The following was originally published by Grubstreet Literary Magazine in 2019(print) and 2021(online).
Two glass cases on each side of a wooden table. In one case, thirty different varieties of truffles, each hand cut from a thick slab of ganache, then dipped in a hard-shell chocolate. Dark belgian, bourbon, rum, Jack Daniels sit on the top shelf. Below them, floral flavors like lavender and jasmine are placed alongside more savory ones like Old Bay and cayenne. Each of them is cupped in a unique color. Beyond the glass lies a land where truffles seem to bloom from paper petals.
I am Willy Wonka in a world of pure imagination.
A woman walks into the shop.
“Hello.”
“Hello.”
Retail workers use some variation of these greetings to engage customers. In an attempt to break through social barriers, we’re supposed to greet people with a bright personality to disarm paranoia. I am bad at this: socializing. If I was good at it, I would comment on her necklace, a triangle coated with the black steel edges shimmering under the warm flood lights. Or perhaps I would say something about the state of affairs in this nation of God, guns, and beer. But I don’t know if I believe in God. I don’t know if this lady likes beer. I’m pretty neutral about guns, but that’s a bit much to talk about after only exchanging two words.
Paranoia, it’s not something you think you would find in a chocolate store, but it is everywhere. I see it in the faces of those walking in. It doesn’t matter the smile one wears, the faces painted with makeup bright and pretty, or the store’s decorations. Hearts, streamers, seasonal displays, glass art, and photos do little to distract from the fact that two people meeting is the equivalent of two universes colliding. Words exchanged are metaphysical. They are capable of creating and destroying, loving and hurting, influencing, forging:
Consciousness.
A silence pervades as she observes my creations in the other glass case: the dipped confectionaries. Oreos, Twinkies, marshmallows, pretzels, and graham crackers share a rack. Barks with different types of nuts and dried fruits. I often forget that I have a hand in the creation of every single piece of chocolate.
“How much is that one?” She sticks her pointer finger on the glass. I think about the fact that I have to clean up the smudges, coughs, and spit that hits this glass everyday. Who knows where these people have been? Who knows what they have touched? As someone living in a country unapologetic about free online porn, I hope everyday that these people wash their hands.
“$4.19, with tax,” I say.
I take her five-dollar bill to the small treasure trove entrusted to everyone who works here. Like a praying mantis, I strike the mechanical keys hard and quick with my fingers. The machine spits the cash out. A metal tongue springs out and screams like a robot, screeching as I pull the change out.
“Thank you.”
She smiles as she leaves. I smile back but as soon as she turns away, the edges of my mouth drop. Smiling makes me tired.
I look at the tip jar. It’s pretty empty today. There is a fiver in there, but Chris made that.
“You just have to be a flirt,” he would say. “Get on their good side. Drop them some compliments. Remind them that you are sexy.”
I get what he means. After all, we are essentially prostitutes. Only difference is that we give people chocolates instead of our bodies. We all give our bodies to time, and no matter who you are, we are all running out of it.
Time is the most valuable currency, yet it’s money that makes the world go around.
“Your problem is that you are just yourself when you sell.”
“What’s wrong with being me?”
“Nothing. But when you’re with customers, you have to be a different you.”
Chris started this job later than me, but he has always excelled as a salesman. I don’t know how to tell him that I find customer service disturbing. I see it when I go into stores myself. Some workers are base-level polite. Others try suppressing that they are having a bad day, doing a really bad job. I feel for these guys. I know what it is like being in one place for eight hours, doing something a robot can do better.
It’s the people smiling at me, with a genuine atmosphere, asking me how I’m doing, with sincerity and joy: these are the workers that worry me. I wonder if these greeters, these optimists, behind the sweet smiles and laughs of soda-pop crackle, dream of a world where everything is on fire. In a developed society where we have built monoliths and temples celebrating our triumphs, do they wish for flames to bloom wherever they step? Do they watch the pedestrians run around, their hair drenched in orange plasma, with embers dripping from the tops of their heads? Do they comment on how they look like little match people, carrying a torch, a life force? In their dreams, are they all crying and laughing at both the terror and absurdity of this arduous rise and split-second fall?
