Fortnightly Writing Competition - Food

[WHAM]

We all need to eat, and the crafting of food is one of the finest, most delicate arts known to man. The tools of the trade are as varied as they are powerful, and the most powerful foodomancers can feed a king as easily as an army.



Your theme for this contest is: FOOD

One of the major themes of the story you write must have to do with cooking or otherwise preparing food.
The story must also, in some way, include a frying pan. (Or, as Brock showcases in the image above: a 'drying pan'.)

The deadline for this contest is 23:59:59 (UTC) on the 10th of January.. (Edited as of 7th Jan 2021)

The voting categories, in which you may award one point per category, are as follows:

- Best use of a frying pan or other cooking tool
- Best overall story
- Best technical writing


May the best tale win!

[Sinitrena]

One of the major themes of the story you write must have to do with cooking or otherwise preparing food.
The story must also, in some way, include a frying pan.

I assume you accept baking? I hate cooking.
Funnily enough, my mother just gifted me a cooking book with cake recipies that are made in frying pans for my birthday. I didn't have a chance to try any of the recipies yet, but I just might in the next few days. (Assuming I have the ingredients. I'm certainly not going to go shopping just for some random ingredients right now.)
Maybe that will give me a story idea.

[WHAM]

I assume you accept baking? I hate cooking.
Funnily enough, my mother just gifted me a cooking book with cake recipies that are made in frying pans for my birthday. I didn't have a chance to try any of the recipies yet, but I just might in the next few days. (Assuming I have the ingredients. I'm certainly not going to go shopping just for some random ingredients right now.)
Maybe that will give me a story idea.

Baking is a close relative of cooking, so it will be accepted. We may consider the term "cooking" in the rules to encompass any methods via which food is prepared for consumption by changing the properties of, and/or by combining of, an ingredient or ingredients.

I just love cooking, and am using Christmas time as an excuse to cook some nice things, so I had the theme on my mind.

[Mandle]

The Exit Ramp For Home

Have you ever had that moment when you felt so angry or surprised or shocked by something that your vision got, like, all warped for a second and you felt a weird tugging sensation around your eyeballs?

I'm guessing, in the case of the "angry" response, that this visual feedback is what inspired the saying "Seeing red", even though I'm a pretty laid back kinda guy and haven't really gotten angry enough, not that I can remember anyway, to, you know, "See red" because of it.

I'm guessing that the warping of vision and the weird feeling around the eyeballs is because of a deeply ingrained reflex in the brain trying to expand our field of vision by putting extreme stress on the muscles around our eyes, but stretching them out of shape sideways, in the case of us humans, because of the overlying thick brows of our skulls interfering, instead of the positive outcome intended, like in the case of a eagle's skull structure where it would expand the eye in equal measures, both horizontally and vertically and provide an increased field of vision that would be beneficial in a life-or-death situation.

And, yes, as you can tell already by the previous run-on sentence: I am a nerd... and not a very good writer, but bear with me because the next sentence will hook you back into my story, or at least that's what my online subscription to "Master's Course On Writing" told me.

I have only experienced that feeling once in my life, and here's why:

(I'm going to switch from the usual first-person past tense perspective here to a first-person present tense narrative because Neil Gaiman told me on YouTube that this is a good tool to use to make the reader feel like they are along for the ride and also to provide an illusion of tension in the story that is lost through the fact that the reader already knows the narrator survived the events of their coming tale. But, just in advance so you know, this is not a story where you would have to worry about the fact of my possible survival or not so I'm not sure why I left that last bit in, but here we go: )

So, I'm driving my car, a lovely orange fastback Datsun SSS 180B, along the Pacific Highway in New South Wales, Australia, from Sydney back to my hometown of Newcastle in the dead of night, but it's Christmas Eve so all the windows are open and a balmy summer breeze blows through the car.

The radio is playing "The Boys Light Up" by some band whose name I have forgotten but it's a good tune to keep me awake as the red reflectors on the road and the white ones on the guard rails flash by.

A big semi-trailer pours by in the outside lane with every edge of its rectangular frame decked out in warning lights of green and red.

My sweet ride barely shudders in its backwash and I start to come up with an ode-to-thou-poem in my nerd head: "Oh, big truck, Christmas tree of the road..."

