I Smell The Future
Ep 5 - I Smell the Future - Season Three
By Steve Gray
Carl’s Collectibles had stood on Darley Street for four years, a glorious, dusty fortress of vintage comic books, collectible cards, and action figures that few were allowed to touch. Carl liked predictable things.
So, when the 'For Lease' sign in the window of the empty shop next door was replaced by a neon pink poster, Carl winced.
The new shop was called Scented Originals. Its proprietor, Chris Jones, was a woman of immense enthusiasm, delicate demeanour and zero market research. Chris decided that the local community was crying out for a single retail space where they could simultaneously purchase vanilla-infused pillar candles, artisanal wooden bookmarks, and high-end educational toys.
It was a chaotic sensory experience. Customers who walked in to browse the 'Build Your Own Volcano' kits were instantly blinded by the overwhelming fumes of 'Midnight Jasmine.' Children looking at the educational toys would frequently mistake the decorative soap bars for exotic sweets, leading to at least three emergency mouth-rinses in the first few months alone.
Carl watched through his front window with grim fascination.
By month six, Chris’s enthusiasm had evaporated. The foot traffic was non-existent, unless you counted the local teenagers who came in to use the tester lotions for free. By month eight, Chris spent most of her days sitting on a stool at the counter, weeping softly into a vat of unsold lavender wax. She was deeply depressed that her grand vision of a scented-educational empire had failed to take off.
At the nine-month mark, Chris flipped the sign to 'Closed' for the final time, leaving behind a legacy of unpaid rent and a scent of artificial cinnamon that had permanently seeped into the drywall.
Enter Greg Taylor.
Greg was a man with a plan, a sharp mind, and a severe allergy to scented candles. He bought out the remaining shop lease and the tiny handful of leftover stock, which mostly consisted of two dozen unloved picture books and three boxes of slightly melted wax figures.
Greg cleared out the perfumes, threw open the doors to air out the building, and pivoted the entire business model. He was going to focus on toys. Educational toys, fun toys, board games, and a carefully curated range of educational books.
The physical foot traffic started slowly, but Greg had a secret weapon: online sales.
To conquer the digital world, Greg enlisted the help of 'Young Kevin,' who was Karen’s boy from down the road. Young Kevin, seemingly lived entirely on energy drinks, and understood the internet algorithms better than he understood his own family.
'Look, Mr Taylor,' Kevin said, tapping furiously on his phone during his first week. 'Nobody wants to see a photo of a puzzle box. They want to see a video of a puzzle box exploding. We need content. We need drama.'
Kevin staged elaborate social media campaigns. He filmed Greg trying to solve complex logic puzzles under a strict sixty-second time limit, complete with dramatic movie trailer music. If Greg failed, Kevin dumped a bucket of confetti over his head. The videos went viral. Orders began pouring in from three cities away.
Within two years, the shop was doing better than 'okay.' It was thriving. Greg was working twelve-hour days just to pack the boxes shipping out across the country.
He desperately needed help, so he hired two staff members.
First came Maxine Bennett, a retired schoolteacher who took the 'educational' part of the toy shop seriously, but fitted in anyway.
Second came Jenny Greaves. Jenny was the polar opposite of Maxine. Jenny was twenty-four, an artist, and possessed a chaotic energy that matched the wildest toys in the inventory. Jenny was responsible for the store displays, which frequently involved hanging plush dragons from the ceiling grid or creating massive towers out of building blocks that teetered dangerously close to the front entrance.
The clash between Maxine’s rigid structure and Jenny’s creative chaos provided endless entertainment for the customers, and occasionally, genuine high drama for Greg.
There was the Great LEGO Incident, where Maxine spent four hours meticulously sorting thousands of loose bricks by colour and size, only for Jenny to mistakenly dump them all into a giant 'sensory pit' for a weekend toddler event. Greg had to mediate the dispute with the diplomacy of a United Nations peacekeeper, eventually settling the argument by buying everyone pizza.
With the business booming, the website firing on all cylinders, and his team finally assembled, Greg decided it was time to shed the last remnants of the old Scented Originals identity. The shop needed a real name. A name that captured the energy, the intelligence, and the pure joy of the place.
He gathered Maxine, Jenny, and Young Kevin near the counter.
'Alright team,' Greg announced, pointing up at the new sign Kevin had just designed on his laptop. 'Tomorrow, the new sign goes up.'
The high street woke up the next morning to see bold, bright letters stretching across the front of the building, completely overshadowing Carl’s Collectibles next door.
The shop was officially called: Think, Thunk, BOOM!
Carl stood out on the pavement, looking up at the bright sign, then down at his own dusty windows. He let out a long, heavy sigh, turned around, and went back inside to smell his old comic books.
No two days were the same in Darley Street; people come, and people go. Today was possibly a glimpse into a more fascinating future, of fun and frivolity.
Steve writes about a range of topics. His poetry can take abstract turns, and his 'Odd Angry Writes' on his website are sure to turn heads with his aggressive approach to topics.
A background in Art and Design often gives his writing a unique creative perspective.
A bunch of e-books under his belt and some honourable mentions in the Geelong Writers Group puts his work in good standing.