I hope so because if not, what are they so happy about?
“Mouse!” my boss yells from the back. I walk to his office. Its tiny closet stuffed with a desk, a cabinet, a safe, and a bunch of miscellaneous tools and documents cluttering the space. If there is a method to this madness, then my boss is a method man, missing nothing when it comes to his true craft: the art of making money.
“Your s’mores are cracking, again. I told you to pull them out as soon as the chocolate sets or the change in temperature is going to fuck it all up.”
“Sorry.”
My stomach lurches. Do I still have my job? This question always resurfaces when I tend to make mistakes. Since I make a lot of them, the danger of unemployment seems all the more prominent.
“I need you to make some turtles.”
“Ok.”
For the moment, I’m still employed.
I get a plastic bowl, fill it with imported chocolate chips, heat it in the microwave at four and a half minutes at half power. While it heats up, I prepare the materials: a scrapper, molds, and a funnel gun. Once the microwave rings, I will take the melted chocolate, pour the molten cocoa into the molds, then pour the chocolate back into the bowl. With a thick chocolate coating in the mold, I will chill the plastic for a couple minutes. Then, I’ll fill the molds with a mixture of caramel and pecans. After, I’ll use a funnel gun and fill up the top up with one more layer of chocolate, sealing and encasing the mixture. Finally, I’ll stick the molds in the fridge again for about half an hour. When I pull them out, I’ll turn the molds upside down and give birth to candy turtles.
I wonder if it was this easy for God to make us.
My body is automated when I cook. Most of the steps involve microwaving something, filling something, cutting something, or timing something. With some practice, it has become muscle memory. A trance state takes over. My body is running a program entitled .makechocolates and its function speaks for itself.
It allows my mind to wander. Or rather, for me to wander through my mind. Like a simulation, my brain crafts entire worlds, recreating sights, smells, and sounds. As if I myself am in a state of superposition, my body automates itself in the world of what is while my consciousness explores the worlds of what could be.
Through this, I have experienced a thousand lifetimes.
I am in an interview. There is a crowd around me, a camera staring me down. I see my reflection within the glass lens.
“How does it feel to have both solved world hunger and world peace at the same time through your new book Do Better?
“I can tell you that it is finally a relief that people will get their hands on it. I honestly feel that it is a culmination of my life philosophy and work, something I can instill upon the people, that they can use it to better their lives long after I pass.”
The lights shine on me, a bright white with a tinge of yellow, flooding this space. In real life, this would make me sweat. I sweat a lot. But here, in this world that my mind has crafted just for me, the lights feel warm. I feel comfortable.
“And I hear there is a Netflix movie on the way as well?”
“I can tell you that it is currently in pre-production and that casting is supposed to start within the coming months.”
The crowd screams at that, and I smile in recognition. I even throw a wave. This is what it is all about: pleasing the people. I feed off their happiness and drink it like ambrosia, nectar, elixir. It is an energy beyond what Tesla could have ever imagined. All it takes is the joy of a single person submitting their emotions to me.
Someone is walking by. It’s common practice to say hello to potential customers passing by the shop. Chris beats me to it of course.
“Hello,” he says. His voice is bright and colorful. The customer returns his affectionate greeting. Then they turn to me, expecting me to top it. I won’t be able to. If I pretended to, it wouldn’t be honest. I give the person a nod and a smile, the best I can muster. She smiles and nods.
How many people pass by every day? My guess is, on some days, hundreds. They all carry their own thoughts, each one so similar yet so different from mine.
Someone once told me that if aliens of a higher consciousness were to visit Earth, they would see us the same way that humans see ants: indistinguishable from one another, bugs in our simplicity and worth. To me, however, we are all a case study for the multiplicity and infinite combinations of the human experience. Does that make me enlightened or utterly foolish?
