Aftertaste

Written by Lindsey Liu from Saint Andrew's School in Delaware, USA

“Do be tempted — this chocolate crème confection is simply irresistible!” Dorothy’s vermillion-red lipstick glints beneath the studio lamps, precariously grazing her row of pearly whites. Even still, they remain defiantly pristine while she savors the chocolate wafer, eyelashes fluttering in satisfaction. She pecks away, in morsels, at the pitch-black discs that resemble compressed ash.

“Buy the ChocoDisc while you can! This one’s Vanilla Veil. Just one taste, and you’ll fancy no other chocolate sandwich!” 

Dorothy neatly twists the discs apart, revealing a crème filling that chimes in an unnervingly crisp shade of white. Upon prying open the monotone cookie, she finds the letters S1-VV etched into the firm, chalky solid that is the chocolate wafer, presumably a manufacturing stamp. Her eyes, brilliantly blue and unblinking, bulge slightly as she relishes the stiff, fatty filling with her tongue. 

“Cut! I think we’ll wrap it up for now.” 

The glee that Dorothy had momentarily plastered onto her face vanishes. She presses a handkerchief against her tongue, still coated in a milky film, and drags it across until the streaks of crème no longer plague it. 

“What, you don’t like it?” the director asks, tilting his head to face her.

“I’m not trying to eat more than I have to.” Dorothy suppresses her grimace, face stark.

As Dorothy works to cleanse her tongue of the inexplicably tenacious cling of the crème, the director’s gaze lingers on her restless hands, repeating the same motion in the stubborn rhythm of distaste. His expression is absent, seemingly more neutral than the flavor of the ChocoDisc, yet there seems to be a wisp of bewilderment. Dorothy discards her handkerchief, now threaded with nebulous strands of saliva and flecks of crème that, uncannily, refuse to disintegrate.

“Remember, inspection before you leave.” 

Dorothy moves toward an uninviting alcove. The unblemished white, ubiquitous and all-encompassing, swallows her, much as she had struggled to swallow the gritty, unpalatable crème. An inspector, scrupulously decked in white, instructs her to extend her tongue. He does not hesitate; a flashlight deftly examines the crevices between her teeth with precision. Dorothy tries to loosen her jaw, though her tongue still remembers that taste that shouldn’t still be there. Once he determines there are no major blotches of white left, he asks the director. 

“I want the tissue she used to wipe off the crème.”

The director, in full compliance, pivots with agility, miraculously approaching the bin where Dorothy had thrown away her handkerchief, and bends over to salvage it. She had not expected his attention to such detail. 

The inspector, noting that Dorothy had scrambled to remove the bitterness of the crème from her tongue, delicately lifts the wet handkerchief with tweezers and slides it into an airtight envelope. He systematically places it into a bin marked with a red cross. Only a few other envelopes rest inside. After scribbling an inscrutable note under a column labelled S1-VV on his clipboard, he gives a perfunctory nod and departs, leaving Dorothy and the alcove suspended in its overwhelming tranquillity.

“Aren’t you going to tell me what that means?” 

She defies the stillness, yet her words fail to latch onto the inspector long enough to elicit a response. 

On her way out, Dorothy passes a storage shelf she hadn’t noticed before. Rows upon rows of ChocoDiscs, stashed away in tight containers, tower over her. They hold an assortment of elaborate flavors, each with smaller tags affixed to their fronts and larger, more conspicuous signs that reveal their flavors: Malleable Mint, Serenity Swirl, Cinder Cream…

“S2-MM, S5-SS, S6-CC…” 

Beside the containers, a laminated chart hangs casually. Out of sheer interest, Dorothy ignores its tedious length and begins to read.

Pheromone Sensitivity Classification– Batch Coding Guide

She easily finds the code that she had seen embedded in the wafer when she twisted the Disc apart, a small, barely legible S1-VV under a much more intimidating Vanilla Veil. 

Intended Response: No detectable reaction to compliance pheromone.

In a more formidable shade of red, it shouts: Flag Reaction (If Occurs): Crème removal tendency, scent/taste aversion, heightened awareness.

Lastly, a nice send-off that Dorothy, admittedly, could have predicted: Status: Non-aligned. Purge immediately when detected.