Before the mahogany eyes

The fridge purred with a certain persistency that bordered noisiness. When it finally stopped its gibberish murmur, he felt like the fish globe that had caged his brain was taken off and his mind could expand into the room again. Not that there was much space to expand into. The noisy colors of the grocery shop shelfs made the edges of his mind bent into the most uncomfortable shapes. Just like a Buddhist monk could knot his legs, the tips of his mind wound into painfully tight muddles to prevent getting caught on the sharp edges of the boring yellowish-white boards.

There only seemed to be this one kind of boring grocery shelfs; at least, he had never seen any interesting ones. Well, maybe this assumption was not exactly his to make, for he only visited this particular store, but he could imagine all grocery shops to have those white-as-popcorn and sticky-as-popcorn shelfs. In fact, he could imagine quite a lot of things, but right now his attention was gravitating towards the people at the counter who seemed to be discussing something. The back-and-forth of voices that had been cut out by the fridge's purr before, now made him hit the dirty ground of reality with brute force. Not the force of a fist in a face, but the force of a door of which you have missed the handle while exiting the room in a hurry.

The broad back in front of him with the poisonous green fabric that stretched over thickly hidden muscles was asking the boy, who looked like asparagus (just more human), why he would not disburse him his win from the lottery. After some questions by counter-boy, it turned out that the man had not even won anything, what resulted in a discussion about fairness and equality regarding games with ridiculously small winning probabilities, that could not even be displayed on the counter-boy's little nephew's 'calculator for beginners'. And a bunch of heated sentences later, the broad back revealed that he did not even possess a ticket for the lottery. Asparagus-boy and green t-shirt now had an argument which contained opinions on each other's brain capacity and heritage as well as assumptions about the jobs of the opponent's parents.

But before the peach-like head of the green t-shirt could compete with a paprika (color-wise, not shape-wise; he never had seen a paprika-shaped head), he stepped forward and interrupted the heated battle of old-fashioned uncreative insults by blocking the rivals' intense eye contact with the small bag of his bubblegum-flavored ice cream. The pack, that was colored with a green that would have made van Gogh cut off his ear rather than using it, dangled from his hand rather unmotivated, and now that he looked at it more closely, it had gotten quite out of shape. However, the sudden silence felt like warm butter; thicker than air and annoyingly sticky.

"I just want to buy this ice cream. It'll take a maximum of twenty seconds, and then you may continue," he said.

"And I just want a lottery ticket," the green t-shirt said agitated.

"You can buy one if you'd like," counter-boy intervened helpfully.

It turned out that broad back had no cash with him, but asparagus informed him that he had to spend a minimum amount of money to be able to use a credit card. That again made shoulders repeat the assumptions about brain capacity from earlier, just directed towards the one who invented the paying-system, until it was clarified that shoulders did not even possess a credit card. From that point on, shoulders started an argument, wanting to know why one could not pay with free tickets to the cinema, while the boy behind him watched his ice cream develop an even more ice-unlike shape.

"I do accept free tickets," he intervened, tired of observing, and pulled out his purse. "Give the man his ticket!"

Counter-boy scanned the ice and the ticket and gladly took the money from him.

With a stretched-out hand, the boy waited for green t-shirt to end his gush of thanks and blessings and hand him the tickets. But it turned out that shoulders did not have any tickets, neither did he visit cinemas. Confused, the boy looked at his empty hand and then down at his ice cream.

The fridge should have proceeded purring. Well, there was no turning black to white, so he collected all the knotted end of his mind, so as not to get it caught in the door while leaving, and stepped outside. The sun was burning like a broken lightbulb would not, and he sneezed like a broken muffler because of the brightness that tickled his nose. He did not particularly like summer, but he did not hate it either. He liked it like he liked trashcans. It was useful to keep everything in a manageable order, but you just start to search for it when you need it.