“Hey, Mouse.”
I look up to see Tera, a security guard. Every day, she makes her rounds and passes by the store once every hour. Her ritual helps mark the time.
“Hey.” I toss her a nod. She smiles before looking forward and walking off past the bubble tea kiosk and into the south wing, then turns the corner. I always greet her during her first round. The other seven times I either just nod or don’t look up at all, pretending I’m too invested in my work. But really, I always watch her pass by. I used to save face by turning around and pretending I need to get something from the kitchen. But lately, I’ve been caring less and less. Especially, after she got…
“Engaged, Mouse,” Chris reminds me. “You saw that rock on her finger, right?”
Perceptive as ever, he manages to sneak his way into my story, using his words like a stealthy rogue to find a spot in my narrative.
“I know.”
It’s times like this when I both love Chris and am fully suspicious of him. Unlike me, Chris knows how to socialize. Not only does he excel at it, but he is fully aware of his ability. This sort of self-realization, understanding the social world, knowing the unwritten rules, being able to wield the power to sway the emotions and thoughts of those who cross his path: that is a power more dangerous than any weapon. After all, it is men such as he that can convince generals how they should use the big red button triggering Armageddon.
He smiles, letting me know he understands how I feel. He never says these things directly. It’s all in the look, the unspoken, the real-life subtext. I know he means well. So why do I think the worst of him? I both admire and fear this man and I wish I had the gall to choose one over the other.
He goes to help another customer while I continue making the turtles. It takes a second to get into the motions. I crush the pecans into crumbs that fall into a bowl of caramel. I mash the mixture with my hands. I take small globs of the new concoction and start filling the chocolate-coated molds.
Then, I am sitting next to Tera. The scenery keeps shifting because, really, this conversation could be held anywhere: beaches with setting suns, rainy streets tinted grey by stormy clouds accompanied by coffee shop jazz, black and white scenes from old movies where the orchestral soundtrack is as real as the foggy breathe that lingers in cold city streets.
I am Tera. I am these many worlds. Most of all, I am myself, the star of this play crafted just for me. As real as it all seems to me, I know that it’s all pretend, based on fantasies and predictions. I glean all her possible thoughts and my dreams to create these stories about us.
“How many times, Mouse?” she says to me. “How many times are we going to rehearse this scene?”
“As many times as it takes,” I say.
“It’s not like I’m even the first one.”
“You’re right. I have been in these scenarios thousands of times with plenty of other girls.”
“Many come and go. Do they ever come back?”
“Oh yeah. Some more frequently than others. A lot of them show up after years of absence. But they always return here.”
“You fall in love that easily?”
“Yeah. It’s pretty tedious, but these feelings are as true to me as anything else I understand.”
We are under the ocean, walking through Atlantis. Within the ruins, we watch leviathans swim among the whales, the sharks, the minnows, and plankton. Even though we are at the deepest depths of the ocean, sunlight still reaches this place and the water is warm. Gravity does not seem to affect us as we walk. Only our hair sways to and fro with the tides of the sea.
“Are you happy?” I ask.
“As far as we know, of course.”
“You do seem to be smiling a lot these days. Chris has mentioned it too.”
“Do you think he knows about our time together? In here?”
“I wouldn’t be surprised. He’s sharp as ever.”
We walk through a forest where the tree leaves are shifting back and forth between fall and spring, cycling between orange, yellow, and red to the many shades of green. Through this fractal forest, we smile at each other, both heartfelt and melancholic. We never touch each other, not even to hold hands. This is the closest I will ever be to her.
I am constantly rehearsing for a play I will never put on.
“Will you ever forget me?” she asks.
“Never. But I hope to God that you, the real you, forgets me.”
“Can I get some help please?”
I look up to see Fred, a fifty-something-year-old desk jockey too dumb to realize that job is riding him harder than he could ever know. Always working at his desk, typing away or on a phone call. Once a week, he walks here from his shop to get some chocolates for his wife. His voice is high pitched, with squeaks and squawks, as if castrated from years of desk-job labor.
