Life in the Sneeze Center

[Kiaory]

10 hours ago, Blah!? said:

Or another funny side thought: stuck sneezes could be a glitch, but photic sneezes are purely the result of Dust being lazy. Like whenever the sun is in Melody's line of sight it gets too bright in the sneeze center, so Dust makes her sneeze so she'll close her eyes, if only for a few seconds.

...

Ok, that's actually really funny .  100% approved as canon until further notice.

I suppose I'm going to have to dedicate a section to glitches in Melody's nasal machinery at some point (and/or abuses of power on Dust's part). There seems to be a lot of really interesting material there. It probably won't be right away though, since there're some thing I want to cover first (we haven't really seen Pollen or Colds behind the wheel yet, and that's a shame.)

[Sneezermissy]

I love this it's so creative. I think it would be awesome to see Cold behind the wheel considering we have seen much of Colds. 

[Kiaory]

Hey everybody. It's been a little while, but could I interest you in some freshly baked part three? It's got your daily recommended dose of hay fever... 

As always, thank you all for your feedback and support. Comments, criticisms, feedback, questions, thoughts, suggestions, and random squirrel noises are greatly appreciated (and, cynically, motivate me to write faster.) I hope you all like what I've come up with this time, so let's get to it:

 

[Warning: this story contains brief descriptions of mess]

 

—Part Three: Still As A Stahh-CHOO!—

It was, for once, a nice day. The normally dim and dreary Sneeze center was flooded with sunlight streaming in through the main view screen as it displayed an image of tall green trees casting dapped shade over green hills crisscrossed with paths. The air was filled with the reproduced sounds of birds chirping and children playing. Melody was visiting the park, and the view through her eyes was extremely pretty, even secondhand.

 Pollen sat taking it all in and smiling to herself as she slowly spun in circles on a swivel chair. She would, of course, have been mortified if anyone had caught her at it, but today she had a rare luxury: she was all alone in the Sneeze Center. 

Ten years ago, she would have thrown a fit at the idea of operating the place all by herself. Regulations clearly stated that all personnel were to remain in the Sneeze Center at all times, unless Melody was asleep. But following regulations to the letter was something only Pollen really bothered with, and her colleagues implacable logic, pleading, and occasional biting sarcasm had slowly worn her down over time. She had to admit, they had a good argument: when you got right down to it, it was kind of a stupid rule. Melody was outdoors, in a park, out in the open. Unless someone had brought some along in a plastic bag, her odds of encountering  household dust were slim to none. True, by unofficial agreement Dust handled any and all miscellaneous particles that found their way up Melody’s twitchy nostrils, but that wasn’t her actual job. Pollen could handle such a situation perfectly well herself, if it came to it. So there wan’t really any urgent need for Dust to be right there.

Of course, it was possible that Melody would pick up a nose full of viruses from some stranger’s ill-timed sneeze, which would be Colds’ responsibility. That was true pretty much any placer there were other people. But… even if that happened, Colds would’t actually need to be on hand for quite a while. Melody’s colds, like most peoples, were stealthy, gradual things, and they took time to set in. Even if Melody caught a cold right now, Colds would’t have to do any actual button pressing until that evening at the earliest. Melody would’t start showing symptoms now unless she had somehow caught a cold yesterday without them noticing, which was impossible.  So Colds didn’t really need to be on hand either. 

 

It wasn’t even as if the other two were very far away. Dust and Colds were playing backgammon in the break room next to the Center. Pollen could hear Dust raising her voice in a dispute over the rules through the thin wall, and she chuckled. At least they were having fun. 

As her rotation took the main screen past her point of view, Pollen wondered once again what exactly Melody was doing. She liked the girl, but sometimes she could be a little strange…

 

*    *    *

 

As it happened, Melody was currently working on her final theater project if the year.

It was the last week of school before summer vacation, and Melody’s class had been given their final project: research a type of performance art, perform it in public for half an hour, and record themselves doing it.

After a little bit of research, Melody had run into the phenomenon of living statues: street artists who posed motionless as statues in public for hours, using clever costumes and makeup to appear to be made of stone or metal. Melody had always loved putting together elaborate halloween costumes when she was younger, so she had decided to make living statues the subject of her project. After doing some research, she set about figuring out how to properly disguise herself. 

Melody had decided to be golden statue. Her face and hands were relatively easy to handle, metallic face paint wan’t too hard to come by. Her clothes were a bit trickier. Not because the proper tone was hard to achieve, but because she’d had a hard time finding clothes that she was actually willing to smear with metallic paint. Eventually she’s ended up rummaging through flea markets and thrift stores until she found a sort of robe/dress thing that was cheap and looked suitably statue-esc. It was a little big for her, but nothing was perfect. 