But then a distance marker, a little square sign on a post next to the road reading "N 10", flashes by and I lose that train of thought and start thinking about how it is going to feel for me returning to my hometown of Newcastle, only 10 kilometers away now, after so many years and after so much has changed and so much has gone away.

And that's right when I get an idea to distract myself with from my sad reflections, or more likely, make them sadder. I dunno, it's just something to do I guess.

Even though I know it's disconnected and long gone, I take my smartphone from its holder on the dashboard, and I dial the number of the house I grew up in: (0249) 63-48-31.

I'm sure that either I'll get a message saying that this number does not exist, or that a random stranger will pick up and then I will just tell them that I was just calling my mum's old number because she has passed on and that they have had her number reassigned to them and thanks for the trouble and maybe have a little chat and then that's that done and done and then...

"Hello, Ross!? Where are you? You're not calling while you're driving are you?!"

And this is the moment where my human-evolved, and not eagle-evolved, eyeball muscles pulled sideways more than they should have pulled upwards and downwards and my vision got all warped for a couple of seconds and the red reflectors on the highway and the white ones on the road doubled horizontally.

The voice I heard over the phone was my mother's voice.

And, as you have probably already read above, my mother had been dead for a couple of years by this point.

I didn't put the car into a panicked spin and I didn't slam on the brakes and I didn't swerve it over onto the shoulder.

Oh, shit, I've screwed up the present-tense narrative that's supposed to make the story more immediate and vibrant for you, but I can't be fucked going back and fixing it (sorry Mr. Gaiman) but I'll get it back on track now:

I just keep on driving and my eyes readjust after a second or two and I say, "Mum? Where are you?".

And my mum's voice replies from the phone, "I'm at home. I can hear that you're driving! I'm hanging up!".

And the connection ends.

Right about now I see the big green sign over the highway telling me to take the next exit to turn off to the outer suburbs of Newcastle.

I could keep driving and take a closer exit but my mind feels like things are crawling across it so I take the exit.

There is a Shell station up ahead so I pull into the parking area. I get out of the car and I walk across the asphalt, still hot from the residual heat of the day. I pick up an iced-coffee drink from the fridge and a Flake bar from the racks under the register. I pay for the shit I bought and go back to my car.

I drink a few swallow of the coffee and eat half the Flake bar, spilling a lot onto my front  and the seat and the floor-mat but I don't care.

I start the car and start to pull out of the petrol station. A car blasts by with an elongated "HOOOOOooooonk", and I realize that I'm looking the wrong way to check for traffic.

I get myself together and pull out into traffic when a gap opens. I follow the familiar roads to the house that used to belong to my family before I sold it off after... Well, best not to think about "after what" at this point, I decide.

I pull up in front of the house and see that there are lights on inside. It's gotta be the new owners. I'll just ring the bell and annoy them a bit. Maybe ask them if I can come inside and take a look around at what they've done with my childhood home.

The bell doesn't ring. I remember that it's been broken for years.

I knock on the door and no one answers.

I take out my key-chain and I use the one key I never thought I would ever use again.

I push on the stubborn wooden door and it opens.

I go inside. Everything is as it was. Even the paintings I took from the walls that SHOULD be hanging in my own home are somehow back where they used to be.

I smell food. It's the smell of my mother's Christmas dinner:

Roast pork and potatoes and pumpkin all broiling away in an electric cooker and smothered and swimming in delicious oil.

I take the couple of turns to get to the kitchen and there she is. The table is laid out for two.

I say "Mum!" and she says "Ross!" and we hug and she says "Sit down. The gravy has just reached the boil.".

And we sit at the same table I broke apart with a sledge-hammer and put out for the trash collection years ago, and she brings out the plates for us both and the roast pork is still sizzling and gleaming and the veges are cut into quarters just like always, and I pour her a sweet sherry and she giggles and says "Maybe just one, then.".

It turns into more than just one and I end up having to help her to the double-bed where her and dad used to sleep and make sure she is in the middle so she doesn't roll off and hurt herself during the night while I'm gone.

I look down at my mum, pleasantly drunk and full of Christmas roast, and she doesn't look young like I remember her from my childhood, but she also doesn't look as old as I remember her during her final years. She looks somewhere in-between and then I see the beautifully wrapped present for me at the end of my parents' bed, just like it was always there in our household, instead of under the tree, so that I would always have to wake them up and they could watch me unwrap it, and I reach for it and grab it and...

