The Scented Maiden

My name is Stella Scott. I was born with a distinctive natural fragrance. That scent is not strong or overpowering, but rather like gardenia flowers kissed by morning dew, mingled with a touch of the warmth of dried tangerine peel; it softly nestles within the textures of my skin. Relying on this gift, at the age of twenty-three I opened my own perfumery studio, which soon gained some renown—some say my perfumes evoke the gentlest of memories, yet I never imagined that this very scent would later become the fuse that plunged me into hell. Today is the wedding day of Felix Lewis and me. My fingertips traced the entwined lotus embroidered upon the hem of the wedding dress; the gold thread shimmered softly beneath the warm yellow light of the hotel suite. I stayed up three whole nights altering this wedding dress with my own hands, adding a circle of pearl lace to the neckline and taking in two inches at the back waist, so it would fit perfectly along my silhouette. That morning, when Felix Lewis came to pick me up for the wedding, he embraced me from behind, resting his chin atop my head, and said, "My wife looks beautiful in anything she wears." At that moment, his shirt bore a faint scent of cedarwood, a fragrance from the cologne I had specially made for him. I believed that to be the scent of happiness—until a pair of rough hands suddenly covered my mouth. The hands that muffled my mouth smelled of rust, their strength nearly crushing my jaw. I struggled and kicked at the nearby flower stand; rose branches tore into my calf, the sting blending with the sharp scent of disinfectant and the cloying, sour note of inferior perfume, all invading my nostrils. The moment the black cloth was drawn over my head, the last sight I beheld was my own terrified eyes in the mirror, the red wedding dress resembling a coagulated pool of blood. That scent later became the trigger of my nightmares. Night after night, whenever I caught a hint of that odor, I would suddenly awaken from my dreams, cold sweat soaking my back, as though I had returned to that fateful afternoon of abduction.