“On the Menu Stains of Madness” • 20


The fry cook line brings back years of memories from your time in fast-food franchise Hell. The flesh you are given to plunge in the bubbling, greenish oil is, mercifully mostly covered with batter. You trim off the especially bad bits with a sharp knife. Where it peeks through, it shines with black, grey, and an iridescent hue that defies description. Worst of all are the thin tentacles. As the fry in the hot fat, they writhe into shapes you can only describe as sigils, glyphs that hint at depths of meaning utterly at variance with the human mind. It’s like calculus class. Desperately, you search for something to clutch on to that will maintain your link with a familiar reality.

 

If you have the coins, clutch them in your pocket.

If you have seen The Tentacle, concentrate on your memory of it.

If neither, clutch the hilt of your knife and fight
the alien syllables forcing their way between your lips.

 

 

 

 

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