Then a big semi-trailer pours by in the outside lane with every edge of its rectangular frame decked out in warning lights of green and red.

My sweet ride barely shudders in its backwash and I start to come up with an ode-to-thou-poem in my nerd head: "Oh, big truck, Christmas tree of the road..."

But then a distance marker, a little square sign on a post next to the road reading "N 10", flashes by and I lose that train of thought and start thinking about how it is going to feel for me returning to my hometown of Newcastle, only 10 kilometers away now, after so many years and after so much has changed and so much has gone away.

I snap back from my daydream and, in a whimsical moment, think to myself "But what if it wasn't a daydream after all and what if I looked into the back seat of the car and the present was sitting there?"

I look back, and it's not there.

Would have been nice though.

[Sinitrena]

Slice of Life

The flour trickled through the sieve and covered the beaten eggs in a thin white snow before the flakes sunk into the mass. Granny kept beating the dough with her sinewy hands while her granddaughter, Meara, moved the apple pieces from one side to the other on the chopping board. When Granny wasn‘t looking, she tried to sneak one of the pieces into her mouth but before it even reached her lips, Granny whacked her hand lightly with the large wooden spoon she used to mix the dough.

„Shouldn‘t ya be mindin‘ the butter, lil‘ thief?“she asked with a lopsided grin.

“The butter is boring!” But of course it needed to be taken care of. It was her job to make sure it melted correctly, became clear and not brown in the old frying pan that was so beaten-up that it had become oval a long time ago and its bottom was so uneven that the pan could hardly stand properly over the fire and the butter always congregated on one side.

“Why don’t you ever buy a new pan?” Meara asked while she stirred the melting fat around the elevated middle of the pan. “You buy everything new, but keep this old pan.”

“Oh, lil’ cake, it was my mother’s before me and her mother’s before her. When I’m no more, it’ll be your mother’s an’ one day yours. It’s important to keep the traditions.”

“Like the tradition to always make two cakes?”

Granny nodded wisely. “Jus’ like that.” With the practice of many years, she swapped the frying pan out of Meara’s hand and added the hot butter to the mixture of eggs, milk and flour and the just added honey that melted into the mixture. With what seemed like the same movement, Granny picked the apples up from the board and threw them into the pan and added another generous amount of butter.

“Now, stir this carefully, lil’ one.” Over the fire, the apples began to sizzle quickly and Meara had to give her full attention to the pan in order to avoid burning them, while Granny kneaded and stirred the thick dough into an even mixture that she then distributed into two baking pans. Once they were equally full, she turned back to her granddaughter and with a critical look, she took the wooden spoon out of the girls hand.

“Stir constantly, stir evenly; to make your cakes all heavenly!” she admonished lightly with the old proverb Meara had heard every time they baked since she was just a toddler.

Meara pouted a bit. She knew perfectly well how to soften the apples and she also knew how much honey was needed and how much milk. Still, it was Granny who now took the ladle and added them with her usual clam, stopping the sizzling and thickening the juice of the cut-up apples immediately.

Quickly, she scooped half of the caramelised apples from the frying pan and poured them over the dough in one of the baking dishes. “This is the cake for us,” she said almost like it was a well-know ritual. Leaving the first cake alone for a moment as some of the apples sank into the dough, she stirred further in the frying pan away from the fire.

Meara passed her the box with the special ingredient she only used a couple of times a year, but the girl knew that today was one of these days as Granny had not taken the second half from the pan immediately.

“Keep stirrin’”, she said as the pan and spoon ended up in Meara’s hands and the wooden box with dark intarsia in her own. She opened the box with the tiny key she always wore around her neck and then sprinkled some of the white powder inside over the apples.

“Always remember, lil’ cake: one for ‘em, one for us...”

“… and never you be treasonous.” Meara finished the sentence with her grandmother, with the most bored voice, knowing the words all her life but never really understanding their meaning.

The powder quickly melted into the mix and Granny poured these apples over the dough in the second identical dish, before locking the little box again.

“And that one is for ‘em.” With these words, Granny opened the door of the oven and put the two cake dishes next to each other. “Now we wait.”

