The Wheel

62. Veronica

I felt like not only my hands were tied up, but every limb of my body.

"It was a joke, Ms. Spears," Ayama tried to reassure me. "You just said that you were ready to do anything, so I asked that question. And you were afraid that everyone would die one by one."

"You...are joking about this..." I tried to say something.

"...stereotyped methods?"

"Yes! Cheap methods. The only thing you want is to see out fear, our emotions, our worries!"

"But those emotions are so real!"

"You're sick!" Sam screamed. "You're just sick!"

I didn't know what to say I just wanted this nightmare to be over.

"Ms. Veronica Spears," Ayama started retelling my biography, "was born in an ordinary family of an engineer and an accountant. You have a good little sister Becky. You successfully finished school and thanks to your parents' savings got into the University of Chicago. Generally, everyone in the group loves you, because you are very helpful and can always keep a conversation on various topics. You're a vegetarian. Why?"

I had an urge to insult that bitch who was torturing Sam and the others, but in order to leave this chair soon I began to answer her questions.

"One day when I was little I saw how a hen's head was cut off – it scared me so much. The worst part was that the hen was twitching for several seconds. It seemed to me that the hen's soul was still in the body and was suffering from an excruciating pain. It's so strange: the chicken was born, was conceiving the world, and then died like that! In the evening this hen was served for dinner – I just couldn't eat it, so I threw it into the trash. My parents scolded me for that, but I didn't do that anymore and decided to become a vegetarian. So what? Is it my biggest weakness?"

"You should know, Ms. Spears," Ayama said mysteriously and my chair turned toward my group mates.

"It's weird, usually you direct people to what they should talk about and I don't know what to tell about me. Don't ' a quirk' and 'a weakness' have the same meaning?"

"Not exactly, because a quirk is something strange about a person, and a weakness is a quality that prevents from living a full life. For example, someone might like eating apples with garlic – this is their quirk, because most people might consider it strange, but this person is a smoker and wants to give up this bad habit – it's his weakness. Anyway, as we got to know earlier all of those meanings are subjective. So we determine our weaknesses for ourselves. You think that being a vegetarian is your weakness. Does it prevent you from living fully?"

"No," I shook my head, "Quite the contrary, actually."

"So it's not a weakness," Ayama concluded. "Tell me what you don't like about yourself the most?"

Looking at the guys, I realized that it's not so hard to answer this question.

"You know when something unexpected happens I become hysterical and even scream. Once we had a pop-up quiz at school and I had tears rolling down from my eyes. And now imagine how I feel, being in this room where something happens constantly! I think, everyone noticed my biggest weakness. Do you need a story of this weakness? When I was eight my friend and I went to a 'haunted house' on Halloween. I got frightened so much that I still remember the feelings I had when I was there: snakes, jumping out of nowhere, spiders, and skeletons didn't go unnoticed. It's weird, but I like watching horror movies: it seemed to me that it might help me 'cure' my hysteria – alas, it didn't work."

"Well," Ayama said.

"I don't like this quality. It comes up relatively rare. So? Does this answer satisfy you? Or are you going to do something unpredictable?"

"There is no point, Ms. Spears," she said, "you're free."

"What?" I was surprised.

The mechanism unshackled me and got back on the chair. It can't be!