The…Flavor is the Life
Vicky Gilpin, PhD
English Instructor
Cerro Gordo High School
E-mail: Gilpin_vicky@hotmail.com
“Natalya, arise!”
Sighing, Natalya attempted to burrow more deeply into the lush folds of her blankets and ignore the insistent voice calling her name. She did not even consider opening her eyes to figure the time, as she had shut the tapestries as tight as possible against the chill before she retired the previous evening.
“Natalya, arise!”
That voice! Cultured, sophisticated, and very much like a warm caress, it triggered a few half-forgotten pleasant memories, but sleeping felt like a priority.
“Natalya, I know you are in there. Arise and meet your destiny!”
Well, that was a bit presumptuous. Destiny? As a wealthy land-owner’s daughter, she should have the right to sleep in occasionally, Natalya thought ruefully. She usually kept hours more suited to a laborer, as she often volunteered her time helping people within the village by cooking, minding children, sewing, and other activities. Although the desire to sleep still pulled at her, Natalya’s sense of duty was more powerful even than the familiar voice. She groaned and opened her eyes. Darkness, as expected. What was unexpected, however, was the light lilac silk she could somehow discern a few inches before her eyes. Silk? Suddenly, as she felt her breath bounce back into her face, she realized the luxuriance of her bed had been a dreamy imagining: she was actually on her back with very little cushioning and lilac silk reminiscent of her father’s recent funeral. Feeling panicked, she inhaled to shriek for help from this nightmare, and-
-found herself standing in the village graveyard.
“Finally!”
Choking down her scream, Natalya whirled in a flourish of white diaphanous fabric to meet her attacker.
Instead, she found herself gazing into her fiancé’s wide grin gleaming in the brilliant afternoon sunshine. Although a newcomer to the village, Sir Thomas Ezekiel Maximilius (and a whole lot of other names and titles she could not quite remember just then) had dazzled her with his compliments, attention, and, most importantly, seemingly sincere interest in her good works as opposed to her father’s sizable fortune. Currently, none of those kindnesses mattered in comparison to her irritation. Preparing to throw a truly deserved fit of operatic proportions over finding herself entombed…and then not…Natalya reached toward her beloved. She could not compose her face to hide the shock she felt when Ezekiel dodged just out of her reach.
“Dearest, I know you are bewildered. I know you want comforting. However, I also know how fast you are to react physically to unwarranted news, and I have no intention of being the victim of your hasty response.”
Natalya sidled closer to him, furrowing her brow and asking, “Ezekiel, what is going on? Why was I in a coffin? I was in a coffin, was I not? Is this some sort of joke?”
“No, this is no joke. As I said before: it is your destiny.”
“Please explain to me what my destiny has to do with being in a coffin.” She forced the next words through gritted teeth, “I am quite interested.”
That was when he told her about Essence. While deftly angling her between grave markers, past the blacksmith’s, the hog butcher’s, and past her own dark abode, he talked on about how some people could tangibly make the world a better place, not just through good works and charity, but through an exchange of gifts. Despite her conflicting emotions of skepticism, irritation, and confusion, Natalya let him ramble on. She figured she was either dreaming or the subject of an elaborate ruse, perhaps initiated by her older brother. On their trek, Ezekiel elaborated about how certain people, special people, could extend their lives through this “exchange” while also encouraging those with pure souls to rise to their potential and positively affect the world.
By the time she collapsed into the brocade of his settee, she had scoffed, she had mocked, and she had ridiculed the foolishness of the comments pouring from her seemingly sane fiancé’s mouth. Despite her growing irritation, Natalya felt herself drifting into an ever-deepening languor. After attempting a scorching glare and only achieving a dour pout, her efforts caused Ezekiel to chuckle at her predicament.
“I thought you might be getting tired; your protests have diminished in their rapidity to about two a minute. How do you feel?”
“Strangely,” she replied. “I feel like I have been resting in the calmest of spring meadows, the softest of down, or the warmest of tropical waters. In fact, the luscious feeling is making me grasp for phrases lacking in triteness when communicating my thoughts is usually so easy for me.” She glared at his mock-innocent expression and continued: “I feel sleepy but not exactly tired, and that does not even make sense.”
His eyes glinted merrily as he smiled and nodded. “That feeling is your body preparing to make the exchange. It is transitioning into a state conducive to finding someone with strong Essence who will invigorate you and make wise use of the gifts you provide. The languor is attractive to others with a similar sense of peace and purpose.”