That was always the worst part. While Meara just stared at the oven, her grandmother had other work to do, cleaning the frying pan and the spoon, the sieve and the bowl. But cleaning was no fun and it became even more boring when a knock on the door distracted Granny, so that she couldn’t tell stories or laugh with the girl.

Not paying attention to Meara, Granny let the old man in and offered him a seat at their kitchen table.

“Is the cake ready yet?” he asked without preamble and without even deigning to look at Meara. She was just a child and of no importance to him, in the same way he was of no importance to her, just a boring distraction for her grandmother.

“It’s bakin’ right now.”

“And the special gift?”

“It’s added, it’s added, don’ you worry.”

Meara put her chin into her fist and pouted. This was so boring: Waiting for the cake to bake, waiting for it to cool, listening to some adults talking about time â€" three days â€" effects â€" stomach pains, headache, cough, growing pains â€" traces â€" none â€"  and the guild’s honour, was just so uninteresting. Meara rather dreamed. She day-dreamed about the sweet apples sticking to her teeth, the honey caressing her tongue and just how great the special ingredient must be. Granny never wasted any of it on her own family. How sweet would it be, how spicy, how soft? She kept it in the locked box and always said it was just for the clients, for the nobles that paid for the best cake in town. And not even always, only on very special occasions. Just once, just once, Meara wanted to taste this ingredient, but Granny always kept the key close to her heart and the box itself hidden in a cupboard.

One day, she always said, you will use it too, one day people pay for your cakes and someone pays you to add the powder.

Meara didn’t care. If only the cake were ready yet, if only the man would leave and she could play with Granny.

Finally. After many a reassurance from Granny that everything was taken care of and the cake would be ready when the servant came to collect it, the man left, satisfied. Of course he didn’t know about the second cake. For some reason, Granny always ever talked about one cake with her clients. There was no need for them to know that she used up some of the ingredients, especially the expensive honey, for the family, after all.

“Were you countin’, lil’ one?” Granny asked once she had escorted her friend out of the door of the bakery. “How much longer now?”

Of course Meara had been. Even though the sand trickled down in the old hourglass, she didn’t need to look at it. As all good bakers, at least in Granny’s opinion, she had developed an instinct for the time a cake needed.

“It’s ready?” Even though Meara was sure, her voice still betrayed some doubt.

“Shall we check?” Opening the heavy door of the oven, Granny took the old knitting needle that hadn’t been used for knitting in decades and first plunged it deep into the family cake, then she moved her fingers along the metal. She grunted satisfied, nodding. Then she offered the needle to Meara. The girl repeated her grandmother’s actions for the other cake and nodded wisely.

“Is it done?”

Meara nodded again.

Each with a towel wrapped around their hand, the old woman and the young girl pulled the cakes out of the oven and set them on the table to cool.

“Now we wait.” Granny said.

“Again?” Meara whined, even though she knew perfectly well that the cake needed to cool a bit before they could turn it, lest it would break.

And again a knock on the door disrupted the chance for Granny to distract her and make the waiting time shorter. At least she kept the visitor at the door for now.

“Not ready yet...” - “Needs to cool...” - “Too early...”

The words drifted over to Meara and the annoyance in Granny’s voice drifted with them and entered Meara’s mind. Didn’t they know that a good cake needed time? Didn’t they know that the best cake in town needed proper care? Didn’t they know that baking was an art and that Granny used special ingredients just so the nobles could have the best of the best?

Meara clicked her fingernail against the hot dish of the ordered cake, whipping the metal with her finger in annoyed anger. One for us, one for them, but why did they get to eat the special ingredient? Why did they get to taste something she would never taste?

The dishes looked identical to her. But of course Granny knew which one was which. She always kept track of it, but out of their form? And Meara knew how to turn out a cake. The baked dough had slightly shrunk away from the edges and the apples had stiffened, indicating that it had cooled enough.

Meara grabbed the two towels and took the family cake, soon to be special cake, into her hands. With practised movements, she turned the dish upside down and, with a little shake, let the cake slip onto the table. Just as quickly, she grabbed the flawless cake and turned it around again, so that the apples that were still like a blanked on top of the dough would not be squished. Setting the still hot cake on one of the expensive porcelain plates Granny only used for her most affluent clients, she sauntered towards the door.

