As I stormed through flip-doored hallways, I found them becoming whiter, white, until they resembled a 3D architectural model—all shape, no pigment layer.
Geometry flowed and flickered around me as I sprinted through this monotone world, until, like an omen, color appeared… in the form of two loitering individuals, who appeared to be waiting for me. One familiar, one strange. One male, one female. Both smiling soft, knowing smiles at each other–both turning their eyes to me, one after the other, as I approached and slowed.
The familiar one–the man–twinkled with an intoxicated warmth that I would have called smug if it were not so innocent. The woman, the stranger, took her time in casting her vibrant eyes toward me, and when she did, my first impression was one of sly cruelty—which, after my initial prejudice, evolved into an impression of secure knowing… of supreme self-confidence, of feet planted with impossible firmness, and of a sort of condescension that rang like the laugh of silver bells: not malicious, but a casually fond and curious.
Her hands were grasping onto his arms, and she stood as though she had just been leaning up to whisper him the secrets of the universe. Though he stood still, he seemed to sway in her grip, light-headed and dreamy. Still, as I passed by him, he seemed a man fully conscious of the substances he imbibed—and it was obvious to me that she, too, had no investment of manipulative control… merely a mutually enjoyed drunkenness that revolved around her sharp-clawed talents, and his own luminous reactions.
The woman lead me through the next set of double-doors, leaving our mutual acquaintance behind, smiling calm and kind after us. The was a set of wooden grid benches in this room, deep and oaken against the never-ending white, and upon one of these she took her seat, magnificently at ease and—in an unnerving fashion—underlyingly amused. She gave a sharp “Heh!” as she reached into an inner pocket to procure a shining silver cigarette case, drawing one for her purple-painted lips. Her hair was a mild shade of pink, cropped close till the middle of the ear-line, above which it shook in a perfect glossy mass, just tangled enough for a vague impression of punk. She patted herself for a lighter.
“So you like him,” she said. She seemed to think it was funny that she was having this conversation with me at all, and finally looked up at me proper when she found her lighter, nabbing the fag from her mouth while she scanned me up and down. I remained standing, feeling strangely diminished to childlikenss by those eyes, yet all the more protective and certain of my integrity. “Huh.” The cigarette was lit with the flip of a chromebox lighter, which was put away before I could decipher the design on its side panel.
I stood silently, not sure how to answer… because I did not know in what capacity she asked, or who she was, or why I had been pulled aside.
“The thing you have to remember about him is that he’s sensitive,” she explained, in a voice that in any other context would have belonged to a sneer, but which was filled with far too much affection to be any such thing. “And he’s clever, too. He’s got a complex heart.”
“I’m sorry,” I said finally, “Why-”
“You’ve got to be aware of his quirks, you see… Have to understand him, know him. If he is to be used correctly.”
A dreamy pattern of thick, white smoke passed through her lips and obscured her face as she said this, leaving me only with the itchy vibration that had been placed on the word “use“. I no longer remembered how to speak, even if I had anything to say. I stood in a silence, caught by this woman, and the eerie self-certainty she exuded… the faint parental amusement…
I almost wished she would antagonise me so that I did not have to stand there and feel so… lesser. And I was still confused.
“—”
She spoke again, but I do not remember her words. It was a bored, amused, slightly warning, slightly warm lecture. The smoke of her cigarette was so thick, so white—white like the walls. Soon, it dissolved the entire scene.
