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Choice: Five

If the black one is sometimes used for torture, I should try the red. You take the red cup and toast Timur’s black. After you consider the dark beverage, it’s clear that drinking this will be easiest if done in one big gulp. With a quick cock of your head, the drink shoots back with little bitterness. Irem looks flabbergasted at this.

“You will regret that, friend.”

“What?” you reply. Opening her mouth to answer, Irem spews black ink instead of words. The inky torrent fills the room faster than anything you can imagine. Darkness swallows the world. You fear you’ve gone blind, or that you may drown in the ink. Groping the midnight haze and feeling nothing results in perhaps the strongest dread you could ever find. About and about the feeling roams: crawling fervor and anxiety. Incapable of finding even yourself in this darkness, you writhe about before deciding to push down with your right knee and lift your left. Shuffling through wherever you might have gone, feelings inside you prickle, ache, burn, calm, comfort, and sooth in a confusing pattern of biological and emotional sensation. Their feelings exclaim outwards into understandable forms of anatomical autonomy.

Feeling dizzy, the left leg decides to skip with glee. The right grumbles at her sibling, shuffling her heel as she goes. An elbow and armpit are in a domestic dispute over, as far as it can be understood, the validity of the Reagan Administration. One of them must have said something funny, because now your penis won’t stop laughing. Meanwhile, your ears refuse to say anything, and your nose acts as if it’s above everyone. Jumping the phenomenological curb, all the world’s parts, features, aspects, elements, and regions of feelings open an unknown door.

Rumbling from your feet to your head, these feelings scamper outside along with something else: something with which you’re only now becoming acquainted. Now hollowed out, the situation drops in severity, though it remains incredibly relevant. Your trip’s lack of sight continues, but stops short at something you’re used to. Amongst the incoherent jumble of steps, over what might be limbs, you feel the nostalgic push of the wooden floor beneath your feet. You remember this moment, this feeling: your shoes tell you which memory this has become.

The black leather is devoid of any of wrinkles or scuffs. Staring at your heels, you brace yourself for the sight you know comes next: the faint clouds of smoke you once walked through, the women you had once met, and the reminiscent bar with matching nostalgic barman. Running a finger over the bar, you feel the hicks and grooves of the wood just as you did before. You wait for him now. As you always do in the memory that was never yours.

You remember meeting a man. Or was it a woman? She wore yellow. Her eyes were like—like a smooth, light-colored cocktail the world was lucky to drink in.

And her hair…

it was black. No.

It was brown. Nope.

It was red! Wrong again.

It was blonde? Ding-ding!

She stood casually, drinking a drink you’ve never seen before, but in a dress you’ve always dreamed before, waiting for a boy you never could see. He was young and rounded out with muscle, with hair swept back and curly. He wore an outfit that couldn’t possibly be right. His pants were so tight, his shoes were just so strange, and his blazer dipped perfectly around his hips. He was nervous. His left hand shook. I loved that. Leaning over the bar, he orders something and turns back to her. You know the inaudible words he’s saying to her, but you don’t know how. She laughs but it wasn’t funny, **and so does a part of you.

Young love’s obvious push and pull is easy to mock for those around, but the two won’t ever notice. He’s taking in every sip of the conversation.** He was so excited. She’s running with her words now, elated with where they’re going. There’s a beat. He reacts. Now they’re laughing again. She’s happy with the words. He’s just happy with the recognition.
The moment climaxes with a sigh and he disappears. The room disappears. She stands alone. Then darkness. Remembering yellow.

Unconsciously, you reach for a lamp and find one. After a tug on a little chain, you discover yourself in one of the palace’s many bedrooms. You’re in bed with Irem, whose naked body cloaks your own as she sleeps. Awakened with the light, she looks at you lethargically. She points to a chair with a suit draped over it.

“For dinner,” she says, and slips back asleep.