“Here you are, sir.”, she said meekly, offering the plate balanced on her fingertips to the servant with a deep curtsy.

“Finally,” the man grumbled, nearly ripping the plate out of the girl’s hands, and turned on his heels without even offering a thank you or just another look at the two bakers.

Meara and her grandmother looked at each other and shook their heads as soon as the servant was out of sight. Then, Granny put her arm around the girl’s shoulder and stirred her back towards the kitchen.

“Ah,” she said, inhaling the scent of the freshly baked cake as she took the towels like her granddaughter before and removed the second cake from its dish with an even more practised routine as Meara. While the girl had to shake the dish just this tiny bit to get the cake out, for Granny it just obeyed her will and soon it sat on one of their plates.

“Can I have a piece?” Meara begged, already getting a sharp knife from the cupboard.

Granny shook her head but the indulging smile told something else. She took the knife out of the girl’s hand and cut into the juicy cake. Some of the apples ran down the cut but most stayed in place. She offered the piece to Meara and slung her arm around her shoulders again.

“Don‘ let your mother know and don‘ you come crying when your tummy hurts later.” she teased.

Even if it would hurt, fresh, warm cake was worth it. And to finally try the special ingredient...

---------------------------------------

Please don’t ask me what dialect/accent Granny is speaking; I have no idea.

[Baron]

Chez WHAM?  Oh, hi - me again.  Sorry for missing my reservation (again), but in my defence they've been keeping me at work after-hours a lot this week.  Any chance of an extension to the weekend? 

[WHAM]

Chez WHAM?  Oh, hi - me again.  Sorry for missing my reservation (again), but in my defence they've been keeping me at work after-hours a lot this week.  Any chance of an extension to the weekend? 

Oh all right then. And here I was, hoping to have some delicious and delectable light reading in my hands, but I guess I can delay my gratification by a few more days.

New deadline:
23:59:59 (UTC) on the 10th of January.

You now have a whole weekend to cook up your story, Baron (and anyone else still working). I expect to see some freshly baked results!

[Sinitrena]

You now have a whole weekend to cook up your story, Baron (and anyone else still working). I expect to see some freshly baked results!

Butbutbut, waiting so long will make my cake stale. 

No, the more entries the better, always. And I'm sure we'll get something juicy and tasty from Baron.

[Baron]

Out of the Frying Pan

   There is a hunger in some men, an emptiness behind the eyes quite separate from the state of their stomach.  Indeed, such men could feast for a thousand nights and still be empty inside.  Like a locust, theirs is a joyless consumption that serves naught but the destruction of all they love.  I have known many such men, for they are not as uncommon as you might think.  One of my favourites gives me a roguish wink each morning from the mirror.

   Now it must be said that different men hunger for different sustenance.  You may lick your chops at the prospect of my story advancing, but to each their own taste!  Some men hunger for the meat and potatoes of honour and glory.  Others are somewhat bizarrely obsessed with the cold broccoli of divine service....  For some it is the cheap wine of beautiful women - with the sadly predictable hangovers, and for yet others the rich gravies of gold and treasure.  Me, I'm more of a deserts man myself.  I hunger for nothing but the sweetness of revenge.

   Now I'm not proud of much in my many misspent years, but I do take pride in the fact that I've seen it all.  You could not invent a character with more deranged appetites than those that I've seen in real life, not if you fed your mind nothing but toad grease and purple flower smoke for ten years and a day!  I've met pirates and prospectors and thieves and thespians.  Merchants and magi and minstrels and madmen; hunters and hustlers and hangmen and whores.  Lords and losers, soldiers and sailors.  I tell you I once met a priest and a pervert and a pimp while only shaking one hand!  But nothing in my life could have prepared me for the man I met on the marge of Mount Malice last summer....

   I was in the Southlands tracking my quarry of three dozen years.  The jungle air was thicker than the web of vines that clung at my every step.  I was a hundred miles from nowhere and six miles from Hell when the last of my strength finally dripped off the end of my nose.  I made my camp in a clearing haunted by the shattered ruins of a village strangled with bones and weeds.  My bed was a downy soft mattress of ash eight inches thick and still smelling of burnt human hair.  Vultures serenaded me into a restless slumber.

