Chapter 25: All Decisions Are Your Decisions

The kitchen smelled faintly of bleach and something older—something sour that clung to the walls no matter how hard she scrubbed. Elisabeth's foot—atrociously old, with hardened, yellowed nails—dragged across the tiles as she paced. Each step felt like a betrayal, like a reminder of everything time had stolen.

The phone shrieked into the silence.

On the table, the Vogue issue sat open, Sue's dazzling smile frozen in print, her eyes brimming with the kind of effortless light Elisabeth once believed was hers. The Rising Star, the headline mocked.

Her body clenched against the pain lashing through her back. Breathless, she snatched the receiver."Sh-she… she d-did it again!"

The words tore from her like broken glass.

The Growth. That's what she called it now—because if she was the Matrix, then what had come out of her could only be called that. The Growth didn't respect the balance. It was eating away at her, stealing more and more of her time. Sue was stealing her time.

Elisabeth hurled the magazine against the wall. It slapped the paint with a hollow sound before collapsing onto the floor, Sue's smile still intact. "She's shallow! Shhhallow and superficial!"

The voice on the other end was calm, detached—merciless in its logic. If you don't want extra time, you simply have to stop taking it. All decisions are your decisions. You're simply making them from different sides of yourself.

Elisabeth flinched as though struck. Her skin prickled with sweat. Stop? Could she really stop? She drew her robe tighter, hiding what had already withered beneath.

"Will… will everything return to what it was before?" she whispered.

What has been transferred won't come back.

Her gaze fell on her leg, mottled with age. She looked down, trembling, at her chest, at the fabric tented loosely where her body had collapsed into itself. A shiver of terror ran through her.

"No… no, I can't stop," she cried, clutching the robe tighter. "I can't stay like this. She has to—" Her hand lashed across her cheek. Smack. Another blow. "I have to! The balance has to be respected!"

So respect it, the voice said, and the line went dead.

Elisabeth sagged forward. Her shoulders trembled with tiny, broken sobs. The kitchen light flickered overhead. From the corner, Sue's ringtone burst to life, jaunty and cruel: When you're smiling, when you're smiling…

Elisabeth's twisted finger jabbed the button, sending the call to voicemail. Silence again. Relief, if only for a breath.

Then—ping. A new message. Her stomach lurched. She knew she shouldn't, but she couldn't stop herself. She pressed play.

Alan's voice erupted, giddy and breathless. "Sue! Holy fuck, are you sitting down? TOM GRANT wants you in his next movie! He saw you on the Vogue cover this morning and he's dying to meet you—"

Her body collapsed into the chair like a sack of potatoes. The words hammered her skull. A raw cry clawed up her throat.

"No! Stop it!" she screamed, slapping herself again. Smack. Smack. Each strike louder than the last. Her fists pounded against her head as if force could bury the truth. "Stop it stop it stop it—"

Her gaze snapped upward, toward the little note pinned to the wall, trembling under the faint draft from the window. The words scrawled in blue ink seemed to leer back at her:

it changed my life.

----

The apartment was silent, thick with shadows that swallowed the corners of the room. Only the bluish flicker of the television cut through the darkness, its images shifting soundlessly across Elisabeth's blank face. She sat curled into the oversized armchair, her small frame dwarfed by its cushions, her eyes unfocused—watching nothing, listening to nothing.

For a long time, she remained that way, lost in the kind of stillness that feels like waiting, though for what, even she could not have said. Then something shifted in her expression. A spark of recognition, faint but insistent, flickered across her features as her gaze fixed on the bookcase opposite her. Something there—something she had forgotten—seemed to call her.

She tried to rise. Her hands gripped the chair's armrests, her body heaved forward, but her right leg betrayed her. The knee, swollen grotesquely with arthritis, refused to straighten. Trapped in her own chair, she looked down at it in bitter disgust. The joint bulged, skin stretched taut and shiny, each movement a stab of pain.

Elisabeth pressed her lips together and tried again. She pushed, pulled, willed the joint to obey. Her breath hissed through her teeth, her body trembling with the effort. But the knee held fast, stubborn as stone.

Her expression hardened. She would not be defeated by her own body—not tonight. Clutching the twisted limb with both hands, she tried to wrench it straight. The agony was blinding. Sweat broke across her brow as she forced harder, harder still, until—

CRAAAACK.

The sound split the silence. Her kneecap shifted violently back into place, and a scream tore from her throat—half victory, half raw pain.

Then she just sat there, panting, tears in her eyes, before forcing herself upright. Every movement was a negotiation with suffering. Her back hunched grotesquely, her spine twisted with the dowager's hump that had grown more pronounced in recent years. Pus had seeped through the old bathrobe near the puncture site, leaving a yellow stain that stank faintly of rot.

Still, she pressed on, staggering across the room like a survivor of some invisible battle. Each step was a triumph. She leaned heavily on the bookcase when she reached it, gasping for breath as though she had just finished running a marathon. Her trembling hand searched along the shelf until her fingers brushed something wedged between two volumes.

Harvey's gift.

The memory rose as vivid as if he stood beside her: Harvey's round, laughing face, his voice teasing yet kind. To keep you busy, he had said. It's French. My wife swears by it!

Her gnarled fingers tore clumsily at the faded wrapping paper, until at last the object emerged: a thick, glossy cookbook. French Cuisine from A to Z. The cover displayed a beaming chef with flushed cheeks, his smile so large it bordered on ridiculous.

Elisabeth brought it close—closer than most people would have dared—squinting at the garish print through her failing vision. The pages opened stiffly, releasing the faint scent of paper long ignored. Full-color photographs greeted her: glossy, indulgent dishes that seemed to belong to another life, another world.

Aubrac Aligot. Brissac Blood Sausage with Apples. Caen-Style Tripes. Christmas Bresse Poultry Stuffed with Foie Gras.

Her eyes lingered on each page as though they were windows, not recipes—windows into a feast she could almost touch, though perhaps never taste.

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