Melody’s hair, meanwhile, had nearly called off the whole thing. Try as she might, Melody had been unable to find out how professional living statues maid their hair appear metallic. She had though of using more of the same paint she used for her face, but a trial run that had turned a lock of her hair into a comb-breaking clump killed that idea. Eventually she ended up using regular blond hair dye to produce a sort of gold-like effect. It didn’t look too bad, If you didn’t look closely.

Earlier that morning, her preparations finally complete, Melody had headed out to the park. She picked out a nice looking spot by the edge of a well travel path, and started to get set up. She hid a camera in the bushes opposite to record her performance for school, set down her fake cardboard pedestal across the way, and made a couple of other last minute adjustments. She even put out a little collection tin  for good luck. Then, preparations complete, Melody got down to the surprisingly tricky task of doing absolutely nothing. 

 

Five minutes into the endeavor, Melody thought she was doing pretty well. So far, there were only two real threats to her integrity as a statue. The first was the wave of surprisingly intense urges and discomforts felt by and one who tries to keep completely still. The inside of Melody’s right knee itched, badly enough that she half wondered if there might be a bug of some sort crawling around down there. A couple of hairs that had escaped from behind her ears waved distractingly at the corner of her vision, occasionally blowing across her face and into her eyes. Melody was noticing with increasing frequency how dry her lips felt under all that metallic makeup. Would just moistening her lips a little count as to much movement? Yes, she told herself, it would. Statues did not lick their lips. She was a statue. Ergo, she could’t lick her lips.

Her second problem was a little more dire. As the summer sun beat down on her, Melody began to realize that her flowing, statuesque dress/robe/thing wasn’t really intended to be worn outside on a hot summer day. True, it had been made of relatively light fabric, but that that was before she had slathered the whole thing with metallic paint. Paint which, apparently, stopped the garment from breathing entirely. Melody could already feel a bead of sweat crawling down her back, and she was only going to get warmer as the day went on.

 

Overall, though, Melody was confidant. Yes, she would be spending the next forty minutes or so itchy and hot and uncomfortable. But, Honestly? That was a pretty common consequence for spending a big chunk of time out in the park in this weather anyway, no statue business required. Melody had read articles about the dangers professional living statues faced, and had gone in worrying about things like her legs cramping up from lack of movement, or being harassed by strangers. If a little discomfort was all life was going to throw at her, she was going to get through this with flying colors.

 

Unfortunately, Melody was still missing a few key pieces of the equation. Not matter how still and statue-like Melody acted, she was still a living human girl. Which meant that, despite all her efforts, she still had to breathe. 

She knew this, of course, and in the days leading up to her performance, she had practiced breathing slowly and shallowly in front of a mirror, so that the slow rise and fall of her chest inside her costume would be subtle enough that a casual observer might miss it. 

 

Melody was blissfully unaware, however, of the other effects her breathing was having. Along with the air she needed to live, Melody was bringing millions of tiny grains of grass pollen into her nose every time she inhaled. 

For most girls, it wouldn’t have mattered. Their noses would have functioned properly, trapping the contaminants and sweeping them into the nostrils and throat to be disposed of. They never would have even noticed.

But Melody had something special inside her. An arraignment of proteins which, while formed with the best possible intentions, represented a noticeable disconnect from reality. Spread throughout Melody’s body were antibodies that were made to bind not to any disease causing agent, but to proteins found in the reproductive cells of Cynodon dactylon, commonly known a Bermuda grass.

A false positive in her immune system.

An error. 

A glitch.

An allergy.

 

As the reproductive hopes of a million plants met their doom in the moist caverns of Melody’s nasal passages, they began to trigger a chemical chain reaction. Histaminic alarms blared as the spiky balls adhered to Melody’s nasal wall. In the Sneeze Center, the console desperately tried to get the attention of the personification on duty. It would not remain unanswered for long…

 

*    *    *

 

Pollen looked over and frowned as an insistent beeping filled the air, accompanied by a flashing red warning light. When she saw what it was, she sighed. Pollen. Her namesake, and also her least favorite substance on planet earth.

I wan’t surprising, really. As spring turned into summer, Melody was entering the part of the year where her hayfever began to bother her in ernest, leaving her red-eyed and sniffly for weeks or months at a time. And on top of that, with her allergies looming on the horizon, Melody had gone to a park, surrounding herself with plants of every description, all of them (or so it sometimes seemed to Pollen) bent on trying to reproduce with everything in a fifty mile radius. 

And yet… Pollen had had hopes. Melody had always been dependent on the pollen count, and there were days when she seemed miraculously un-sneezy when by all rights she should have been an allergic mess. This morning Pollen had thought that they might be able to get through the day with nothing passing into Melody’s nose but air, and nothing coming out but gentle breaths. 

