Chapter 4

 

Chapter 4: The Feast of Fools

The meal was served with all the pomp and circumstance humanity could muster while simultaneously preparing for potential planetary digestion. President Doom-Harbinger herself presented the first course, a delicate amuse-bouche of crystallized panic garnished with microgreens of futility.

"Your Imperial Magnitude," she began, having practiced the speech during her previous career as a used car saleswoman, "we are honored to present the finest existential cuisine our doomed civilization has to offer."

Cannibalus examined the tiny portion with the critical eye of someone who had never been told that food might not be about him. "THIS SEEMS... SMALL."

"It's an amuse-bouche, Your Cosmicness. It's meant to be small."

"I DO NOT WISH TO BE AMUSED. I WISH TO BE FED. BRING ME SOMETHING LARGER."

The second course was a soup of liquefied despair, served in bowls made from the fossilized screams of middle managers. Cannibalus slurped it loudly, cosmic etiquette apparently not being a thing in the eleventeenth dimension.

"ACCEPTABLE," he declared, cosmic soup dripping from his tentacles. "BUT WHERE IS THE SUFFERING? I SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED SUFFERING."

Chef Deathwish hurried forward. "The suffering is more of an undertone, Your Hungriness. It's subtle."

"I DO NOT LIKE SUBTLE. IN MY DIMENSION, WE BELIEVE SUFFERING SHOULD BE OBVIOUS AND PREFERABLY SCREAMING."

As the courses progressed - the salad of wilted dreams, the entrée of braised futility with a reduction of broken promises, the cheese course featuring aged resentment - it became increasingly clear that Emperor Cannibalus was not just an interdimensional tyrant with godlike powers, but also a food critic with the sophistication of a toddler who subsists entirely on chicken nuggets.

"THIS TASTES FUNNY," he complained about the perfectly prepared anguish flambé.

"IT'S TOO SPICY," he whined about the mildly seasoned terror tartare.

"I WANTED THE DESPAIR ON THE SIDE," he demanded, despite no one asking him about his preferences.

By the time they reached dessert - a soufflé of collapsed civilizations with a drizzle of sweet, sweet entropy - the humans were beginning to realize that perhaps cosmic digestion might be preferable to cosmic food critique.

That's when President Doom-Harbinger made a decision that would either save humanity or result in the most spectacular failure in the history of spectacular failures.

"Your Infinite Hungriness," she said, standing up with the sort of confidence that only comes from having absolutely nothing left to lose, "I have a proposition for you."

_________________________________________________________

Chapter 5

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Chapter 2

  Chapter 2: The Emergency Session President Maximillia Doom-Harbinger III (née Susan Williams, but she'd had it legally changed during her campaign) stared at the live feed from the Brand New Big Ass Atom Smasher and wondered if this was actually an improvement over their previous predicament. "Let me get this straight," she said to the assembled cabinet in the Emergency Bunker of Last Resort, "we've got an alien entity threatening to eat the planet unless we cater a lunch for him?" Secretary of Defense General Buck Blastmeyer nodded grimly. "That appears to be the situation, Madam President. Our intelligence suggests he's from the eleventeenth dimension, which our scientists inform me is 'like the regular dimensions, but more pretentious.'" "And he wants what, exactly?" Dr. Cornelius Brainfart, the Secretary of Existential Affairs, consulted his hastily scribbled notes. "A seven-course meal of pure existential drea...
Read more

Chapter 3

  Chapter 3: The Culinary Corps Chef Magnifico Deathwish had cooked for dictators, war criminals, and food network executives, but he'd never been asked to prepare a meal for a cosmic entity with the emotional maturity of a spoiled toddler. He stood in the hastily converted cafeteria at the BNBAAS facility, surrounded by ingredients that defied both physics and good taste. "Okay, people," he addressed his team of volunteer chefs, most of whom had been recruited from the ranks of those who'd already given up on living anyway. "We've got forty-three minutes to prepare a meal that will either satisfy an interdimensional god or result in the consumption of our entire planet. No pressure." His sous chef, a woman known only as Madame Guillotine, raised her cleaver. "Chef, I've managed to source the tears of the innocent from a nearby daycare center - I told them we were canceling Christmas. But I'm having trouble with the philosophers' hope...
Read more

Chapter 1

  Chapter 1: The Brand New Big Ass Atom Smasher Dr. Miranda Pestilence adjusted her radiation goggles and cackled with the refined madness that only comes from seventeen years of theoretical physics and a steady diet of methamphetamine-laced energy drinks. Around her, the Brand New Big Ass Atom Smasher hummed with the sort of ominous vibration that typically preceded either groundbreaking scientific discovery or the complete obliteration of spacetime. "Fire it up, Jenkins!" she shrieked to her assistant, who was busy updating his suicide note on his tablet. "Let's see if we can punch a hole straight through to next Tuesday!" Jenkins, a pallid man whose life force had been gradually drained by years of watching humanity's increasingly creative attempts at self-annihilation, sighed and pressed the big red button labeled "DEFINITELY DON'T PRESS THIS UNLESS YOU WANT TO FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENS." The year 2042 had been particularly festive in terms...
Read more