Strawberry with Champagne by Daryna Yakovenko

 Strawberry with champagne.

What associations can provoke this fragrance? Perhaps, the happy moment in summer when you travel with your friends or when you celebrate the end of exam week?

What if I say that the first time I felt this smell was at a funeral?

Pungent smells of alcohol and rotten strawberries with the worms inside. They eat it like a dead body. To this day, this smell gives me goosebumps. I also can’t drink champagne.

This smell is associated with the smell of decay.

It all started on the 20th of July 2012. My friend’s dad died in strange circumstances, and the police ignored all the questions my friend asked about this.

The day of the funeral was the 25th of July. Why was that important? The police didn`t do anything to find out what happened to him. I didn’t understand what they did all this time before funerals.

The next strange thing was that day. The 25th of July.

I entered the room where the funeral was and looked around.

Near the coffin stood a lady. I couldn`t guess her age because a part of her face was hidden by those funeral clothes.

I guessed it was the widow whose perfumes I smelled. At first, it was a sweet and pleasant smell, so I thought she was young. Because usually performs like that wear young ladies. Fresh strawberry with an expansive champagne. I didn`t think it was an appropriate perfume for the funeral.

It was a late night already, but this woman stood at the same place, near the coffin. Something had changed. I didn`t see the young lady anymore. Moreover, she looked like a witch who probably killed her husband because of some ritual. 

Her gaze was fixed on me and a barely noticeable gesture of a raised glass. Her eyes flashed; a smile could be read in them. I swear, this smile can be a weapon. If the sun saw this smile, it would destroy itself, and the moon would disappear.

The woman slowly and gracefully as a panther and barely perceptibly raised her glass, and her lips whispered:

Cheers!

After that, I noticed the horrible smell of decay. I even needed to go outside to smell some fresh air. I needed to get rid of it because I suddenly felt it on my clothes and even my skin. This pleasant smell turned into a stench.

When I returned, there was no woman anymore.

As I found out earlier, no woman looked like I had just described at funerals.

What surprised me even more was that my friend’s mother died years ago. She went to the forest and didn`t come back. My friend told me that his mom used to go to the forest to take some strawberries for a picnic they had every year as the summer came. They used to drink some champagne with fresh strawberries. It was a family tradition.

Why am I even telling this?

Yesterday I was at a friend`s house. Hardly entering the house, I noticed a smell I had already noticed earlier.