Apparently she had been wrong.

Sighing, Pollen rolled her chair over to the control panel, silenced the alarm, and began preparing her response. Unlike her colleagues, Pollen had never liked making Melody sneeze. Yes, it was sometimes necessary. She knew that. But her job was to keep Melody safe from things that could harm her body. If she had to start giving Melody symptoms, that meant something was already going wrong. Not something she had control over, admittedly, but it was still a sad occasion.

More to the point, she knew that every symptom she gave Melody interfered with her life. Pollen had never had an itchy nose or a runny nose or sneezed herself, but she couldn’t imagine they were pleasant. She had to cause Melody some inconvenience and discomfort in order to keep her safe, but she wasn’t about to cause more than she had to. 

So, rather than skipping straight to the giant explosion of a sneeze, Pollen started small. She called up a light tickling sensation in Melody’s nose, just enough to inform her that the air she was breathing was contaminated. If Pollen was lucky, Melody would get the message and get away from whatever was provoking her allergies. If not…

 

*    *    *

 

Melody’s nose twitched, the first outward sign of the biological cascade taking place within her body. A few seconds later she sniffed once, her gold painted nostrils flaring. Pollen’s actions were beginning to make themselves felt.

It started out slowly; an uncomfortable tingling just inside Melody’s nostrils, as if the sensitive skin there were being oh-so-gently brushed with feathers. 

Melody didn’t register the sensation at first. She could feel it, but her mind was too preoccupied with things like being unpleasantly warm and wondering how much time had passed for it to come to her conscious attention. Melody only noticed the tickle in her nose for the first time when she had to stop herself from unconsciously raising a hand up to rub at the upturned, triangular underside of her nose. 

Frowning inwardly, Melody mentally chastised herself. She had never realized how many tiny moments she made all the time without thinking about it. Ordinarily she wouldn’t even notice what she was doing, but right now she couldn’t afford to move her arm just because her nose… was… kinda tickly…

  

Melody’s blood ran cold as she at last recognized the sensation for what it was: her hayfever. The sensation wasn’t particularly strong now, but Melody had suffered from allergies most of her life. What she was feeling right now felt almost exactly like the very beginning of a messy, sneezy allergy attack. 

Melody’s mind whirled frantically as he body remained motionless. There was no way she could keep her statue routine up through sneezing her head off, and it was only a matter of time until that happened if she stayed out here. Seeking shelter someplace air-conditioned wouldn’t help either: even leaving aside the fact that her allergic snot and tears would undoubtably ruin her makeup, it wouldn’t change anything. The moment Melody stepped outside again, she’d be right back in the same boat she left. As long as the pollen was still in the air, Melody would become an itchy, sniffly mess. It was only a question of when.

Could she pop a couple of Benadryl and come back tomorrow, Melody wondered? No, she realized as her heart sank, she couldn’t. She had checked the weather in advance as part of her preparations, and it was supposed to thunderstorm tomorrow. In fact, it was supposed to rain pretty much every day until she had to hand in  her assignment during class next Thursday. Today was her last chance to complete her assignment.

 

Melody grit her teeth. There was no helping it then. She was just going to have to try and hold on long enough to get enough footage to meet the project requirements before her hayfever took over.

 

…This was going to suck.

 

*    *    *

 

“Oh, Melody…” Pollen trailed off, staring forlornly at the main screen “Why do you do this to yourself?”

She hadn’t moved. No matter how long Pollen waited, the view on the main screen stubbornly refused to change. Melody was just sitting there, doing nothing as pollen flooded into her nose. Worried and confused, Pollen closed her eyes and tried to think. 

Why was she not doing anything? She had to feel the tickle Pollen had sent. It wasn’t the strongest sensation in the world, but it wasn’t that weak. 

Could Melody have mistaken the tickle for something else? Pollen hurriedly scanned the readout and displays in front of her. No. there was nothing else that could conceivably be affecting Melody’s nose. Melody was a bright girl, she must have figured out what was going on by now. 

Which meant, Pollen supposed,  she must not care.

 

The spiky yellow spores inside Melody’s nose were dangerous. This knowledge was built into Pollen at the most basic level, the same way she knew that water was wet and the sky was up. Granted, she couldn’t have told you the exact details and specifics. She wasn’t a doctor. But she knew that if enough pollen got into Melody’s body, it would make her very sick, or even kill her. 

 

Was it possible that Melody simply didn’t know this? It seemed insane. Even if Melody didn’t have the insight that came with Pollen’s job, she knew what inhaling pollen did to her. She must have enough trust in her body to realize that it wouldn’t do that to her for no reason …right?