“Gifts? Ezekiel, this joke has gone on long enough. Surely my reaction is merely the earlier surprise compounded with the exertion of the walk.”
“No, no, my dear Natalya, this is no joke. It will be easier to show you than to tell you.”
He gestured for another person to enter the room. Natalya felt her lips turn up of their own accord as she recognized a dear friend with whom she often partnered to care for others in the village. Even through her unwarranted lethargy, Natalya noted a difference in her friend’s appearance.
“Why is Brigida glowing?”
Ezekiel sat down next to Natalya on the settee, gingerly putting an arm around her. “Good, good. If you can see the glow, you are ready for your first exchange.” He continued quickly when he saw her start to form a protest. “The exchanges are necessary to ensure your continued survival. You are in a weakened state because of your own transition, so this excessive serenity bordering on torpor is a way to preserve the sanctity of this act. We are not ravening beasts. We provide a service to humanity. Only the purest of heart with the most beneficent potential can share their essence with us, and only they may reap the rewards and share those rewards for the good of society. The stronger the glow, the more productive or effective the exchange…for both parties. Your friend Brigida has an extremely generous soul and will be a perfect first exchange.”
Although still confused, Natalya found herself nestled against Ezekiel’s chest while still gazing at the illuminated visage of Brigida. She no longer felt alarmed at her out of character reactions. Instead, she felt suffused with peace as well as a sense of recognition of the same calm peacefulness emanating from the silent Brigida.
“The first exchange can be startling,” Zeke said as he clasped her more closely against the length of his body. “Although this is a personal and intimate act, it is not a carnal one. Most people do translate the fulfillment of the exchange and the first taste of Essence as intensely pleasurable sensations, so I will hold you to me to protect your sensibilities…and Brigida’s. She will not remember her encounter with us, so long as we only touch her spiritually, not physically. In a few decades, bringing the Essence-holders to us will be unnecessary. You will be able to do the exchange, under your own mental and physical control, from across a room. For this first time, I will help you open yourself to the exchange and your first taste of her Essence.”
Natalya nodded, wishing the incessant talking drifting in and out of her awareness would cease, so she could enjoy the deep calm radiating throughout her body and mind. She wanted to plunge into the dark serenity that encroached upon the edges of her vision ---a soft persuasive blackness that was getting more difficult to ignore.
For a moment, Brigida’s glow seemed to double, then triple. Then it disappeared.
Natalya shrieked as her back arched, her fingers dug through the fabric of Ezekiel’s vest, and her body ground into his. She felt his arms straining around her as she trembled and realized what he had been babbling. She had no desire to throw herself inappropriately on Brigida, however. This was not about Brigida. Despite the response of her squirming body, this was not about physicality, either. She tasted the thick warmth of melting chocolate, the lushness of peaches, and a panoply of flavors that seemed to be tasted by all of her senses and down to her soul. Her shortness of breath, sizzling blood, the pleasure spiraling from her core, and, yes, even the reaction her gyrations were provoking from Ezekiel’s body, all of these were secondary to the flavor, the exquisitely sacred taste of the Essence.
I wish he had started with this rather than the explanation, was her last thought before she succumbed to the all-consuming flavor.
A sleek Jaguar sped down the highway into the twilight. Despite the radiant sunrise streaking the sky with a palette of fuchsia and lilac, the Florida breeze, and the lush transportation, the disgruntled passengers slouched forlornly into the leather seats.
“Nope, nothing.”
“Still? She was the purest of the pure; her heart was filled with potential for joy and charity--.”
“Face it, we need to change with the times and figure out what’s going on.”
“Going on? There isn’t anything going on, Nat. We don’t need to change anything.”
“Zeke! The whole experience, the whole exchange is missing some…vitality.” She sighed and raked her hands through her hair, wincing at the tangles from the wind. “Seriously, for a while, I thought it was just a phase. I thought we got over that whole hump in the 80s, that whole Madonna-like a virgin era, when it seemed like no one was…and now, all the kids in black clothes and silver jewelry; their souls ache for us…but nothing. We’ve got to face the facts: psychic soul energy just cannot sustain us. I’m drooping. Drooping!”
