Tasteful Lies

Prompt: You can taste lies. One day you’re comforting your best friend after a tough breakup and almost vomit at the foul taste the words bring– “After all, you’re only human.” Credit: writing.prompt.s

Response:

“I wish I had the right words to comfort you. I’m sorry I suck at this.” I looked at her ball, her crying, huddled ball, feeling helpless.

She sniffed and after a moment of more silence, she said, “It’s okay. After all, you’re only human,” and I’ve never tasted something more delicious. My body froze.

How.

How was that sentence from my best friend a lie? But I’d been so used to keeping my secret about tasting lies that I quickly snapped into faking that I didn’t know she just said one. “I mean, sure, but I should still be able to comfort my best friend. Some crappy human I am.” And my own words left the bitter taste of uncertain truth.

She looked at me and a kind smile broke her tear-soaked face on the floor of her apartment. Opening up from her ball, she began the motions to give me a hug. I echoed them and we held each other, her body shaking.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’d be a wreck without you.”

There was no taste to these words, but they felt like an imprint on my mind, like she was saying something more than she let on.

What did she know about me? After I went home, flurries of sleepovers and dinner dates, study dates and goofing sessions tackled my mind until I felt dizzy. Okay, okay, get a grip, Alianna. I grabbed the half wall of my own apartment. Just because they say a lie, doesn’t mean the opposite is true. You know this.

All it took for me to taste the sweet, sweet lie was that the person speaking the words believed the opposite.

But why would Caty believe I wasn’t human? Still clutching the stub of wall that separated the kitchen from my hallway, I looked around my normal cheapo apartment. When did she consciously decide with certainty that I wasn’t a human? And what if the opposite were true?

I could taste lies after all.

There was a paper on my table. I frowned at it, bringing me out of my panic. I didn’t recall putting it there and I distinctly remembered having to unlock the door when I came in…

“You time on earth is finished. Meet us in the field farthest away from the paths of machines, surrounded by large plant life.” The handwriting was odd; fancy, clear, but… alien to me.

I stared at the first sentence, the one that had the ability to be a lie, a joke, something tasty. But the words were dry and as plain as the cold, hard truth. I raised my eyes to the window that looked over the town, buildings of fellow humans, comrades, schoolmates. Numbness settled over me like a veil.