But the alternative wasn’t much better. An ignorant Melody was on thing, but one that deliberately placed herself in danger was… worrying, for a lot of reasons. Pollen shuddered. These weren’t new thoughts. They had occurred to her before whenever Melody seemed oddly slow or reluctant to avoid or abandon things that provoked her allergies. 

Pollen shook her head. Right now it didn’t MATTER why Melody was acting the way she was. What mattered was keeping her safe. If Melody didn’t want to move on her own, She’d just have to giver her some motivation.

“I’m sorry Melody” Pollen whispered “but this is for your own good.”

 

*    *    *

 

Melody’s hands twitched and balled into fists as she fought the urge to scrub at her nose. The light, etherial tickle from earlier had blossomed into a deep fiery itching that had spread back from her nostrils into the cavernous folds of her sinuses, and then further into her eyes and ears and the back of her throat. Thankfully, it was still the type of itch that itch cried out to be scratched, instead of to be sneezed out. The problem was, Melody couldn’t scratch. She had to remain still. Even so, she might have risked a quick scratch if it weren’t for the tiny, inconvenient, and immensely frustrating fact that the parts of her that itched were IN THE MIDDLE OF HER DAMN HEAD!

 

Melody took a deep breath and calmed herself down briefly with a fantasy of pulling her nose off and scouring it’s insides with steel wool. This wasn’t a new complaint. She had spent many summers constantly fussing with her nose, futilely trying to sooth an itch located two inches deeper in her skull. That didn’t really help, though. 

 

Melody’s composure was failing, and she knew it. If it weren’t for the golden paint covering it, she was sure her nose would be a lovely shade of pink right now. Worse, she could feel her nostrils twitching and flaring with every breath, but she had no idea how to stop it. She had no idea what muscles made it move in the first place.

The reason her face was faring better, but not by much. The broad strokes of the regal, statuesque expression she had pasted on her face this morning were still there, but the details were beginning to shift under the pressure of her hayfever. Melody’s wide hazel eyes, once bright and intelligent, had become squinted and watery. They were probably bloodshot too, although she couldn’t tell herself. Melody was also pretty sure that the set of her mouth, try as she might to keep it in place, had acquired a certain grimace like quality. She hoped people wouldn’t look closely enough to notice, but Melody’s statue costume now looked like it must have been made by a very strange sculptor. 

 

The small part of Melody’s brain that was not occupied by the itching was wondering why exactly all this was happening. Her allergies had gotten this bad in the past, but not without some kind of lead up. She had been completely fine yesterday. In fact, this was the first time her hayfever had really bothered her so far this spring. Her allergies usually didn’t come out of nowhere like this, so why…?

Then Melody heard it. Coming from behind her, Melody could hear the distinctive sound of a lawnmower. In fact, now that she thought about it, she was pretty sure she had been hearing it for a while, and had only now consciously noticed it. Which meant that someone was mowing the field behind her, and it was getting louder, so it sounded like it was getting closer. That…

…That would do it.  Melody’s heart sank as she realized exactly how much that would do it. Melody always held her breath when she walked by her neighbors mowing their lawns in the mornings. On the days she couldn’t quite make it past in time, she tended to show up to school sneezing and sniffly. When the lawn around her house was mowed, Melody hunkered down inside with the AC on and waited for it to be over.  She had never just hung out next to a lawn being mowed, let alone an entire field. She really didn’t want to know what that would be like. Unfortunately, it looked like she was going to find out. Melody’s tortured nostrils reported the unmistakable smell of cut grass…

 

A sudden spike of itchiness lanced through Melody’s head. She could feel her nails digging into her palms as she resisted the urge to attack the only exposed part of the sensation: her eyes and nose. Melody had had her hayfever for years, and she knew from painful experience that rubbing would only work more pollen into them and make things worse. Melody knew that doing what her body so desperately wanted wouldn’t help. She knew she had to remain still for the sake of her grades. But it itched. It itched it itched IT ITCHED-

 

*    *    *

 

Pollen sat nervously watching the main screen. She had just finished increasing the itch for the fourth time. Surely Melody had to crack sometime, didn’t she? Her nose itched unbearably, Pollen had made sure of that. Melody was suborn, but what could be so important that-

 

Pollen’s train of thought was abruptly cut off as a shrill, angry sounding alarm cut through the Sneeze Center. It was the same alarm that had alerted her to the presence of the pollen in the first place, now much louder and more instant.

 Pollen paled as she saw why: the readout denoting the amount of pollen currently in Melody’s nose had climbed into triple digits and was surrounded by flashing warnings. Her life passed before her eyes for a moment as she had visions of Melody keeling over, dead.

