Recursion

by Blake Crouch

And then he smells something. It’s odd, because it conjures an emotional response he can’t quite name, but which carries the ache of nostalgia. It takes a moment, but he realizes it’s what his house used to smell like after he and Julia and Meghan had finished dinner. In particular, Julia’s meatloaf and roasted carrots and potatoes. Next he catches the scent of yeast and malt and barley. Beer, but not just any beer. The Rolling Rocks he used to drink out of those green bottles. Other smells emerge and merge in an aroma more complex than any wine. It’s one he would recognize anywhere—the house in Jersey City he once lived in with his ex-wife and his dead daughter. The smell of home. Suddenly, he tastes the beer and the constant presence in his mouth of the cigarettes he used to smoke. His brain fires an image that cuts through the dying whiteout—blurry and fuzzy at the edges, but quickly sharpening into focus. A television. And on the screen, a baseball game. The image in his mind’s eye as clear as sight, gray-scale at first, but then color bleeding into everything he sees.