Inktober #25: Tasty

"Breathe, first. Through the nose. Out the mouth. Inhale every possible scent around you. Each breath will be different. Some smells you notice so strongly at first will disappear with desensitization. So hold them, remember them. You won't want to get confused. The more subtle scents should come through then. The surrounding ionized metal. The slightly acrid tease of the sewage leak into the filtration systems. Me. Hold them all. See what comes into the forefront with each breath. Eventually it will seem like you've smelled it all. Every bead of sweat. Every exposed wire. Every fiber of every rat lurking in the walls.
Then, and only then, do you taste the gum.
...
Good. Do you smell it all?"
"Yes."
"Hold it. Hold onto them tight. And then hold onto your ass."

With what felt like the extremest edges of focus on the cacophony of smells around me, sensing each and every particle and where it came from, barely keeping the threads of every link together, I raised the gum to my tongue.
The instant it touches the first tastebud every ounce of focus is sucked into the very molecules of this unfathomably complex substance. The threads of smell are instantly translated to taste, though there are more connections here than could ever possibly be maintained. But I try. I try. I hold.
Whereas every breath brought a new scent, now the second tastebud grabs hold and sends its infinitely sparking cascade of new tastes into my head, back out into the gum, back again. Rebounding echoes. It's too much.
But I can't stop as my arm reacts far too slowly and the next wave hits. An infinitesimal universe of burning atoms greets me as I taste the very electrons sparking, held in orbit by the focus I bring onto them. Every atom vibrates, rapt with my attention and I with theirs.
It's too much to bear. I can feel my mind snapping under a weight it was never meant to sustain.

And then it happens.

Time reverts to normal.

And I see. I can see.

I can see him. Looking concerned. The lattice of every skin cell reaches out to my new awareness.

"Well?" he asks. "You don't look like your brain has melted into goo."
"No. I'm fine."
And I reach out to touch his face. The most direct path. Not just aimlessly reaching for a voice.
"That was the tastiest thing I've ever had."
And it would be for the rest of my life.