Chapter 6: A Taste of Another's Past

Chapter 6: A Taste of Another's Past

The pain in his arm was a relentless metronome, ticking off the seconds of his new, circumscribed life. Every throb was a memory of scythe-like claws and a world of bone-white trees. Aaron had called in sick to work for three days, a prisoner in his own apartment. The risk of someone seeing the hastily bandaged wound was too great, but the true prison was the craving. It was a physical hollowness, a gnawing abyss that food couldn't fill and sleep couldn't soothe. The memory of the wine, of that cold, liberating euphoria, was a constant temptation, but the thought of facing those chittering horrors again was paralyzing. He was caught in a perfect trap: too afraid to choose RISK, too broken to live without a REWARD.

The static in his vision was getting worse, a persistent fizzing that ate at the world's edges. And the confetti… the confetti was multiplying. It was no longer just on his clothes or the floor. He found a piece in his coffee mug one morning, a shimmering blue hexagon floating on the black surface like an oil slick. He found another inside a sealed box of cereal. They were manifesting, appearing from nowhere, tiny, glittering spores of an alien dimension colonizing his reality. His neighbor, the girl from 2C, had been quiet. He hadn't seen her since their encounter in the hall, but he felt her presence through the wall, an unnerving, watchful silence. He knew she had seen the confetti. She had known it was something more than party trash. He was being watched from both sides of the veil.

By the fourth night, he was a wreck. He paced the floor, his good hand running through his greasy hair, his injured arm cradled against his chest. The craving had become a physical agony, a relentless screaming in his blood for another taste of that perfect, artificial satisfaction. He couldn't go on. He would rather give up another piece of himself than endure this living death. But what was left to give? His happy memories were too precious, and his dark ones were foundations of his identity he was terrified to lose.

Defeated, he stumbled to the pantry. He didn't even have a specific memory in mind to trade, only a vague, desperate hope that he could find some useless scrap to sacrifice. He pulled the door open.

Lady Lacuna was waiting, her sequined dress a shimmering, oily black that seemed to drink the light. Her smile was patient, knowing, the expression of a spider who has felt the first, faint tremor of a fly struggling in its web.

“You look… frayed, my dear boy,” she cooed, her voice a balm of poison. “The thrill of the RISK can be quite draining on the nerves. And yet, the hunger remains, doesn't it? A difficult choice. To risk the body, or to sacrifice the soul?”

Aaron just stared at her, his desperation a raw, open wound. “I can’t,” he whispered. “I can’t go back there. And I… I don’t have anything else I’m willing to give.”

Lady Lacuna’s smile widened, a needle-toothed slash of predatory empathy. “Oh, but who said the sacrifice had to be yours?” she asked, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. “The game is about exchange, my dear Aaron. Value for value. It doesn't concern itself with ownership. Why should you bear the cost alone when the world is so full of… inventory?”

The suggestion hung in the air, obscene and unbelievably tempting. Trade someone else’s memory. The moral implications were monstrous, but they were a distant, intellectual problem compared to the immediate, visceral reality of his suffering.

“How?” he asked, the word tasting foul in his own mouth.

“Simple,” she purred, tapping a long, sharp fingernail against her microphone. “Think of someone. Someone you know. Picture them in your mind. Their memories are just stories they tell themselves. All you have to do is pick one of the stories you know… and give it to me. I’ll handle the collection.”

His mind immediately went to work. To Mark Rendell. A portly, smug senior associate at his firm with a booming laugh and a talent for taking credit for other people’s work. Two months ago, Aaron had spent a week of sleepless nights building a complex data model for a new client. Mark had presented it as his own at the team meeting, earning a bonus while Aaron got a condescending pat on the back. The injustice still burned, a small, bitter coal in his chest. Mark, with his perfect family photos on his desk, his expensive suits, his easy, unearned confidence. He had so much. He wouldn't miss one little memory.

The rationalization was disgustingly easy. Mark deserved it. This wasn't theft; it was justice.

“There’s a guy at my work,” Aaron said, his voice flat and cold. “Mark Rendell. He gave a presentation a couple of months ago. On the sterling-silver-fork project. He took credit for my model. I want to trade his memory of that presentation. His moment of triumph.”

Lady Lacuna’s eyes glittered with an ancient, bottomless hunger. “A memory of stolen pride, traded out of spite! Oh, what a deliciously complex flavor profile! Consider it done.”

She snapped her fingers. The sound was like a bone breaking. Aaron felt nothing this time, no wrenching in his own mind, just a faint, ethereal shudder in the air, as if a distant string had been plucked. A triumphant fanfare, slightly muted, echoed in the void. In Lady Lacuna’s hand, a white ceramic plate appeared, bearing a thick, perfectly grilled steak, still sizzling, a pat of herb butter melting over its cross-hatched surface.

“A reward for a man of ambition,” she declared. “Enjoy your taste of success, Aaron. You’ve earned it.”

She didn’t toss the plate. It simply floated from her hand, across the threshold, and settled gently on his kitchen counter. When he looked back, the pantry door was closed.

The steak smelled divine. It was a cut he could never afford, cooked to a perfect medium-rare. The craving was a roaring beast now, demanding to be fed. He grabbed a fork and knife, not even bothering with the rest of the plate, and cut off a large piece. He brought it to his mouth and chewed.

The taste was incredible—rich, savory, decadent. It was the flavor of victory, of a five-star restaurant, of money and power. The relief was instantaneous, a wave of profound satisfaction that washed away the pain in his arm and the static in his head. It was working. It was perfect.

He took another bite. And that’s when it started.

Along with the taste of seared beef and butter, another flavor bloomed on his tongue: the stale, bitter taste of lukewarm coffee from a cheap office Keurig. He swallowed, confused, and took a third bite. This time, he felt a phantom sensation—the slick, synthetic feel of a silk tie, knotted just a little too tightly around his neck.

He stopped, his fork hovering over the plate. A flicker of an image flashed behind his eyes: a small, blonde girl in a pink tutu, laughing as she smudged a crayon drawing. His daughter? No, Mark’s daughter. The vision was gone as quickly as it came, leaving him dizzy and disoriented.

He tried one more bite, a desperate attempt to reclaim the pure pleasure of the reward. The steak was still delicious, but it was irrevocably tainted. He could feel the dull throb of a stress headache behind his temples. He could hear the faint, nagging echo of a woman’s voice—Mark’s wife?—reminding him to pick up milk on the way home. He felt a surge of anxiety about a looming mortgage payment.

He pushed the plate away, his stomach churning. The steak was not a clean reward. It was contaminated, saturated with the psychic residue of the man he had stolen from. He wasn't just tasting the steak; he was consuming a piece of Mark's life.

Stumbling back from the counter, he caught his reflection in the dark, greasy glass of his microwave door. For a horrifying, heart-stopping second, the face staring back wasn't his. It was a slightly fuller, smugger face, with thinning hair and the faint lines of self-satisfaction etched around the eyes. It was Mark Rendell’s face, superimposed over his own gaunt, terrified features, looking back at him with a faint, bovine confusion.

Aaron cried out and scrambled away, falling to the linoleum floor. The reward hadn't just given him a taste of success. It had given him a taste of another man’s soul, and now, that soul was beginning to curdle within his own.