He preferred winter because it came with snow, something you could touch and play with. If he had been able to touch sunlight, maybe he would have like summer, too. Snow was also something he could wrap his mind around, whereas light confused him when he gave it some more thought. So, he had stopped thinking about it and just waited for winter.

Waiting was something he was good at. It did not require much knowledge though he knew many things. Just now he had learned that the probability of winning the lottery could not be displayed on a 'calculator for beginners'. The knowledge of when this information would become useful was not his to possess, but collecting information never was a bad thing. As well as collecting questions. Unanswered questions were new information; memorizing them meant reserving space for the answer. He loved answers, and he would wait for them to find him. He was good at being patient.

But right now, he doubted his patience to wait until winter so that the wobbling undefined shape his ice cream had grown into would become hard again. He poked the suspicious object he had placed next to him on the low brick wall and watched it doing strange movements. It was a mix of wiggle and wobble. Maybe the cinema would have been cold enough to freeze his ice again. After all, he always had the feeling of sitting inside of a fridge while he watched pixels, that would only make sense when he took off his glasses, moving over a big screen.

With a defeated sigh, he gave up on the shapeless pack of hopelessness and laid down in the grass, eyes darting into the smoky-blue sky. His mind had unwound and was tangled up in the boughs of a nearby tree. This would take some time to undo, but for now he would let his thoughts allow to play hide and seek between the leaves. After all, there was nothing else to do for them.

After the mahogany eyes

No matter what part of the closet that he called his mind he opened, every drawer and board was stuffed with either overflowing ashtrays, because his brain had started smoking, or dildos of all sizes and colors. His mind could not keep its tips off the latter; it loved funny things. Masturbators, vibrators, butt plugs, cock rings, love balls. He had learned quite some new words after he had spent a night on the internet. Though finger sleeves amused him the most; they looked strangely delicious, but scary. The variety of toys was comical but creative, and after scanning though some websites he became curious. Not the curious you become when you are about to open your birthday present, more like the curious you become when you know something good is about to happen, but you do not know what.

So, after he had been forced to fiddle the ends of his mind out of the door of the sex shop, where it always got stuck in, he decided to pay the store a visit. Maybe his mind would stop smoking then, and he would no longer have to wave off the mist that clouded his thoughts. So, one rather boringly sad day of late March, he opened the glass door to said sex shop. Before he could wonder why a sex shop had a glass door, his mind let go of the cigarette it was holding and screamed like a twelve-year-old at her first concert while wrapping itself around all the fancy, shiny, elegant silicone and metal sources of sexual joy. Having his mind stretched to an unknown extend into all directions made him freeze in place for a moment, before he decided that a simple dildo and some lube would be enough for now.

Even to him this sounded strangely mundane considering the unbelievable amount of fun he was surrounded with. But he could come back any time, he told the tips of his mind that unwrapped from the weirdest shapes of silicone and came back to him like scolded kids. After knotting all ends together so as not to lose them in the proximity of this place, he followed the big sign reading 'dildos'. The neatly marked shelves reminded him of electronic markets. It was a peculiar comparison but not as bizarre as comparing it to a grocery store, though food as well as those toys promised satisfaction.

But he was drifting off. He would have expected this to take longer, but apparently the bundled force of his mind took a liking in a long, pinkish, transparent, glossy model with an elegant curve. Adding some baby-blue lube, he left the shop happily.

To make it short, his brain disposed of cigarettes and dizzied itself with lust instead, demanding more and more toys to reach higher levels of prickling blankness. But although the white bliss always left him euphoric, there was something missing, something that would prevent the high from fading away completely. His mind screamed for mahogany eyes and restless hands to hold him, to hold him so tight his mind would be wrapped into the embrace as well.

So, now I am waiting. I am good at being patient. I will let my mind count thoughts until I get the answer I am waiting for. The place for the answer is already reserved. So, all I can do is watch time playing on my tense nerves, sending expectant vibrations through my body.

Kim Namjoon. Will you be my boyfriend?

>>The End<<

I hope you liked my story. Please, tell me what you think of it ^^