(Image created with Adobe Firefly.)
She says each universe tastes unique, and they’re the most flavorful things that will ever grace your tongue.
You imagine it: animals, vegetables, minerals, millions of foreign species and alien constructs, billions of molecules and gajillions of chemical compounds, all jam-packed into a lump of galactic coal. More flavors per cubic inch than your primitive brain can fathom.
You suspect they taste unpleasant, like licking a rock. Your guess makes her laugh. Those light, bubbly bursts that turn your blood fizzy.
“It wasn’t my favorite,” she confesses, “but I ate one universe where there hadn’t been war for thousands of years. Only pleasure, and no shame in seeking it.”
She brings a finger to her lips, daintily brushing them in case she missed any crumbs. She smiles and hums with satisfaction. You blush, watching her. “It was like the richest, spongiest marzipan you’ve ever had. Except better.”
“If that wasn’t your favorite,” you ask, trying to play it cool, “what was?”
She shrugs. “How can I choose?”
The possibilities are endless, after all. In her dreams, the past and future spread before her like roots and branches, infinite choices connected along constellations of forking paths. She travels along them, phasing between moments, millennia, galaxies, mapping every feature bound by choice and consequence, shaping her chosen universe. The other paths wither and fall away. Skies fall. Space shrinks, crumpling like aluminum foil.
When she wakes up, it’s there, plopped on her sternum. A black, dense mound, greasy and glistening.
“Sounds gross,” you say.
“They look like chocolate cookie dough, from the right angle,” she argues. “And besides, it’s almost like they want to be eaten …”
It sounds like she’s making excuses, but you can’t blame her. If you could project your consciousness back and forth across millions of years and miles, squeezing every person, place, and unclassifiable thing into a bite-sized lump, wouldn’t you want to know how it tastes?
She takes your hands in hers and gnaws at her lip. She wants to ask you something, but she’s afraid of scaring you away. She doesn’t want you to think of her as the freak girl who eats coal and justifies it by pretending they’re pocket universes.
“Um,” she starts. “I can show you, if you like. All I have to do is sleep. And dream, of course.”
Is she … inviting you over? You didn’t imagine this outcome. Sure, you’re into her, but you didn’t think she knew, and this is—
“A lot to digest,” you blurt.
She frowns, clearly betrayed. She thought you two had a connection, that she finally found a path that would lead to a life less lonely.
“It’s not bad,” you hastily correct, “I am, um, curious. To see you. I mean, to see how it works.”
You kick yourself for your clumsiness. But it’s okay, because she smiles and giggles again, this time with relief. She leads you by the hand back to her place.
#
She sleeps just like anyone else. Her eyes flutter beneath her eyelids. Her breath catches at odd intervals and she turns from side to back to side. All rather ordinary, but you can’t seem to take your eyes off her.
Then she breathes in, deeply, sharply, and pop—below her collarbone sits a nugget of coal, laced with rings of gold and sapphire. It shimmers in the dusk light filtering through the blinds of her bedroom, and you can’t quite tell if the gemstone veins are actually moving along their circular paths or if it’s just your imagination. Regardless, the lump is far more dazzling than you expected.
And you do wonder how it tastes.
You also wonder if you might sneak a nibble without waking her. She’s sleeping soundly still. Her chest rises and falls evenly, gently rocking the universe, tilting planets on their axes, scattering asteroid fields. You tiptoe towards the bed, begging your hands to stop shaking and your mouth to stop salivating. You reach out—
Her eyes open. She smiles when she realizes you’re still here, that she produced a bite-sized universe and you didn’t abandon her. But her expression shifts when she spots the hunger in your eyes.
“Don’t,” she urges.
“But I need it,” you complain. “I need to know.”
“Not this one.” In a golden-blue flash, she clutches the stone and hides her fists behind her.
The earth shakes beneath your feet and you’re thrown to the floor. It hits you, through your cloudy temptation, that she holds your entire world in the palm of her hand. Holy hell, you thought she was creating copies.
She gingerly sets the stone down on her nightstand. The earth settles.
“You asked me which universe was my favorite,” she mutters, and gestures towards your universe’s capsule.
“What’s it taste like?” You still can’t shake the urge to gulp it down, to contain multitudes.
“I don’t know, but I’ve eaten others like it. Different versions of this.” She gestures around the room, the center of this universe. “I like knowing what could happen in our future, you know? So I can erase it if I don’t like it. But not this one …”
Your eyes widen. You imagine being swallowed, your body and your town and the piddling kidney bean of knowledge you’ve accumulated over your short life, all drowning in her stomach acid.
“What’s so special about this one?”
She glides over to you. Her presence is suddenly ethereal. You don’t deserve her, or her brain that can map universes, or her lips and teeth that can devour entire futures. But you want her, all the same.
She crouches down to your level. Her nose brushes your ear and she whispers, “It’s packed full of wonder.”
You draw back, and her lips find yours. Kissing her is a refreshing cocktail on a hot summer day, effervescent and impossibly sweet. You’ve never tasted anything quite like it.
Nicholas Jay is a conservation-minded urban planner living in Atlanta. His fiction has appeared in The Dread Machine, Hyphenpunk, Tree and Stone, among others. He enjoys his time most with either pen, violin, or map in hand -- sometimes all three at once. Find him on Twitter/X here.