She glared at him as he struggled to contain his reaction and focus on the road. “Zeke, you laugh, but women have to know these things. The only way I’ve been able to jump fashions every few years and remain undetected has been an intimate knowledge of my exact measurements and how they correspond with modern sizes. The audacity of that snippy clerk…suggesting that I might need to go up a size in the skinny jeans I was getting to match that purple sequined halter I got in the seventies. I could tell right then that she didn’t have a soul energy that would be any use to anyone.”
Zeke huffed in impatience as he reached over to flip through the impressive song list on his I-pod. Nat wasn’t sure whether the sigh was in response to her rant about “drooping” body parts or an immediate desire to hear a minuet, a desire which consistently remained unsatisfied by modern top-40 choices; she wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
“Zeke, honey, people are changing, and somehow they’ve left us in the dust. We’ve got to change with them, or…or no more halter tops! We can’t very well blend in with the people we’re trying to help if we look old.”
“We don’t look old. Nat, honey--”
“Don’t ‘Nat, honey’ me! We don’t look old yet. We’ve just been turning a blind eye to this for decades, maybe even a century or two. It isn’t just that the Essence has lost its zip and has gone from a flavorful orgasmic experience that turns your brains inside out to something with the dynamism of a handshake and the effervescence of tap water. We’re no longer helping them. We--”
“What?” he yelped. “What are you talking about? We’re doing the same things we always have!”
“That’s exactly it, Zeke. We are doing the same things we’ve always done…and it isn’t doing anything. It doesn’t help.”
“You can’t know that.”
“I can know it, and I do. When we had to catch those ‘awesome waves, dude’ in California a few years ago, I decided to conduct an experiment.”
Zeke swerved into the other lane as he shrieked, “Experiment! We don’t do experiments on people! That’s unethical; in fact, I’ve told you--”
“Stop interrupting!” Natalya shouted, grabbing onto the “oh, shit” handle on the door. “I didn’t do experiments on anyone. I just watched people. It’s called people-watching and is a very normal activity, practically an unofficial national sport--”
“How can something be an unofficial national--”
“Pay attention when you drive! That stupid SUV, well the SUV itself didn’t look stupid, but I’m sure the driver was---I mean, who paints flames on a baby blue SUV?---it almost ran you over when you got into oncoming traffic. Pay attention to the driving, and leave the talking to me! I was people-watching like I said before, and I decided to see if the effects of our ministrations have become as lackluster for the humans as they have for us.”
“I told you: we are still humans--ulp”
“Zeke, honey, do you feel my nails in places you would like my nails not to be? Nod if you can. Ok. If you can stop interrupting for half a second, I will not squeeze any harder. I decided to just watch a few of our special friends and see how they were affected, if at all. Remember, that lovely Hawaiian surfer with the tribal tattoo down his back?” Nat’s eyes drifted half-closed before she gathered herself and continued, “After he awoke the next day, he walked by a small orphan on the street and gave her a twenty. Gave her a twenty.” Nat stared at him meaningfully, “a twenty…” She continued to stare at him meaningfully as he writhed on the seat. “Oh! Don’t be petulant, Zeke-honey, you can talk.”
“Well, Nat, I wouldn’t want to overstep my bounds…” he wheezed as her grasp loosened, “but he gave her a twenty. That’s great! We are still having an effect on people, so your people-watching--”
Nat scowled and angled her sequin purple nails down at his squirming body and shouted, “A twenty!? After experiencing the wonder that is us? The sacred exchange? He should have picked her up, both of them agog with wonder, rescued her from her life of street squalor, and gone on to do good works to benefit the world for the rest of their natural lives! I just kept seeing examples of that: people would leave us to do some small act of kindness and that was it. Not only are we getting less bang for our buck from people, we are in turn giving them less back! Use your keen powers of analysis to figure out what is going on instead of how to get the best tan.”
“Ok, ok,” Zeke sighed, “I guess we ought to move closer to a university or a research department or something. Can we at least go to one close to a beach?”
After weeks of analysis, Zeke decided that as humans had become more depraved, their Essence was no longer pure or sacred. He declared they would find new sustenance and continue as they always had, by volunteering and helping others in small communities as they traveled the countries.
Centuries of not eating is a hard habit to break. In the experiments that followed, they learned that there is nothing sacred in marshmallow fluff, overcooked meat was immediately rejected by their bodies, and caffeine…well, it was best to forget all incidents concerning caffeine. More food-related experiments continued. Nothing was working. They were no longer connected by Essence-fueled altruism and spent less time together. Nat and Zeke no longer strolled down streets hand in hand, searching for the glow of Essence. Rather than a languor, their soul-hunger had become desperation. They were willing to try anything.
