EXPERIMENT

Aindrila Roy
Feb 29, 2020
2 min read

EXPERIMENT

If I’m being honest, I don’t know what I was thinking. There, I said it. I’m not impulsive by nature. Far, far from it. Anyone who knows me would attest that I’m a creature of habit. Stickler for rules. A very by-the-books girl. You know the type.

But here I am, writhing in agony. Every pore of mine is on fire – well, not literally, but it sure feels that way. A haze clouds my vision and the world around me spins off-kilter. I can’t breathe. It burns. It burns! Make it stop. Please. I beg you. Why, oh why did I ever agree to this?

I suppose I should tell you the chain of events that led to my current predicament. I’m a twenty-four-year-old girl, currently nursing a broken heart. Broken hearts, as you may know, hurt something bad. I was in the middle of my seventh moping session when I guess my friends had had enough. They dragged me, kicking and screaming, out of my house and into civilization. A not-so-little faux shack smack in the middle of a fancy-shmancy mall. I hated every second of it. Complained and whined without an end.

Not that they paid any heed to my protests. They did not understand my need to keep myself shrouded in familiarity. Cocooned in the comfort of my blanket, curled in my sofa, garbed in my PJs, I am at peace. Ripping me out of my comfort zone, they threw me off my game. That maybe the reason I agreed to this insanity. I’m almost seventy percent convinced.

“It’ll be an experiment,” they said.

“It’ll make you forget your heart ache,” they said.

They were… not wrong.

It was an experiment, yes. It made me forget the jerk who broke my heart. But at what cost? At the cost of my sanity. At the cost of my mind. At the cost of my taste-buds.

My friends tell me I’m being over dramatic, but they were not tasting the Ghost Pepper Sauce. I was. I’m telling you folks, do not try this at home! (And this is not even the spiciest pepper in the world! What gives!)

I’m writhing in agony while my friends are laughing. Assholes.