To the Bone
by Ronin Fox
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
Chef Rags grabbed an oyster grenade from the live tank, seasoned it with some asteroid flakes and placed it in the steamer. Once cooked, it needed to be served and consumed within one minute. Otherwise the flesh broke down and it would go off like what it was named after, splattering its guts everywhere.
Guido showed up to serve. “Perchance. Perchance. Perchance.” He rolled his eyes. “I swear zat word will fray my nerves. Perchance I have always wondered what my day to day would be like as a walking talking piece of snot.”
Chef Rags let him work off a little steam. He couldn’t name anyone else better to do the job than him. As long as he was flinging sarcasm, that was a good sign. “First course is coming right up Guido.” He grabbed the oyster grenade out of the steamer and hit the one-minute timer. The carapace shone a brilliant candy-apple red, and it had already started to bulge. He gave it a splash with the most expensive bottle of cheap wine he had and garnished it with a wedge of lunar lemon.
Guido placed the dish in front of the critic with 45 seconds left on the clock.
The critic’s nose hit it from all sides. Taking micro sniffs and letting the aromas ripple the skin on his trunk. His eyebrows shot up, and a smile creased his face.
“Monsieur,” Guido said, “I suggest—”
“Do not rush me,” the critic snapped. “I will enjoy it when I am ready.”
The critic’s nose plucked a fork from the table and he opened his mouth wider than ever before. Inside that cavern of a maw were no teeth. Instead were rows upon rows of old forks where teeth should be.
The critic took the blunt end of the fork and squeezed it into the forest of cutlery in his jaw, sinking it right into the flesh and down to the hilt just below his gum line. He closed his mouth and swished his bucket of a jaw. The forks inside grated against each other with a metal-on-metal scrape heard only by people under torture.
Guido shuddered.
The critic’s nose shot out and tagged him on the cheek.
Guido stumbled back. “What was zat for?”
“No twitching. Am I to assume as true that your inability to—”
BOOM! The oyster exploded.
With warp speed, the critic’s nose sprang into action and plucked each gob out of the air except the last one and tossed it down his gullet. “A two out of ten,” he said. “More of a mob control measure than an appetizer, and marvelous if you like licking the floor of the mess hall from a galley that sank an eon ago.” His snout snatched the final piece out of the air as it was coming back down. “Several eons ago.”
Chef Rags tossed a sheet of whisker noodle dough into a boiling pot of his homemade pink broth infused with a dozen herbs and rare spices from far-off places in the galaxy. The narrow pasta only took a moment to cook as it soaked up the soup. He fished it out and spread it out on the cutting board with one hand and grabbed his sharpest knife with the other. He sliced the dough into hairline strands as thin as he possibly could. The first few were too big, but he soon found the right rhythm, and each successive one got a little bit thinner. The threads that were the slightest wafted into the air and into the dining room.
Guido placed an upside-down bowl, set up on a custom-made frame on the table and the noodles floated into the bottom of the bowl, swirling around like a cloud.
Chef Rags cut the last strand a little too thin and the knife sheared off the slightest wafer of his skin. It disappeared into the line of noodles and into the dining room.
The critic gobbled it all down with one gulp and frowned. “Bland as a crater and, although I am sure very entertaining to the common rabble, the bottom of my table has more flavour than this. It does however remind me of something I have tasted from restaurants many times before.” He made sure to pronounce the last word very clearly: “Failure.”
Chef Rags felt the whole place sinking. Grits was getting buried in orders trying to handle everything else on his own; the lineup at the door was backed out the door, and the other guests were starting to complain as the critic was handing out a serious gloom that was infecting the entire place.
Guido hung up his arms. “I cannot fathom what zis animal needs,” he said. “We’ve given him everything.”
“Everything,” Chef Rags said as something inside the muddle of his brain sparked up. He flung open the fridge and started unloading everything he could get his hands on onto the table. “Grits I want one of every dish you can make.”
“But that will take all night.”
“I don’t need the whole plate full, just a bite of everything that goes into the dish. Get a spoonful of all your sauces and a sprig of every garnish. Bonillia, get your hair fork ready. Guido. Drinks, and lots of them.”