They slumped on either side of the couch as they stared at the silent young woman sitting demurely between them.
“Are you sure, Zeke?”
“I’m telling you, Nat, for a moment as I was trying to eat that revolting sandwich, I thought I saw her glow.”
“I think your experiments are making you hallucinate. We haven’t seen a good glow in decades.”
“No, no, I’m telling you that I was trying to ingest that awful blood sausage---you know, the one you refused to even try---and I saw a dim flicker.”
“Great, Zeke, a dim flicker? After the ‘JOLT experiment’ that laid us up for two weeks and had us thinking we were bugs--”
“Oh, c’mon, that was the Kafka before bed--”
“That was the JOLT. I’m not too excited about eating something without a rationale. Seeing what caffeine would do to our systems was not a scientific rationale, and searching for a ‘dim flicker’ isn’t either.”
Zeke sighed as he leaned toward the still-silent girl and stroked her arm. Nat’s eyes widened at the impropriety of the touch as he continued, “I still think we should try to open ourselves to her Essence and see what happens.”
“Don’t you think that’s what I’ve been doing since she sat down?” Nat growled. “Do I look peaceful? Do I look serene? Better yet, do I look satisfied?”
Zeke sighed again and took a mangled sandwich from his pocket, looked dejectedly at it, and started nibbling at the meat. “I just thought there was something about the combination that would work, you know? I know that ‘drooping’ and not helping people is going to have a cumulative effect. We’re no longer thinking about benefit to humanity or whether you can wear a blue sequined halter top--”
“Purple.”
“Purple sequined halter top from the seventies. We’re looking at our survival.”
“Zeke. Honey. I know that. I know. I just don’t have any more ideas. Zeke? Zeke, what is it?”
His face revealed a look of wonder as his sandwich dropped to the floor, but his gaze remained fixated on the young woman between them.
“I see it! I see it, Nat! It is only a flicker, but I do see a glow. It is odd, not the bright white of ages past, but rich amber swirled with red. It looks like honey mixed with wine.” His eyes never left the face of the woman as he murmured, “I wonder what she’ll taste like.”
“But what does it mean, Zeke? Will she save us or kill us? And why can you only see it when you’re eating that damn--” At this, her head sunk to allow her to gaze at her hands, which had somehow become clenched, the fingers of one digging into the flesh of the other.
Zeke finally looked at Nat, and his look was a painful combination of resignation and determination. “We can’t help the world if we can’t make the exchange.”
“But will it be a sacred exchange? What will our gifts be now?” she asked through a throat that felt like gagging, like choking, like no memory of Essence could ever clear. She asked the question even though she knew the answer would not change the decision that had already been made, that had been made, in fact, the moment Zeke brought the young woman home. All the experiments, the JOLT, the marshmallow fluff, even the blood sausage, all of the other not-food had been leading to this moment, this flavor.
As he had before the Cool Whip, the pizza, the orange juice, as he had before all of the other experiments, Zeke steeled himself to test the flavor with an air of excitement and gravity. He took out his pocket knife and reassured himself that the young woman was still paying attention to her own thoughts or the wall across the room. Awkwardly, he grabbed her wrist and drew her arm to him. He perused the paleness of the arm like a butcher or a doctor, with clinical eyes and a set jaw. After making a small puncture on the girl’s wrist, he brought the redness and whiteness to his lips.
The instant he started to suck, Nat felt her world twist. This exchange had nothing to do with the sacred, the spiritual, the betterment of humanity. Her body clenched painfully as if to emphasize the visceral elements of this scene, so different from the soft glow and mutual gratification of tasting Essence. She walked to Zeke, concerned for his control in this new communion. With the hand not pressing the soft flesh to his active lips and even more involved teeth, he firmly drew Nat to kneel on the floor against his legs. Gripping his thighs through the denim, she felt no languor. Instead, she felt a heady anticipation as she saw the dim flicker of red and amber. Zeke stroked the arm once more with his tongue and looked at Nat through feral eyes in the gloom. Panting, his head half-lolling with carnal satiation, he offered the soft-moist redness and whiteness to her, a juicy apple. She felt his touch upon her as she bent to drink the flavor.
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