As the initial shock passed, the outline of what had happened unfolded all-too-clearly into Pollen’s horrified mind. She had been so insistent on getting Melody to take care of herself and get away from the allergens that she must have forgotten to keep track of how many were already in her system. As she had been carefully ramping up delicately calibrated stages of itchiness, pollen had been flooding up Melody’s nose the whole time. Pollen slammed her fist down on the large red button in the middle of the control panel. Forget quality of life, forget Melody taking care of herself, and especially forget subtlety. Melody had to sneeze NOW.

 

*    *    *

 

Melody felt it when the sneeze began to well up. The awful scratch-or-go-insane itching filling her head from top to bottom began to undergo an alchemical transformation into an entirely different feeling, one that demand a much more dramatic reaction. She felt the sensation reach wispy arms down her trachea, grabbing her diaphragm and forcing it to open and-

 

no.

 

She was not letting some stupid plant and it’s ugly, good for nothing spoors beat her and ruin HER project.

Melody pictured an image of herself sneezing. She pictured herself wrapping it in chains and then locking it in a cage and sealing it behind and enormous vault door deep inside herself so that it would never ever see the light of day again. 

You are not getting out of my body. Ever. Melody mentally told the sneeze, her face screwed up in concentration. I… will… not… let… you! 

 

*    *    *

 

In the Sneeze Center, Pollen’s jaw dropped. Up on the screen was an enormous, blinking system error.

 

403 ERROR: COMMAND “SNEEZE” CONTRADICTED BY ACTIVE INPUT

 

It meant that Melody herself was preventing the sneeze from going through. Pollen had only ever seen it twice before, once when Melody was of a monster under her bed as little girl, and again a couple years ago when Melody had broken her nose playing soccer. Occasionally Melody fought for control of her nose and managed to delay a sneeze for a second or two, but actually managing to veto a sneeze was practically unheard of. 

Pollen stared at the screen, hoping against hope that it would vanish and Melody would give in and sneeze.

 

Nothing happened. 

 

As seconds turned into minutes, Pollen panicked. There wasn’t time for this! Melody NEEDED to sneeze now. There was too much pollen in Melody’s nose, she needed to do something–

But she couldn’t. 

Pollen had already done everything she could by making Melody sneeze. If Dust had been there maybe she would have known how to make it harder to hold back, but Pollen’s understanding didn’t go much farther that ‘push the button’. 

In desperation, Pollen frantically hammered the button over and over again, queuing up sneeze after sneeze, hoping that it would somehow make Melody sneeze faster. 

“Melody!” Pollen pleaded under her breath “I’m sorry I made you itchy and uncomfortable, but you need to sneeze! This isn’t safe for you!”

The error message stared down at her unmoved. Pollen grimaced and redoubled her efforts, terrifyingly aware that she probably wasn’t helping anything.

“Come on Melody, please, just this once?” Pollen continued, tears in her eyes “Just sneeze…”

 

*    *    *

 

Melody was in hell. There was really no other way to describe it. She could feel the sneezes bubbling up inside her, knocking against the walls of her ribcage, climbing over each other like puppies in a basket in their haste to be free. How many were there? A dozen? A hundred? A million? Enough that Melody felt like she would explode from the pressure of holding them in. One of the sneezes tested its prison, sending whispering tendrils against Melody’s voice box, forcing her to choke down a gasp. She wanted, no, needed, to sneeze so badly that she swore she could hear her brain creaking with the effort of not doing it. Melody felt like she was trying to climb a waterfall, or drink the sea. How could she- 

Suddenly, a desperate hope tore through Melody’s mind. What if the thirty minutes were already up? She had passed a convenience store on the way here that had a clock on  the outside, and she could just barely see it without turning her head. If she could just make out the hands on the clock, she might be able to see how long she had been doing this. She strained through allergic tears to find the clock at the very edge of her vision. Please, please, please let it have been half an hour, Melody begged the universe as she fought eyes that wanted the squeeze themselves shut. She couldn’t do this much longer, she just couldn’t–

 

Too late, Melody heard the lawnmower come up behind her again. It was closer this time, so close that she could feel bits of grass hitting the backs of her legs. One piece of grass, an inch and a half long and bright green, was tossed into the air, whirled about in the breeze for a moment, and came to rest on the very tip of Melody’s pert, gold painted nose.

 

It was the final straw. As the piece of grass alighted, somewhere deep inside Melody a dam broke and something began to flow out. A full-body shudder passed through her, containing, or so it seemed to Melody, every tiny movement she had held in or suppressed since she had started this charade half an hour ago. 

