Why Can't I Control It?

I'm sitting in a chair. I didn't chose that spot, but I found my way into it. I didn't even move, it just happened.

A shift in perspective. A different location.

All of it happening without my decision whatsoever.

"Why can't I control it?" I ask her, not demanding the answer but instead begging for it.

The creature who is and is not the Baba Yaga brews tea. It isn't for me, I understand that. I cannot drink or eat in this place, cannot consume without erring on the wrong side of a pact that, like all things, I can only glimpse a glint of but not the full scope.

And while that brings up more questions for me I at least am comforted by the fact that the dark liquid substance that she brews holds no appeal for me. The acrid scent and the too slick surface of it speak of fathomless depths and warm suffocation. Stickiness sliding in to the crevices and the cracks and sealing them up, making it so that I **** until I can't stop and I stop until I can't move and I won't... I won't have to worry about it.

She sips as if it is saccharine sweet.

"What can't you control?"

"Everything. Me. Them. The world. My needs. Her feelings. The future. I can... I can go on but I won't stop if I do."

Inhaling slowly through her nostrils she savors the taste of the liquid she drinks and I realize that she managed to consume it without removing the veil and then I realize that I'm just assuming.

I can't see her face.

No mouth and no nose and no eyes. A dark void covered by a dark veil and yet still I can see and understand her. The lines around her eyes that crinkle when she smirks and the lopsided turn of her lips when they curl into a smile. She smiles a lot, bemused by some part of me or this circumstance and I just...

"Is this a punishment?"

That gives her pause, my question. She holds fast for a moment, the last expression frozen on her expressionless face. Not displeased but confused by my words and I don't know why. But then I don't know much of anything and I haven't been certain of anything else in a long time.

"Why would you think that it is?" she asks me slowly, carefully.

When I say that I inhale slowly, know that I do not move. When I say that it takes an eternity for me to respond as I pick my words carefully and take my time to be sure that I am saying the exact right thing, know that not even a second passes because time is without meaning in this place. When I say that I know all of this know that I know nothing and that I am sure of even less and know that it is only assumption that leads me forward but assumption at least with the comfort to be able to say that there is less that I know and that I need to know more and at least one thing is certain.

"I can't control anything."

The words linger in the air and I can almost see the outline of them and there is all of the meaning necessary in it for her to interpret and to give me my answers but she doesn't speak a single word yet and that is for my benefit. This woman knows what it is that I am asking, before even I do. But it is important for me to get my thoughts straight.

"I can't control anything," I repeat, this time to myself and maybe not even loud enough to be heard outside of my own head.

And I start to see it more and more, the truth that is forming and the question, the real question, to which I need answers. I need to know and I can't go without anymore and I need to...

I need to understand.

"Why am I doing this?"

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