Everyone sprang into action. Plates and cutlery and bowls were laid ready as well as most of the contents of the fridge and pantry. The grill was cranked up to max, frying pans were seasoned up, and every ingredient the place had was at the ready.
Chef Rags looked into the eyes of his staff and realized he should probably say something; something inspirational that his mentors had passed on to him before going into culinary battle. Something to tell his staff they were appreciated for working under such stressful conditions. He opened his mouth but unplanned public speaking certainly wasn’t one of his strong points. The words got choked up in his throat.
Grits put a hand on his shoulder. “S’okay there, boss,” he said, “We already know. Snail-hunting season, right?”
What a guy.
The temperature of Chef Rags’ blood spiked with the temperature of the kitchen. His knife was a ninja’s blade and his hands were a blur as he and Grits roasted and grilled and baked and sautéed a smidge of everything they could get their hands on. Chef Rags signaled to Bonillia when the first dish hit the pass. Her fork stabbed the bite-sized portion and streaked towards the critic.
Guido held up a glass of wine: “Bon appétit.”
PWA-TWANG! The critic’s nose batted the fork away with the knife he had stuck into the table.
Bonillia yelped but got control of the fork in a moment. She gave Chef the “What now?” look.
“What are you waiting for?” Chef Rags put another dish up. “Everything you’ve got!”
It was on.
Bonillias’ fork would stab a morsel of food and try to slip into the critic’s mouth. Every time it got close the nose would swat it away. Her eyes were stone and she was standing up like a champion, but she cringed with each hit, and the strain was showing.
“But, Monsieur,” Guido said, “zis is the new style of cuisine. You must relax and enjoy the experience.”
“This is not dinner!” The critic parried another attempt. “This is a fencing match! Perchance—”
Guido twitched so hard his face almost folded in half.
The critic’s nose shot towards it.
Guido snagged the thing and yanked it up into the air. With the other hand, he dumped a glass of wine down the critic’s stretched-open mouth. The wand flung a forkful of food down the critic’s gullet, and Guido held the nose up as it zipped back and forth, each time loaded with another dish of flavours.
Baked fish-fish with cosmos sauce, grasshopper cheese and asteroid fruit, dagger-plant leaf tossed in red dwarf vinaigrette, grilled squish tail over crispy star sprinkle, light-speed cakes stuffed with nadir nuts, dried meat melon dipped in comet sugar, cured gojira crab over spaceberry jelly, poached alien eggs and quasar sauce, roasted meteorite mushrooms with pulsar pickles and gravity bread with big bang butter.
Guido kept the snout up, drinks going down and the critic teetering on the back two legs of his chair.
Food and wine went down the critic at a record pace. The last bit of anything Chef Rags could muster was launched into him and the critic reeled back in his chair. Eyes bugged out and incoherent blubbers sputtered from his lips.
“Don’t forget the space parsley, dear.”
Chef Rags’ senses went nuclear as his nose lit up like a pinball machine crashing through the atmosphere. He looked over to the stairway and there was his mom, holding in both hands, the biggest plate of homemade alien meatloaf he had ever seen. “Bonillia!” he shouted and held out a sprig of space parsley.
Bonillias’ fork stabbed the meatloaf right through the middle and erupted through the other side. It zipped under Chef Rags’ hand, snagged the space parsley and the bone tied around his wrist.
Everything plunged into the critic’s mouth before he could stop it.
The critic jerked like a stuck pig. His whole body rippled purple and scarlet and emerald. The nose went ballistic, stretching and stabbing in every direction. He careened back over the tipping point of the chair and with a mighty, slobbering, spastic, all-encompassing wail crashed to the floor with an impact that launched everyone around him a full inch off the floor.
Chef Rags rushed into the dining room and looked down at the critic, who was gleefully using the bone as a toothpick. Every single fork in his mouth was shining in a smile so big it could’ve swallowed Chef Rags whole. The nose shot out, grabbed Chef Rags, and brought him in for a hug that almost squeezed the juice out of him. “Ambrosial! Scrumptious! Nectarous! So many flavours, Chef! How would you like to be rich and famous... and rich again?”
Copyright © 2023 by Ronin Fox