Melody’s head bobbed forward, and a tiny “etch!” burst from her lips like the first drop of rain plopping down into a century of dust. The sneeze was quiet, polite even.

 

But it had brought it’s friends.

 

etch!-heh-tch! hetch!

 

An avalanche of tiny sneezes burst from Melody’s slim frame with mechanical, machine-gun like rapidity, powered by spasming muscles in her stomach and chest. There was no time to breath or even inhale between them. As the air in Melody’s lungs ran out, her chest jerked silently a couple times. She gave a long, ragged gasp as her head tilted back towards the sky, revealing her face. Melody’s eyebrows were knit, her eyes were screwed up tight, and her mouth gaped almost comically wide. Her nose and eyes were streaming, washing away the golden paint to revel the desperately allergic girl underneath. 

A girl that needed oh so very, very badly to sneeze.

 

“HAAAYYYAAASSHOOOO!!!!”

 

The little sneezes had been just the beginning. This latest monstrosity bent Melody double, her body folding before the force of her allergies. Muscles in Melody’s legs, stiff and numb from being held still for half an hour, failed to compensate. Melody wobbled, overcorrected, and fell, tumbling down off her fake pedestal into the grass behind her. 

 

Sneeze after harsh, body convulsing sneeze tore their way out of Melody’s body as she lay crumpled on the grass. She couldn’t stop them, couldn’t control them. Her body refused to listen. 

She tried to struggle to her feet, but as she got to her knees another explosion wracked her slender body and she collapsed back onto her stomach, face buried in the grass. She tried again, only for another horse, painful sneeze to knock her over.

On her third try Melody managed to get to her feet and stay there, swaying. 

 

Melody was a mess. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy, and so full of tears that she could hardly see out of them in the few brief moments she managed to force them open between her constant sneezes. Her nose was bright read and swollen, a twitching, quivering mass of enflamed membranes that oozed mucus down her face with every convulsion of her chest. Every choked, gasping breath she took was just the prelude to another sneeze, and she couldn’t even take a single step without  another ‘HACHOOO!!!’ bending her double and causing her to nearly loose her balance. 

 

Barely able to see, barely able to walk, Melody half-ran, half-stumbled to the convenience store. In a blind panic she pawed at the automatic door looking for a handle before it opened to let her in. She left behind a smear of mucus and golden face paint on the glass door as she tumbled inside, into the safety of the filtered, air-conditioned air. The sounds of her allergy attack could be heard from outside the store, slowly fading into the  occasional sniffle, and then nothing.

 

Some time later, a figure in gold armed with a surgical mask and heavy sunglasses dashed out of the store, ran to the bush where Melody’s camera was hidden, and sprinted out of the park as fast as she could. Melody didn’t bother coming back for the pedestal.

 

*    *    *

 

When she got home, Melody took twice her normal dose of Benadryl, showered the makeup and pollen off her skin, and collapsed into bed, exhausted. Her chest and stomach still hurt from the force of all those sneezes earlier, but at least her allergies seemed to have settled down. Letting out a small sigh, she rolled over and burrowed deeper under the covers. She could worry about the footage tomorrow. 

 

*    *    *

 

The next day, Melody stared at the screen of her laptop, hoping that the sheer pressure of her gaze would make the numbers on it change. She had managed to hold out for twenty-three minutes. 

 

The project required half an hour. 

 

The film was technically long enough, but the last seven she needed were nothing but her having a colossal allergy attack and running of screen. Melody groaned and resisted the urge to bang her head on the desk, trying to think. Was there something she could do? Could she somehow slow down the footage, or…

 

Holding her breath for fear of scaring away the idea forming in her mind, Melody reached for the mouse and changed the file’s name from ‘Living Statue Project’ to ‘Wellness and Poise: Allergies as a Metaphor for Internal Strife’. 

Despite everything, a tiny smile tugged at Melody's lips. It wasn’t even remotely what she had intended, but it just might work…

 

…right?

[Blah!?]

Man, you're incredible. We made all these insane suggestions and you still managed to come up with something on your own that not only met my expectations but surpassed them. It was nice getting to see Pollen in action by herself, and her style is obviously very different from the others. Plus it was just kind of cool having one of them alone instead of the whole group, and while I love their chemistry, it's just something we hadn't seen before. I also love the way you handled allergies, where Pollen is just pre-programmed to "know" that her namesake is dangerous. That was a really clever take on it.

As always, thanks for sharing, and I really look forward to what you come up with next!

[Kiaory]

Awww, Thank you so much! ^-^ It really means a lot to me to hear you say that. 

I'll keep trying to come up with interesting stuff, I guess.

 

[poiub]

masterful!

