The room shattered around B. It wasn’t just the walls, but reality itself that crumbled beneath the power of A, who appeared suddenly in the ruined space. B did not flinch. He’d been expecting this to happen sooner or later.

“What the hell was all of that?”

B remained seated, though the chair he had been seated on was in the process of being unmade. “You could at least knock before you obliterate my space.”

It had taken some time for A to figure out how to infiltrate the mysterious area where B existed. Locating it in the twisting realities of his unconscious had been the easy part. But to actually pierce that veil required focus. Once it was done, he had an odd headache that pulsed right behind his eyes. Like he had pulled a muscle doing a foreign and strenuous task.

“That box of junk in the attic. When did you put it there?”

B took a moment to study A who looked like he wanted to rip him in half. “I thought that I was too weak to do anything like that.” His smile only deepened the creases running through A’s face.

“Don’t patronize me. I know it was you.”

“I thought your whole deal was thinking rationally. How would I have been able to accomplish all of that? Unless you care to admit that you have less control than you thought.”

B stood now, and closed his eyes for a moment in concentration. The room began to steadily rematerialize. Pieces of wall, floor, and chair began to piece themselves back together, reversing their disintegration. “Now, if you would like to have a civilized conversation about this, I’d be more than happy to work through this with you.” B sat himself in his chair and gestured to a space that was once empty. There was now a black leather lounger that A glowered at. He made no move to sit.

“Perhaps I underestimated you. Though this hardly changes anything. I must have just forgotten that I used to paint.”

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B crossed one leg over the other, and interlocked his fingers, resting them lightly on his lap. “Forgot does imply a lack of agency. Would you say that you have had episodes of lacking agency before?”

A glared back in response, and B took his silence as an invitation to continue. “I had no idea that you had such a colorful background. Have you given any thought as to why you don’t remember this little past time?”

A sank slowly onto the lounger, just barely resting on its edge. He didn’t sit because of weariness, but because his anger simply couldn’t be supported any longer. He cast a wild look around the room. He recognized the dimensions of his old room, but the only things in it were these two pieces of furniture. The chair that B sat in was his father’s chair that sat in the family living room. The lounger was from his first apartment, long lost to a flood that had soaked the leather and caused the insides to rot.

“If you had nothing to do with it, then you must also be curious as to how it got there?” A had meant to voice a statement of fact, but he couldn’t help himself from adding a lilt at the end which turned it into a question.

“I’m curious about a great many things. You’re the one who puts things into neat boxes and moves along.”

“It’s the only way to survive.”

“Maybe. Then the question is, why are you here? That box isn’t going to bite you. It’s up in the attic. You can leave tomorrow and never see it again.”

A felt his hands clench at his sides. His knuckles pressed into the leather in a way that felt familiar, but distant. “Maybe I will.”

A silence hung in the air for several moments. One in which both A and B felt their own emotions growing, desperate to fill the empty space. Yet both of them held their tongue.

After several more moments, B spoke.

“As long as I have known you, which has been since the day I was created, I haven’t known you to be so unsure about what you will or won’t do. Could it be that you know this is a trap, but you can’t turn away?”

A said nothing, but B knew from the intensity of A’s stare that he had struck a chord. “It’s ok. You can admit it. You’re the one who is really curious.”

A disappeared from the space as abruptly as he had entered. B waved his hand and the lounger disappeared as well. As he leaned back, he closed his eyes and a saucer with a small espresso on it appeared in his hands. He sipped it with a newfound hope that soon, he would not need to simply imagine the taste of the small bitter drink. Soon enough, he would be able to taste the real thing for himself.