Talking Simulator

The other day you made a post online. You were thinking about having some soup later. 

“It’s soup weather. It’s chill and crisp. Maybe time to put on a sweater and toss on some hot soup. Put on a comfortable tv show. Bust out the blankets. Turn on the fairy lights.”

I decided to think this too. I think about it hard, and I meet you there. You’re in the mind palace. Surrounded on each side by plinths of solid onyx and basalt, each supporting a squat statue of a naked baby angel. Enormous windows puncture stately granite walls and outside I can see large, terribly thin cones bursting up from the ground and extending past the eaves. The sky behind is the color of wildberries. There are no doors into or out of this room. I knew that the windows would be locked if I dared to try them. 

The air was very dry, and the chamber had an echo to it. I imagined myself tap tapping my way over to you, footsteps reverberating off the walls. You were perched at an oblong table with a large stone basin sat atop it. I could see steam pouring from its mouth. 

You had on a crown and a bib, what must have been soup dribbling down your chin. The crown was fitted with fat, bedazzling rubies that sparkled in the ethereal light cast in from the windows. You looked so satisfied. As I sat down at the opposite end of the table, the lines of your mouth drew back in a grimace.

I clenched all of my muscles starting from the top of my face, working down to the shoulders, abdomen, arms, legs, calves, feet, toes. One by one, I released them in reverse order, and a stone basin appeared in front of me. It contained chowder, the perfect temperature. I caught your gaze and stuck both of my hands into it. This infuriates you. 

You slap your soup onto the ground and dive across the table. 

Your crown slips off and shatters. 

You grab my neck and you squeeze so hard your biceps bulge. You crush my windpipe. You make it so that I cannot breathe again.

You commit a heinous act of violence against me in the mind palace. 

You stop thinking about soup. 

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The next day at work, you don’t see me. I’m absent from the shop floor. The floor manager says I’m NCNS. You try not to think about it. 

You eat lunch alone. It’s Campbell's TO GO soup, lightly microwaved. It’s so hot when you pop the top off and the first sip from the included plastic spoon burns your tongue. You barely feel it.

You drive home. On the way, you pass through my neighborhood. 

You find my house and try to discern any activity through my front windows, but the curtains are drawn. My car is in the driveway. You think about calling. Instead, you speed home. 

You check online. Did I post? Any new activity? You scan every network and drudge up nothing. 

Not since you posted your intentions to think. 

Not since you killed me in the mind palace. 

I’m absent again the next day. You do the math. Three days No Call No Show means I’ll be terminated tomorrow. You ask the floor manager if he knows anything. 

“HR called him a few times, but he isn’t picking up.”

“Maybe somebody should check on him?”

“Uh, yeah. Be my guest.”

You don’t eat lunch. You stand outside the employee entrance and try calling me. Once, twice, three times, no answer. My voicemail isn’t set up so you just get that robotic message telling you my phone number and to leave a message.

You lean back against the wall. It’s raining. There’s a tiny overhang that mostly shields you from the thick droplets that lazily pelt the building. The asphalt parking lot slowly morphs into a football field sized collection of puddles. You look up and see two surveillance cameras, one on top of the other, nailed into the brick and cement.

You unlock your phone and try my number again. It rings.

There’s a click. You hear a song. It spills out of the speaker. It’s thick and saccharine. 

Human, human. I know the world looks wide, So wherever you go, over and over, just keep saying: "You win! You win!" Don't destroy me, but go right through me Take my home and my wife Human, human. Your generous lungs billow warmth.

You hang up in a haste. It feels like getting hit by a truck.

You drop to your knees and throw up into the gutter.

You go back inside and tell HR that you’re not feeling well. You just threw up in the parking lot, you need to go home immediately. They playback the footage of you vomiting into the gutter on the small CCTV they keep on the employee services deck. HR stifles a chuckle. Of course you can go home, they say. Try to get some rest. 

On the way to your car, you look to the small pool of vomit you made before it is washed away by the rain. It looks like soup. 

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You speed to my house and park on the street, leaping from the driver’s seat onto my lawn, almost forgetting to lock up. You glide to my door and knock, sheepishly. No answer. You knock again, harder. Nothing. You start to punch my door. You punch it till your knuckles turn red. You punch my door so hard it bends on its hinges. You imagine my head hung on the front like a decoration and you punch again. 

You stop. You place your head against it and breathe. 

Just breathe. 

In, hold, out. 

In, hold, out. 

All of my lights go on at once. The lock clicks and the door scrapes open. You enter. 

You are back in the mind palace. You see the stately granite walls, the basalt/onyx plinths, the cones, the poison wildberry sky, the crown. It’s all there, as it was.

The oblong table in the center of the chamber is empty, and near it, you find my body. 

I am crumpled, devoid of life. You kneel next to me and place your hand upon my chest. 

I’m as cold and as empty as the earth. I am void. Null. Finished. You allow yourself to cry.

You pick me up and and toss me over your shoulder like a sack full of oranges. 

You exit my house, stopping to brace yourself against the door. You shift my weight around, resituate, and press on.

You carry me down the road. My head lolls against your shoulder. The sun sinks behind the mountains. 

I don’t know where we’re going.