As a young man, Nigel Premeiter lived a simple, if unconventional, life with his two parents, Houghler and Tricia. He would stay out doors, normally at the edge of the lot his parents owned. His home was simple trailer, with one room on one end and his own on the other. Taking most of the length of the trailer was a large kitchen with long double windows custom installed by his father all along the 'backside' of the unit. During the day, light poured in like waves upon a beach. The muted colors of the couch and chair-and-a-half were brought to brilliant life in the splendor of the morning sunrise, and often Nigel would expect to hear a yelp from the couch whenever he plopped down to color in one of his books.
At night, through these large windows, both Mr. and Mrs. Premeiter would watch their son play in the backyard under the clear night sky. Living in the middle of no where had its perks, one being the total lack of light pollution. Nigel spent almost every warm night out in the fields that extended to the horizon behind his little home, playing with his two childhood friends, Wade and Alexander.
Playing with both Wade and Alexander one night, far beyond the sight of his parents, the boys all laid themselves down on the long field grass, heads together and their legs splayed out in the spokes of a triangle. They stared in silence at the stars, keeping to their own private thoughts when, much to their surprise, a green light flashed across the sky, rising from the South and striking a path North before disappearing. Jokingly, they all made a wish together, and went about the rest of their night playing in the fields.
Its been twenty years since that night, and Nigel is almost the same six year old that wished upon a star, minus a definitive increase in commonsense and general intelligence. He still loves getting dirty and telling crass jokes, habits that stayed with him from his time well-spent with Wade and Alexander, from their infancy through their college years.
But more than anything, what he's loved doing since that night is simple.
Nigel was sitting in a brightly lit coffee shop that he frequented near his office. It was well furnished, with large, arched half fan windows that opened to the street. In many pots lined on the insides and outsides of the walls, the old woman who owned the building grew many of her own herbs and spices. From the basement port, a large wooden door near the back with wrought iron reinforcements, the smell of freshly ground coffee wafted up as the breeze ebbed and flew through the basement windows.
On a plate near the cash register, freshly baked goods released sweet smells of home, laced with love and care, the kind you found from your own grandmother's oven baked goods. Their smell was inviting and seeped out of the open double windows, ensnaring sailors of the street and using their siren's call to drag them inside with the delicious temptation of their siren's call. The old woman who owned the coffee shop had two lovely granddaughters who loved baking whenever they had the chance, and would normally come to the shop straight from schooling to make their own kind of magic in the world.
To put it simply, the place smelled like heaven. Each bitter, sweet, and savory aroma that floated around made the air seem to take on a water-like quality. It was so thick, one would almost believe that they could reach out with a butter knife and cut themselves a slice of that intoxicating aroma to keep in a bottle.
Nigel loved these smells, reminiscent of his own mother's garden and kitchen. But what he loved more were the people. Never was the palate dull here; there was always a motley crowd. Rugged sailors, polished police officers, vile criminals, stoic philosophers, and gaudy dancers: The Triquetra of the Soul always had a varied and often disharmonious crowd living in harmony.
It was as if their was an unwritten law, a binding force placed upon them all, that kept the different personalities from rubbing against each other. Nigel could remember vividly a commonly known pick-pocket sitting at a table with a man who was looking for him and knew him well. They shared stories over a cup of dark roast coffee and freshly baked honey biscuits. They smiled and the pick-pocket paid. The officer exited through the rows of open double windows facing the street and the delinquent exited through the back into the alley. In all of his years of patronage, he had never witnessed an act laced with hatred.
Today, Nigel had taken one of his favorite seats, a small table for one and perhaps a second if you squeezed, right in the center of the room under a lazily turning fan. With the windows open, a slight summer breeze was constantly rolling in, cooling its inhabitants and mixing the sea of relaxing scents. He wore a pair of khaki shorts that were cut above the knee, with a t-shirt of a vivid and bright leaf green color one size too large for him draped awkwardly over his gangly frame. His long, brown hair was held out of his face by a red head band in a comical fashion, showing his rather large and shiny forehead. His nose was crooked and hung low from his face, and upon it sat a pair of moon spectacles. One of the lenses had a crack that started at the button and extended to about the middle part of the lens.
He was enjoying a medium blend, its smell pungent and fair, somewhere between savory and bitter, an utterly consuming fragrance that made his hair stand on end and sent shivers down his spine, much the same that a man would experience looking at the love of his life. On a small plate on the small, lightly colored wooden table in front of him was a lemon cake, that had a consistency comparable to what Nigel imagined a cloud would feel like: fluffy, light, and pleasantly moist.
The object of his attention was a rather large man who was sitting outside at one of the wrought iron tables (made by the old lady's own son), who was wholly invested in a cup of dark roast, savagely devouring a banana and coconut muffin, and reading the newspaper as if it were a religious text.
His suit was well cut and tailored, hugging well to his body and accentuating its finer features, like his broad shoulders and thick, corded arms while doing well to hide the gut that he had begun to grow as he reached, if Nigel remembered correctly, his mid 50s. His shoes were polished leather, and despite their apparent age, looked fit for the Queen of England, if she were to have an appetite for men's shoes.
There was nothing spectacular about this man that drew Nigel to him, but all the same, Nigel was drawn to him. His wish, like himself as a child, had been stupid and ultimately useless except in the face of what he and his compatriots considered good fun. He loved this coffee shop not only for the nostalgia and beauty of the smells that stewed here, but because of the challenge these smells presented.
Nigel shifted inconspicuously, lifting his left leg and draping it over the other, putting the majority of his weight onto his right hip. Silently, he slowly let out a puff of gas, that to his amusement, he could see as a faint shimmering cloud.
He let it sit for a second, coaxing it into a compressed form, keeping its putrid and rotten contents from seeping out into the fresh, sweet airs around it and also keeping those airs out. He could tell looking at it that its odor was foul and dark, surely to be a sharp contrast to what the good sir sitting at the table outside was experiencing.
Slowly, and with purpose, he lifted his fork, doing twirling motions in the air and slowly, the little ball danced through the air. He had practiced this often, so it merely looked to anyone who would look in his direction on a whim would see a man artfully eating his pastry, enjoying the ecstasy of its tastes and being overwhelmed by them.
It was a short trip, no more than ten seconds, before the orb had come to rest below the man's nose. With a sigh of melancholy joy, he opened his left hand in his lap and reveled in the art of his performance.
The little ball disappeared, the smell unfurling and expanding, cutting into the air in dark tendrils that only Nigel could see. Two of them assaulted the mans nose, causing a split second of panic to assail him. His face contorted to one of immense pain, the normally pleasant smells of the café being destroyed by the fetid smell of the fart Nigel had just sent to him.
Nigel chuckled to himself, looking down at his phone. As his background was a picture of the only people in the world who had complete control over the smell, positioning, and even release time of their farts.
The young faces of Wade, Alexander, and himself smiled up to him.
He quickly finished his pastry and his coffee, returned the dished he used to the old lady at the counter, and paid his tab, along with a tip of five dollars for her granddaughters. He left, walking onto the crowded cobbled streets, with the sunlight bringing to life all of the old stone mason buildings around him, and walked home eagerly to tell his two compatriots of his most recent prank.