You violently sit down in place, a toddler who is going to need to be dragged out of the store by its mother. All of a sudden the situation that you've found yourself in is completely overwhelming. No matter how far you've come, or how far you go, you know you won't be able to get yourself out of this mess. You don't even know what happened, you don't know why you're so lost or why you can't seem to find anyone that can help you. You're not a bad person, maybe you've made some silly decisions, but its all been harmless! You should be to just go home, but something keep stopping you every single time. Why bother anymore? You've had it. So you sit down, and sit still, for a long, long time.

Then you hear a woman's voice. "Hey there," she says with gentle friendliness. You look up and realize you're sitting in a leather chair. Directly in front of you is a mahogany desk. The floors look like poured concrete, covered in the middle by a plush dark green rug, where your chair and the desk sit. The walls are lined with books and plants except for the floor-to-ceiling windows in a concave wall like a castle turret, directly in front of you. You can't see anything in particular out of them, as if you're on the top floor of a high building. Fog that could be clouds swirls around outside. In between you and the windows, sitting at the desk, is a 30-something woman with dark hair pulled back in a ponytail. She's dressed like a lawyer or some kind of executive, in a gray-white suit dress nearly matching the floors. Her eyes sparkle like a glint of sun between dark leaves. She's smiling encouragingly.

"Um," you say, reaching for something else, and then realizing you don't have the first idea what's going on or what you would say even if you did. Whatever- its been that way for a while now, ever since you woke up by the side of the road in New Jersey. And here's another wierdo stranger who almost definitely won't help you. You decide "Um" will suffice. You give her nothing more.

The woman's grin slips into an amused twist of her lips, a snort of a chuckle implies she's seen this kind of thing before.

"You need a drink." The woman stands and walks to a small table you hadn't noticed off to the side behind her. You're surprised to see she's barefoot. The table is same color as the desk, with inlays of lighter wood. You can't see what she does next, but she must have pressed a switch or button because the top of the table flips open into two leaves and a couple of cut-glass decanters with a number of matching glasses come up out of the table. The woman grins over her left shoulder and pours each of you three fingers of a dark gold liquid. She strolls back, with her hips swinging in something not quite a swagger, bare feet stepping carefully but surely, like she knows the exact right path through the woods. She hands you a glass before sitting back down, her own chair so big that it implies a throne, and offering her glass for a clink.

"Cheers," she says, leaning back and taking a sip of her drink as if it were a long pull of a cigarette. She gives a contended hum.

You only hesitate a little before knocking back a quick swig. There's a comforting ethanol burn, quickly smothered by something heavy and rusty-sweet.

"S'good right?" the woman turns towards you, smiling that same encouraging smile, like a kindergarten teacher to her best toddling student.

"Its good," you agree, taking another sip to prove it. You aren't lying, this is great stuff. If you ever get home you'll have to pick some up. "Who makes it?"

"Ah, its small-batch artisanal. You can only get it from the source, a friend of mine. He sends me a bottle every year."

"That figures," you nearly sneer. You remember that you're lost and exhausted. And scared. And of course this one simple thing you wanted, you can't have, because its made by some hipster douchebag hiding behind his pretentious girlboss bff. You take another sip. The woman has swiveled her throne to the side, one knee on the other, watching you out of her left eye. She takes another sip too.

"Its ok, y'know." she says. Turning her head the other way, eyes to the high-rise smog. "Its ok to be tired. Its ok to give up." You stare at the back of her ponytail, noticing that its off-center, like she pulled her hair up in a hurry, a while ago. "The question is, what do you want to do now?" She turns her chair back around, placing her glass directly on her desk and an elbow next to it, chin in her hand.

"Like I have a choice." you almost spit. You don't want to be angry, but you are, you are and she's the closest thing you can hit. You don't want to take it all out on her, but then again you do, you really, really do.

"You have a choice." If her voice had been soothing you might have thrown your whiskey at the window, but its matter of fact. A lawyer advising a client. "You've always had a choice. Everything you've done this whole time has been your choice. Its kind of the point." She has that wringing half-smile again, one cheek lifted, like she wants to wink at you but knows about your desire to chuck something.

You glance down into your whiskey. "I want to go home." You feel so tired, saying that.

But even so, and despite it all, you know its only half true.

"You can go home. You've always had the power to go back to Kansas." This time she does wink. You don't react. "Ugh," she mutters, lifting her glass in your direction and taking a sip. "Nobody ever laughs at that. I really have to stop doing it but it fits the theme so perfectly I can't help myself."

"The theme?" you look at her skeptically.

"Nevermind," her free hand waves, sweeping the question out of the air. "Anyway, you can totally go home." She looks at you full on, elbow still on the table with the glass near her eyes so they bounce the deep gold of the whiskey at you. "If you want. Or," she pauses, leaning back again, "you know, I could use a little help around here. I know what the consensus is on unpaid internships these days, but you could review my... work, lets call it. Check for typos, that kind of thing. I do have a day job, you know," she gestures to the office around her, as if that explains everything.

"Um," you say again. "Well I mean I don't know, are there benefits at least? Dental?"

The woman throws her head back to laugh, a bouncing noise that starts low and runs up each step of an octave. "Sure! Yes, sure there's benefits!" She keeps chuckling for a minute before taking another sip of her drink. "Well, there's whiskey anyway, and I consider that to be of great benefit." Her laughter trails off into a sigh.

You don't know what to make of any of this. Do you want to go home? You're tired and angry, don't forget how angry you are, and scared, and tired, and this lady offers to pay you in whiskey for an internship is she serious? You want to go home. You do.

"There a third option," the woman's voice drops a little. Gentler, again, like it had been at first. "You can try again."

"Try again?" You don't understand.

"Yeah. Try again. Start over. You're a bit wiser now, and I mean you had a little fun, didn't you?" She has that half-smile again but its lost its mischief. She hopes you had fun, you realize. She wanted you to be having fun, this whole time.

"Well, some fun, I guess. Sort of."

"The world is changing every day, you know," she adds. "You've seen some of what's out there, but anything could still happen. And you would still get to choose what to do with that, with every new thing you find. Its happening to you, sure, but you're also happening to it."

"To what?"

"The story. Its all just a big story." She shrugs, not quite apologetically. More like, that there's nothing to be done about it.

"So you're saying I can make choices, but in the end the choices, don't matter? The story just, marches on and drags me with it?"

"Mmm I mean, sort of. There's a beginning, a middle, and eventually we'll get to the end. But that doesn't mean your choices don't matter."

You want to scream. "How? That's exactly what it means!"

"Your choices matter because you chose them." She says, "Trite, I know. But," she shrugs again, bringing her glass back to her lips. "Its still true. Plus like you said, it was sort of fun. So if you wanted to, you could start over."

You sink back into your chair, taking another sip of your drink. The whiskey is starting to feel like hot blood in your veins. Maybe an internship wouldn't be so bad.

"You don't have to decide in a split second. Hang out, have another drink if you want one." She gestures to the inlaid table, still butterflied open. "I'll be here to help, whatever you decide to do." She sits back again and half-turns, eyes on the windows and the swirling gray on the other side.