[Kiaory]

Hey Everybody! I have a question for you. I am currently woking on part four, but it's likely going to be pretty long, and might take a while to complete. I's also going to be a bit more modular than the previous stories. So my question is: would you prefer to wait and read it all at once when it's finished, or should I split it up into several segments and post them one at a time? Each segment would include at least one sneeze.

In case it affects your preferences, here's the basic premise of the next section:

Spoiler

Part four will follow Melody as she catches and comes down with a cold over the course of about a week, with Colds taking center stage in the sneeze center. Each segment would correspond to one day.

 

In the mean time, please enjoy this mini-update to tide you over:

—Part 3.5—

 

It was Colds who first noticed something was wrong, albeit mostly by luck. 

In a rare display of synchronized professionalism, all three personifications had been sitting behind the main control panel. Granted, Dust was doing one of her crossword puzzles, and Pollen had a book open in  her lap, but you couldn’t have everything. Colds had been spinning around in her chair as well, but one her last rotation a single display had caught her eye.

 

“Hey guys?” she announced, breaking the silence. “I think you should look at this…”

 

As Pollen saved her place and walked over, Colds pointed out what had caught her eye. It was a small and rarely used piece of instrumentation, crammed between two larger readouts. Presumably it had some official technical name, but none of them had ever bothered to learn it. On the rare occasions they needed to refer to it at all, they called it the smell-O-meter.

Normally, Melody’s sense of smell just didn’t come up often in the Sneeze Center. Smelling things was part of the nose’s typical operation, and the personifications were only supposed to get involved when things went wrong.

 

Now, though, the graph was reporting an anomaly. The the line representing Melody’s sense of smell was a jagged red line, centered on an enormous spike that went past the edge of the screen.

“She’s smelling something really, really strong, and I don’t recognize it” Colds said with a frown, turning around in her seat to face pollen. “Do you know what it is?”

Pollen frowned. “No, I don’t recognize it either” she said. She tilted her head. “I suppose it looks a little bit like the smell of flowers…”

“Nah,” said Dust, leaning over “Flowers are WAY less intense. Melody was at the botanical gardens last week, remember?” Something seemed too occur to her “Do you want me to trigger sneeze?”

 

“Are you sure that’s necessary?” Pollen said . “Not every little thing needs to make Melody sneeze.”

“Pollen, for it to be this strong, whatever it is would need to be practically inside Melody’s nose.” Dust said sarcastically. “Do you think this stuff belongs in Melody’s body? Because I don't think this stuff belongs in her body.” 

“We don’t have a reason the think it’s dangerous!” Pollen protested

“And you don’t have a reason to think it isn’t dangerous” Dust countered, her voice rising slightly.

The two stared at each other for a moment before Colds tentatively raised a hand.

“Uh, Pollen,” Colds interrupted, looking at the graph “I don’t think Melody can smell anything at all like this.”

 

“…She has a point, you know.” Dust said after a moment. “This stuff is gonna drown out anything else Melody smells until it’s gone. What happens if there’s a gas leak or something?”

Dust looked at Pollen, trying to see if she was close to winning the argument. The blond personification of allergies looked worried and conflicted, and despite herself Dust felt a pang of sympathy. The anger drained from her face.

“Polls, I’m pretty sure stoping Melody from smelling anything counts as impairing the nose’s functioning” Dust said in slightly softer voice, and stood up to place her hand on Pollen’s shoulder. “I know you don’t like them, but Melody’s body needs to sneeze right now.”

Pollen looked away. 

“…Ok, you’re right” she admitted eventually. “I guess we do need a sneeze.”

Dust smiled at her and snapped a mock salute as she pushed the lever marked ‘irritation’. “Aye-aye Captain!” She joked. “Forward torpedo tubes armed and ready!”

The corners of Pollen’s mouth twitched as she fought a smile, her earlier anger dissipating. “You know, Dust, you can be really immature sometimes.” She said.

Dust just grinned back at her “And you can be a boring stick in the mud, Polls.” She said. “Permission to fire?”

Pollen tried to stifle a giggle. “Sure, Dust. Fire away.” A thought seemed to occur to her. “Only a small sneeze thought!”

“Awww, you’re no fun!“ Dust said and pouted, but her earlier grin quickly returned.

“Fire in the hole!”

 

*    *    *

 

Back in the outside world, Melody’s eyes glazed over as she stared into the middle distance. Her nose twitched once, then a second time, and a third before her nostrils trembled slightly and then flared outward, revealing their light pink insides. Her lips parted as she began to inhale, her chest rising slightly. Muscles in her chest and throat tensed, and then spasmed-

 

“Hetchew!!”

 

-as Melody’s head snapped forward, warm air bursting through her nose and mouth, clearing out the offending scent. With it, the air carried with it the characteristic sound of a sneeze.