   And then in the depths of that unpeopled wilderness a man walked out of the scrub, followed by another and another.  I swear two vultures knocked heads in disbelief, which is what I would have done as well if anyone had been so stupid as to come along with me.  More men emerged from the tangled brush, each more laden than the last with baskets and boxes and troves and trunks.  And then the final five emerged, four of them shaking at the effort of carrying the fifth on a grand, glittering litter.

   On the litter lounged a man larger than I have ever seen.  He was 36 stone if he weighed a pebble, and three chins removed from handsome, although he did keep his hair well-trimmed and his face meticulously shaved.  He wore something like a toga that was sumptuous but ill-tailored, as if the only regal garment he could find to clothe his girth was a royal-sized table cloth.  Golden bracelets decorated his fingers where rings would clearly fail to span the distance.  And his facial expression veered between patrician boredom and pig-like self-indulgence.

   â€œAt last, a fellow traveller!” He rumbled more than spoke, flailing his limbs like a turtle stuck upside down on its shell.  “This calls for a feast!”  And I kid you not, his servants set about preparing the most delectable spread of gourmet foods I've ever seen in a palace, let alone in the depths of the jungle wilderness.  How they cooked such fine dishes with nothing but what they carried on their backs is beyond my grasp, but no sooner had we finished one course then two more were served, each more delicious than the last.

   But even more remarkable was this bloated man, a gentleman adventurer named Leonius.  His stamina for eating was simply prodigious.  You could not dump food off a plate faster than this man could eat, and even for his girth I could not believe where he managed to cram it all.  I was painfully stuffed by the fourth course, but this man continued eating nine more.  But for all the sumptuousness of the food, he said he could barely taste it at all.  He confided that the only thing he could truly savour was a new ingredient, and when he found one it was simply bliss.  But then soon the new became the old, and he hungered for that blissful state once more.  As all the foods of the settled lands became known to him he was driven ever further afield to seek out ever more exotic foodstuffs.  In his desperation for the novel he had turned to the recipes of yore, half-myth and half-magic, scrawled out by the insatiable gluttons of ages long lost.  And it was this that had led him to those ruins in that clearing in that jungle by that mountain.

   Though Leonius was evasive about the specifics, I soon cottoned to the fact that he was seeking the same beast as I. It has had many names over the eons, but to me it was always called the Worm.  It was a serpent of monstrous length and fearsome appetite, that roved the world attempting to sate it's own ever growing hunger.  It was cursed to feed off only the most absolute terror of its victims, which it usually gleaned by burning them alive with its fiery breath.  Leonius called it the Glubbon, and he claimed the ancient sources had deemed its tongue to be the most divine food the world has ever known.  He would not rest until he had just the smallest taste of this marvellous food, even if the questing for it killed him. 

   Truth be told, I was more interested in ripping out the Worm's heart.  But I wasn't against teaming up to achieve my goal.  Aye, I could see in Leonius' eyes that he was mad with yearning for one last self-destructive taste of bliss.  But at the root of it, was his hunger any different from mine?  Or for that matter, was either of ours any different from that of the dreaded Glubbon itself?  We're all driven by hunger, in our own way.

   And so we agreed to work together to achieve our aim, which involved a rather painful amount of more feasting.  Deep into the night we schemed and plotted and talked and dreamed.  Indeed the boundary between sleep and wakefulness blurred as our plans grew ever more extravagant and the food comas set in.  In my mind's eye I could clearly see the path to vengeance, as if the fog of nearly four decades were suddenly lifted and the landscape of my wretched task at last exposed to the light of day.  But with this dazzling clarity came a sense of giddy surrealism that bore ill for our enterprise.  Never has clarity had much to do with the muddy reality of real life.

   And so I woke with the half-twilight of dawn licking at the fringes of the clearing, an ominous mist rolling through the trees like the ooze of a ghostly volcano.  There was sweat on my face, but I could not tell if it was from the muggy weather or the food sweats or the painful dreams of a hapless soul.  But what I could tell was that the ground trembled like grass in the wind in anticipation of the coming storm.

   â€œIt's here!” I yelled as I tried to sit up, my sore stomach protesting at the effort.  I fumbled with the clasp of my weapons belt, cursing that it no longer fit around my waist as it should.  Leonius merely waved me away, mumbling nonsense and draping a napkin over his face as an ostrich might bury its head in the sand.  But his men were up and scurrying, although it was hard to tell if they were preparing for battle or preparing another feast (the many implements they produced could easily serve either task).  Small solace it brought them, for in an instant the Worm was upon us.

