The Perfume of Withered Roses

The apartment at 7th Floor, Unit B, on Maple Street had always felt off, but room 707 was the epicenter. My friend Kyle and I moved in during a sweltering August, but the room was a cold pocket of air, as if winter had taken residence there. We laughed it off as a draft, but the chill never left, even in July.

Room 707 was a long rectangle: the door at one end, a bathroom on the left, and two single beds against the right wall, facing two closets with a window between them. Our travel bags sat on the closets, and the window looked out onto a fire escape and a brick wall. The space was simple, but something was wrong.

Kyle was the first to notice. He said the room smelled like rotting flowers, a sweet decay that clung to the air. I didn’t smell it at first, but after a week, I did. It was faint, like the ghost of a perfume, but it made my stomach turn. We searched for the source, but there was nothing—no plants, no flowers, nothing.

Then the temperature inversion began. No matter the season outside, the room was always the opposite. In the dead of winter, the room was so hot we sweat through our sheets. In the summer, we shivered under three blankets. We joked that the room was possessed, but the joke faded when we realized it was true.

Kyle started sleepwalking. I’d find him standing at the window, staring at the brick wall, whispering something I couldn’t quite catch. I’d lead him back to bed, and in the morning, he’d remember nothing. But the whispers stuck with me, echoing in my mind like a CD skipping.

One night, I woke to a sound—a soft rustling, like silk sliding over skin. I opened my eyes and saw a figure by the window. A woman in a red dress, her back to me. She was tall and thin, and her hair was as black as a raven’s wing. She stood perfectly still, and the room grew colder, my breath forming fog.

I called out to Kyle, but he was in a deep sleep, unresponsive. The woman turned her head slightly, not enough to see her face, and I saw a glimpse of pale cheek. Then she was gone, leaving only the smell of roses in her wake.

The next morning, Kyle told me he had a dream where a woman with no face whispered his name and pointed to the window. The same window where the red lady had stood. We tried to leave, but our lives were tangled there—jobs, lease, nowhere to go. So we stayed.

The temperature got worse. In the heat of August, we wore jackets inside. In January, we slept with the windows open, but the heat was suffocating. We lived in a room that was not our own, and the red lady grew bolder.

She started appearing more often. Sometimes I’d catch her reflection in the mirror, a blur of red. Other times, I’d feel a cold hand on my shoulder, but when I turned, nothing. Kyle began talking to her in his sleep, calling her ‘Lenore.’ I researched the room’s history and found that a woman had lived there in the 1980s—a dancer named Elena who died in a fire. She was said to be a lady in red.

One night, I woke to find Kyle kneeling at the window, his forehead pressed against the glass. He was muttering, ‘She wants us to open it.’ I yanked him away, but the window was already ajar, gasping cold air. Outside, I saw a shadow on the fire escape, but it vanished.

We became prisoners in our own room, sleeping in shifts, never letting the window close. But the red lady didn’t need the window. She emerged from the walls, from the floor, from the mirror. She was everywhere.

Finally, we decided to flee. We packed our bags, but as we reached for the door, the knob burned ice cold, and we couldn’t turn it. The room was sealed. We were trapped.

In the corner, the red lady materialized, her face finally visible. It was not horrible, but empty—no eyes, no nose, just a blank canvas. She spoke, and her voice was like the whisper of dead roses. ‘You have been chosen to remember me.’

She raised a hand thin as bone, and the smell of roses intensified to a cloying sweetness. The temperature swung violently, hot then cold, and the walls seemed to breathe. We sank to the floor, hands over our ears, as the room filled with the whispers of countless lost souls.

Now I write this, but I don’t know who will read it. We are still in room 707, the door sealed, the window eternally shut. The red lady watches, and we are her new perfume, preserved in the amber of her sorrow. If you come to Maple Street, do not enter Unit B. If you do, and the room is cold, leave immediately. But you won’t. Because the lady in red has chosen you, and once she does, you are hers forever.