 

Melody sniffled, rubbing a finger underneath her now slightly pink nose. 

“I guess that’s a ‘no’, huh?” said Melody’s friend Carla, still holding the bottle of perfume in her hand that had spritzed towards Melody’s face a few seconds earlier. 

Melody waved a hand in front of her face, coughing. “Uh, yeah.  Sorry Carla, I don’t think you new perfume agrees with me.”

Carla looked downcast. “Shoot, that means I’m not gonna be able to wear this around you, am I. I liked this one.”

“Well I might be ok if you don’t put to much on” Melody hedged, not wanting to disappoint her friend. “As long as you don’t hug me or anything…”

“It’s ok, I bought some other brands too” Carla said as she pulled another glass atomizer out of her bag and took aim. “Tell me what you think of this one…”

[Blah!?]

Great to see that you're still up and at it. This was a fun little tidbit, and I'm looking forward to the bigger idea you've got going too. As far as how you should post it, personally I'd prefer to get the whole thing all at once even if that means having to wait longer, but I'm certainly not going to complain no matter what you do with it.

[blueprint]

I can't w. ait for the next part 

[Pearlised]

This is so great, thank you for sharing!!! x

[Kiaory]

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoyed it. ^^ Is there any part you liked in particular?

[I love Alan Rickman]

Ahhhh, very wonderful! I just binge-read it for the past hour, and I absolutely loved it. Can't wait for the next part!

[Sneezermissy]

Please update! I can't wait for the next installment! This is so well written.

[chronic reader]

I hope you're still working on the next installment and haven't given up on it. I really like this one!

[Chanel_no5]

9 hours ago, loyal-phan said:

I hope you're still working on the next installment and haven't given up on it. I really like this one!

Hi loyal-phan! Please, could you stop bumping all these old threads? It's always a sad thing when you get really into a story or something after it's been dropped, I completely understand that, but this trend of old threads being bumped is starting to get really annoying for other users. 

The author of this particular story has been banned from the forum, so it won't have any more updates, I'm sorry to say. 

How about trying your hand at writing fiction of your own instead?  

Take  care!  

 

[PuddinPop]

13 minutes ago, Chanel_no5 said:

Hi loyal-phan! Please, could you stop bumping all these old threads? It's always a sad thing when you get really into a story or something after it's been dropped, I completely understand that, but this trend of old threads being bumped is starting to get really annoying for other users. 

The author of this particular story has been banned from the forum, so it won't have any more updates, I'm sorry to say. 

How about trying your hand at writing fiction of your own instead?  

Take  care!  

 

Just to piggy back on the back of this, even though I'm not on staff anymore, I would like to politely remind everyone that necro-bumping is actually against the rules, so repeatedly doing so can and probably will result in further staff action. 

Just for clarity, the rule states: 

 

• No spamming is allowed on the forum - this includes (but is not restricted to) posting the same message on lots of different sub-forums, asking the same question multiple times, repeatedly bumping up old topics that haven't been replied to in a while (especially your own) and anything else that the staff considers to be needless spam.

[NoV]

11 hours ago, loyal-phan said:

I hope you're still working on the next installment and haven't given up on it. I really like this one!

Once you are validated, you will be able to send other members a PM to show your appreciation for things they have posted in the past. This way you can let them know how you feel without bumping the thread. Plus it is always lovely to receive these sort of PMs from other members  

Enjoy the forum  

[sneezyfeather338]

Oh My Gosh!!!!! This is amazing!!! I love the scenarios you’ve written so far. If I can make a suggestion, why not make a scenario where someone is trying to tickle Melody’s nose with a feather, or have her hide in a dusty closet. But that’s only if you plan to write more chapters. If not, you’ve done a great job with this concept and I look forward to reading more of your work. 😍🥰

[itchynose2]

9 hours ago, sneezyfeather338 said:

Oh My Gosh!!!!! This is amazing!!! I love the scenarios you’ve written so far. If I can make a suggestion, why not make a scenario where someone is trying to tickle Melody’s nose with a feather, or have her hide in a dusty closet. But that’s only if you plan to write more chapters. If not, you’ve done a great job with this concept and I look forward to reading more of your work. 😍🥰

I think the status “Banned” on Kiaory’s profile is not going to help them fulfil your request.

[sneezyfeather338]

3 hours ago, itchynose2 said:

I think the status “Banned” on Kiaory’s profile is not going to help them fulfil your request.

Ooh that’s too bad. Oh well I at least had fun reading what was posted. 😍🥰😘

[FireFlower3013]

Love this! I hope you continue with it! 

 

Cheers, 
Drea

[Snotlvr]

Great story!