something had happened – something she hadn’t planned for – and she second guessed she was at the hospital, but all she was worried about was her bottle of perfume. How long ago had she sprayed it? Where was it? She inaudibly mumbled her thoughts aloud.
“Dr Reynolds, I think she is trying to say something? I can’t quite make it out?”
“Maybe that explains the smell – it’s like the sewers are vomiting up my nose.”
Cassandra had heard everything she needed to hear and had dreaded hearing. They hadn’t quite hit the nail on the head but they hit the nail nonetheless. What they could smell was her. She was the source of the sewage stench – it was not her breath but her entire body that emitted the gut-wrenching odour and there was nothing she could do except drench herself in perfume. It was so bad that most of the stench would neutralise the effects of the perfume so she didn’t even get to enjoy what the perfume smelt like.
But now she could only reek. She allowed herself to slip back into unconsciousness.
She woke up to kind eyes and dyed orange hair framing a gentle, pale face; a face she didn’t recognise but in a uniform she did. Cassandra thought she looked pleased to see her awake, as if she were bursting to tell her something important, as if she couldn’t smell her.
“I know what you have,” the nurse smiled at her. “I know how we can fix you.”
All Cassandra could do was cry.
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