Morning all. I hope you are feeling fabulous today. I am ready to kick off this week’s writing so let’s get started with the morning prompt. Timers set and off we go.
Okay now this is a good start to the week. I like Ian and I really like the set up. I even sort of know what is in the box and am going to be making some notes before I move on.
Monday, May 4th: The scent was strange.
The scent was strange. It permeated the air, saturating it. Ian inhaled trying to place the scent. He had been working in the archives for over a decade now and it was so rarely visited that very little disturbed the scent of the space.
It was why he had adjusted to non scented body products. One Christmas his Aunt Maureen gave him a peppermint scented body wash and the morning after he used the scent he came in thinking someone left a package of peppermints open somewhere.
The archives smelled of paper and leather. The air purification system took care of most scents. When he moved anything around on the shelves the scent of paper or leather, depending on what he was moving about, intensified. That was it. Any other scent caused him to sniff himself and wonder how much of an impact his presence had on the archives.
As his personal routine was consistent, specifically for this reason, it wasn’t much of an issue. He was the only one who came into the archives. If something was needed a request was sent and he sent the item to the reading room and notified the person sending the request. When they were done, he retrieved the item from the clean reading room and returned it to the archives.
He sniffed the air trying to determine where the strange scent was coming from as well as what it might be. ‘Spice,’ he thought as he made his way deeper into the archives. Thoughts of aftershave circled through his mind. He was usually good with scents and his friends often tased him about being able to identify perfume, cologne, and many other items by scent alone. They occasionally made a game of it.
He dimly wondered if one of them was playing a game, testing his senses. He dismissed the thoughts. None of his friends worked in this complex. Not only would they not have access to the archives, but they would not be allowed in the building without the correct authorization.
Ian let his nose guide him further into the narrow corridors created by the shelving units. He could tell which section by their scent. The ink used when drawing blueprints had a tangy scent that mixed with the paper. The printed documents smelled of slightly burned ink as the printers ran hot and seemed to scorch the ink as it was pressed onto the page. The older hand written inks all had a certain scent and he could now tell which color ink he would see by the scent of them. They were a jumbled scent when they were all on the shelves as the archives didn’t separate by color, so his nose simply identified the hand written section as he moved.
The bound documents had the added scents of the bindings, be it leather or linen or some other material. While he could scent them all, over everything was the scent of something else. The new scent. Ian reached the end of the aisle. Along the back wall was placed a long table. It was his work table. There were all the elements and items needed to repair any damaged item. Occasionally things in the archives needed to be repaired. Other times new items arrived and needed work before they could be added to the archives. It was here where he found the source of the scent. A box had been left on his formerly cleared down work table. How it got there, he didn’t know. It wasn’t the normal way arrivals entered the archives. But it was here now. Ian approached cautiously, something about the package causing the hair on his neck to prickle.
Ten til Midnight 