“Can I get a box of twenty-four assorted truffles, please?”
“Sure.”
“None of the alcohol ones please.”
“Sure.”
“And can I get a ribbon on that?”
I don’t want to do a damn ribbon. Out of all of the things to do in the shop, it is my worst skill. It is a free service that takes extra effort and it tends to hold up the line.
“Of course.”
I finish putting the truffles together and close the box. Guy picks a red one.
“Can I get a fatter ribbon?”
I already cut a piece of the thinner ribbon from the spool. I know that he isn’t doing this on purpose, but it’s almost worse that way.
“Yeah, no problem.”
I cut the new piece and I start tying the bow around the box. From the corner of my mind, I get a feeling. Everyone who works at the mall gets a discount if they shop at any of the other stores, a consolation prize for sacrificing a third of your day that could be spent living or sleeping. Fred mentions it every time, as if it’s his first time shopping here. I don’t know if I can handle that today.
“And I work upstairs, so don’t forget my discount.”
Why am I so agitated? None of this matters. We don’t matter. I don’t matter.
But if that is the case, then why do I care so much?
“Sure.”
He hands me a credit card. I stick it into the chip reader and wait. Our credit card machine uses an old landline that the mall still has in service. The price for stolen internet is that it runs like we’re still in the ‘90s. There is a long silence as I wait for the machine to spit out the white paper.
“Thank you. Have a nice day.”
I turn away. Please go away, Fred. If you value me as a human being, an individual with feelings, please go away.
“And this final price is with my discount, right?”
I am fire, alchemized by hatred. I brush across the forests in wide strokes, painting the wood like a canvas. My reach is ever-creeping towards civilizations. As I blacken and char all that I touch, turning the living into the dead, I am a force that forever changes. I am a thousand people being burned to ashes, lighting brilliantly like fireworks, just as jubilant because this is a celebration. This rapture within this world I simulate is the result of one man who could have saved it. I like to imagine that he stands as the last man. He watches from a mountaintop as the world is swallowed by the phoenix before being reborn as ash. There, he awaits his own fate, the same as everything else. To watch his new world unfold and to know that he is the reason, one must imagine Fred unhappy.
“Yes.”
“Ok, have a good one.”
He walks out of the store. Chris walks over to me.
“You ok? You looked pretty angry.”
“I’m fine.”
“Be careful. People aren’t very good at hiding their emotions.”
I wonder how much Fred knew. I don’t think he picked up on it. If he did, he didn’t even know the half of it.
I go back to making chocolates. Again, I get lost in the rhythm. I just let my body do what it does, but my mind is still in ashes.
“You’re really good at this.” I look up to see a woman. How long has she been standing there?
“Thanks,” I say. “Would you like some help?”
“No, I’m good. I just like to watch.”
I keep going for a while. I forget that she is there until I finish the tray and look up to see that she has watched me all this time, like a pedestrian who stumbled upon the beginning of a street-performing act and decided to watch until the end.
“You know, it is amazing to be able to watch someone so passionate about their work make their art.”
I never say anything back to her. Instead, I look around the shop. Everything, from the truffles, dipped confectionaries, the molds: I have had a part in all of this. A part of me is put into each of these pieces of candy. A part of me is in everything here. This is my world. It makes me feel simultaneously so big, yet infinitely small. I am a master and slave to this realm. I create only to have my work taken from me. I produce children that I have no attachments to.
She waves goodbye and walks on until she gets lost in the crowd, becoming a part of the giant web of thoughts that exists within the collective human experience. I wonder who will be the next proxy to emerge from the entity, what combination of aspects, traits, and archetypes that will walk past the shop next.
It’s four o’clock, two hours until closing.
I go back to dipping. Like a film, I fade in and out between my real-life television show and the strange commercials where I can dream, if only for a moment.
Danger Wonka 