Chocolate Death

I am lying in bed awaiting death. The dragon in the painting above me is laughing. It starts as a light chuckle but escalates quickly to an intimidating guffaw when it sees my limbs start to shake. I find his purple hue nauseating as I trace his spine with my gaze, over and over again, until the curves of his tail become the glow I see against the black backdrop of my eyelids.

I had been so hungry, scouring my room for anything edible. Too cold and lazy to go downstairs to heat water for soup, I was left with the only other option my quest produced: the chocolate. So seductive! That stupid wrapper, caramel oozing out of the glimmering brown shell. I held the small package in my hands, feeling the candy through the plastic, lusting after sugary bliss. But he had given it to me. What if he had done something to it? He could have poisoned it, squirting a few drops of a lethal fiery liquid with a tiny needle through the packaging and the chocolate and into the caramel core. Over two decades of listening to Halloween candy nightmares has allowed my imagination to run (perhaps excessively) wild. This chocolate would not be spared my skepticism.

I had accepted the chocolate not because I wanted it, but because my hand had involuntarily extended to take the gift. He had popped out of a taxi, run up to me, reminded me of his number and his availability, and then scurried off again as quickly as he had appeared. It was only after his departure that I became aware of the chocolate in my hands, which I promptly hid in my purse, hoping that this would finally be the last proof of is existence that he would ever leave me with.

“Is it just coincidence, or perhaps fate, that has brought us together again?” My heart quickly grabbed hold of my rib cage to keep itself balanced, nearly knocked out of place in shock. Turning my head slightly to the left, I saw exactly what I was dreading: Lui, panting a little after having run across the street to catch up with me, staring into my eyes, now gracefully protruding with equal parts dismay and disgust. I moaned. He continued, unabated. “You know I have this friend who met his wife at the grocery store. They just kept running into each other. Not that I’m saying we’ll get married. But you never know.” Despite my repeated attempts to tell him to leave me alone, and his agreeing that this would be the best idea if I was truly uninterested, he continued. I wanted to yell, to be brutally mean and horrible and tell him that he was making me afraid of walking alone, but I couldn’t find the anger on-switch in my brain (hidden, no doubt, behind the filing cabinet I just added for information on International Human Rights Law—it’s quite a sizable entity). If only I had screamed. If only I had ripped the business card he had given me in half, right there in front of him. Then maybe he wouldn’t have told the taxi to stop the next time he would see me, handing me the chocolate that would cause me to agonize over the possibility of death.

So now I lay here in bed, waiting. The wrapper crumpled on my bedside table. The dragon glaring. The TV playing the closing credits to the movie I was watching to distract me in my last moments on earth. I’m shivering, but I always shiver. I ask my heart how it’s doing, and it rolls its eyes. My lungs grin and shake their heads. My fingers wave a healthy hello, and my stomach emits a satisfied rumble.

I’ve survived. This time.