Choose Wisely

Chapter Eleven: The Giving Of Gifts

“Please call to schedule an appointment,” the cool voice of my counsellor addressed me from my voice mail. “Due to the failure to attend the last few of these subsequent months, we will have to extend our sessions. Reply before the eighteenth. Thank you.”

The brisk click sounded and my voice mail switched off. I snapped my Communicator shut. The voice of the woman was as emotionless as her visage. I wondered if she ever indulged in passions, like someone might indulge in rich foods. She didn’t seem like the type to fall into heavy emotions, dragging you down to shadowy depths-

I shook myself, my cheeks bitten red. Where had that come from?

I pushed the thought away and sighed. It had been a long day: memories had taunted me from the grave, dancing in my mind like flickers of flames. It felt like my brain was being immersed in the fire, building up the heat until all I saw were the colours of an inferno: of speckled reds and bold yellows.

My feet found the cold floor of my bedroom. There was a chill lazily trickling down my spine, congealing in the furrows of my skin- the kind of fear that made you want to hold your legs to your chest so that the monsters underneath your bed couldn’t grab at them and drag you under.

There were no monsters under the bed.

Though, they could be found in other places.

The sharp blaring of my alarm system began; the shrill bleating of a mechanized lamb. I sighed again, thinking it was going to be one of those days.

I got to my feet, heading off to the bathroom, to start a day that had started with a sleepless night.

Morning had its own sound. The clink! of cutlery, the shuffling of feet, the air laden with forbidden words and retorts. Father sat at the head of the table, eyes hooking into his tablet, as the daily news flickered across the screen, attuned to his reading pace. The servants stood erect at the sides of the room, so still they might as well have been permanent fixtures.

Father cleared his throat and one of the servants moved forward, filling his glass with a cold wash of milk. When the glass was filled sufficiently, the servant was waved away and he retreated to his normal placing, his face turned upwards so that you could never quite catch his eye.

“The Choices’ Ball will be here within the month,” Father said, after swallowing a bite of poached salmon. The taste of salt and pepper salmon spiced the inside of my mouth, but even the delicate offering of breakfast wasn’t enough to have me actually enjoy the meal. “I trust you already have sufficient money to deal with the matter of your dress?”

“Yes,” I replied, setting my cutlery down to take a long drink of water. “I think I'll be planning a shopping trip with Bonnie."

"She will be your Companion then?" he asked curtly, not looking up from the pale pink of his breakfast. He chewed briefly, swallowed. I wondered if everything in his life had to work as smoothly as a machine: cogs winding together in perfect precision.

"My Companion?" I said, half-forgetting the old term. Companions were the Chooser's female partner for the night. Buying into age-old customs, on the night of the Choices' Ball, it was deemed improper if you were only spending time with your Choices. And so, you ensured you had one of the same sex.

As if we didn't have ways to get around tradition.

It hadn't been hard to sneak past the patrols roaming the city at night. We had passed it off as if it were nothing, when really- if we had been caught- it could have ended in a price too high to pay. Laughed when the high-powered beam of the central watch-tower's searchlight flickered over the city.