Charles Conley, born and raised on Long Island, was a 2009-2010 fellow at Teachers & Writers Collaborative in New York and a 2008-2009 fellow at the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center. His stories have appeared in The Southern Review, The Harvard Review, North American Review and Canadian Notes and Queries. He was the recipient of an Elizabeth George Foundation Grant in 2010 and a SASE/Jerome Grant for Emerging Writers in 2007. He received his MFA from the University of Minnesota.

I was deep under the ocean when The Italian Gentleman first arrived and enraged at him for pulling me up. The plants had such colours – purples and scarlets and deep indigos – and the fish such strange shapes and spoke to me. I would have cried in my frustration, but though I floated through each sodden day, inside me was desert. The Italian Gentleman came and brought smells with him. Strongest was the smell of his cigarettes. They smelled like the land, as tobacco does, but of a strange land, not the one I knew. A spiced land, with odd creatures that burrow in it. Creatures with moustaches. His satchel full of herbs smelled more familiar – like an old saddle left in a garden – but with an unrecognisable aroma lingering in the corner. The last, underneath it all and only when he brought his face close to mine, must have been his aftershave, which smelled exactly like a pirate, or what I imagined a pirate would smell like. The scent of week-old rum, which I had never smelled. Tropical islands. It was when he arrived that I realized smell was the only sense that crossed my mind's threshold unescorted by pain. I wanted to explain this to my mother, but I couldn't make the words right with my scratchy voice and fevered mind. I told her about the canoes – sight-canoes and soundcanoes – and that only the smell-canoe didn't have blades on the front.

My mother patted my head to quiet me, then left the room and returned with an ashtray for the Italian Gentleman. When he finished his cigarette, he put his hand on my neck. It was lovely and cold. I closed my eyes. There was caring in his fingertips and the tasks and sighs of concern in his mouth. He moved his hands around my body and I think I fell asleep. There were no visions. I awoke when he placed a moist towel over my eyes. It was warm, but with a cooling herb, and I enjoyed this both-hot-and-cold feeling. There were footsteps and the door closing and a murmured conversation. The only words I clearly heard were when the Italian Gentleman said, "Have faith, signora," as he departed. He left smells behind him. The towel over my eyes, the faintest scent of the herbs in his bag, the cigarette smoke. His pirate musk he kept with him. My mother emptied the ashtray and replaced it next to my bed, then sat with me for a long while. We were both quiet.

He came back, I don't know when, after he'd found the herbs he needed. I closed my eyes, and the tinkling of glass pinched my brain as he prepared his balm. I smelled the pirate smell as he leaned close, then another, much stronger scent replaced it. Flowery, nauseous. He placed the smell on my upper lip, between my eyes, on other points around my body. After some time, he brought the smell close to me again, slid his finger inside my nose, and rubbed an oil thick as lard inside my nostrils. This smell-canoe had blades and also mallets, and they pounded me. The Italian Gentleman was touching my back, manipulating my spine and my neck, but this was gentle compared to the dynamite going off in my skull.