Nika Imamberdieva, 12/15/21, Pd 1

 Nika Imamberdieva, 12/15/21, Pd 1

Creativity and Fiction

Eloise put on her checkered blue-green sundress and was in awe, completely taken aback by a scent that transported her thousands of miles away in the span of milliseconds. The unique aroma overwhelmed her nose and compelled her hippocampus to revive a series of long-forgotten memories. 

And suddenly, she was there. Right back on the scalding hot sands of Miami beach, laying on a sun chair and sipping on a cool Pina Colada whilst involuntarily burning her frail pale skin. As hard as Eloise tried to protect her skin from the scathing ultraviolet rays of sunlight, she was eternally vulnerable. She ascended from SPF 30, to 50, and to 75 before attempting to layer lotions and aerosols on top of each other but it was no use. It was her trademark to leave for a summer vacation white, and come back red. 

Leaving these destinations was always the worst part. The moment she arrived back at home, Eloise felt consumed by sadness and thoughts of hypotheticals… What if she left two days later, what if she stayed at the pool instead of going to the beach and spoke to the people she wanted to meet. These thoughts spiraled around in her brain because it was immensely difficult to let go. This figurative afterthought had subconsciously brewed itself into fruition.   

Eloise began reminiscing about all the vacations she had gone on in the past few years. She thought back to her trip to Germany, where she fell in love with the German language and began learning it for herself. She revisited her escape to the Dominican Republic, where she put on a performance for all the resort’s residents to see on the center stage. She even considered her walk up the Hollywood mountains to Griffith’s Observatory. These were experiences that Eloise would never forget; and it became clear to her that she had to savor them. 

When unpacking her suitcase after a vacation, Eloise would take out everything, even the items that she hadn’t worn, and throw it in the laundry; as was standard. However, after coming back from her latest vacation she became acutely aware of an idiosyncrasy she had. It was evident that Eloise would leave one article of clothing out of the laundry such that it retained the hotel’s signature smell. Whether it be the Sheraton’s scent of fig, clove, and jasmine, or the Westin’s white tea aroma, every hotel chain she ever visited had a distinct scent that would isolate the infrastructure in her mind’s perception of it. Of the five senses, smell is the one that instinctively invokes our emotions because of its fervent ability to trigger a neural response. 

By allowing one item to retain its initial scent, she gave herself the chance to relive the entirety of her vacation experience, if even for a single moment. It was the discovery of the millennium: Olfactory Teleportation.

The smell would always bring her back instantaneously. And she felt tranquil and content; able to escape the rowdiness of everyday life for a split second and taken back to where she’d wish to be.