   The first man near the fringe of the clearing had barely time to scream before the beast swallowed his terror in one fell blast.  The second shrieked like a child before succumbing to the same fate.  One by one, as fast as your eyes will blink, the party was consumed in a grisly meal of flame and dread.  And the Worm bore down on me as well, and I felt the kiss of its burning breath upon my cheek.  But it could not taste the fear in my heart for there was none â€" not yet â€" and so it only seared off my ear and my left arm.

   And lo there was this rumbling roar the likes of which I'd never heard, even I a hunter of demonic beasts.  It raised the hair on my remaining arm and I dare say at that moment I knew fear, for I knew not what dread menace was now upon me, and that ignorance made me cringe.  I rolled on the ground in abject terror, flames still dancing from my cauterized wounds.  I turned to see it gliding through the sky, not the grim spectre of the Glubbon but rather an obese angel possessed of his own righteous flame.  As my vision cleared I could see it was none other than Leonius, swinging from a vine of unexpected strength, waving a dinner fork and hollering an unworldly battle cry as the first rays of dawn streaked through the trees.  And I swear, even from a distance I could see the hunger in his eyes, the yearning for death or delicacy.  It may have taken his last six men to heave him into position for this last glorious charge, but as he flew through the air aglow like a shining missile I have not the slightest doubt that this was his finest hour.

   And there was the Glubbon, looming over me but turned to face this most unexpected opponent.  The vile worm lunged and the vine snapped and somewhere in the middle the two met head on, a battle of appetites the ages have never known.  Although the moment will hang in my mind for the rest of my days, it must have all been over in just an instant.  The earth shook and the dust flew and then the world was nothing but a choking cloud of ash.

   What I do know is this: in the days to come I was to lament my newfound lack of hunger.  I am now but an empty husk with no prospect of ever growing full again.  Like the ash of that jungle meadow, I am but a wraith of something that once was, once hungered, once lived.  I should have died in that pit of ash.  That is what I hungered for.  Now I am cursed like the great Leonius, not to know what I hunger for, but only to wander with the wretched hope that I might one day find it.

   As for that hero among men, he died in the throat of that gruesome worm.  But lament not for the fallen, for the Glubbon itself choked on that man who was too large for this world, and certainly too huge for just one mouthful.  Maimed as I was I could manage to hack neither heart nor hero free from the beast.  So there is no way to tell exactly how either of them met their end, but I would like to think the hateful creature died with a small chunk missing from its tongue, and brave Leonius with an expression of purest bliss.

[WHAM]

Why didn't I make this post yesterday? No idea...

The deadline for writing hath ended! 'tis time to read and to vote.

Our competing stories are:


The Exit Ramp For Home by Mandle

Slice of Life by Sinitrena

Out of the Frying Pan by Baron


And as a reminder, the voting categories, in which you may award one point per category, are as follows:

- Best use of a frying pan or other cooking tool
- Best overall story
- Best technical writing

The reading and voting deadline is 16th of January 23:59:59 UTC (so the winner has Sunday to start us off into next fortnight)

[Sinitrena]

@Mandle: The story is a bit rambly, at least at the beginning. I was a bit disappointed that the mystery turned out to be just a day-dream ("It was just a dream!"  is usually not the best trope.) but there was a certain fell of reality to the story, the memories flowing back when you are going back to a place from the past. There are some smaller aspects that are never properly explained ("I follow the familiar roads to the house that used to belong to my family before I sold it off after... Well, best not to think about "after what" at this point, I decide.", for example) and they don't add too much, so leaving them out wouldn't hurt. I think the importance of cooking to the story is relatively minor. Yes, food is mentioned and as a traditional Christmas Dinner (for the family) it adds to the theme of returning and memories, but it is no more important than the present the narrator finds or the door-bell that doesn't work. It's aspects of things that once were normal but are no longer now - none of them more important than the other.
From the prompt: "The story must also, in some way, include a frying pan." - There was no frying pan, not even the mention of one, let alone given some importance to one. Did you miss this part of WHAM's post?

@Baron: Also a slightly rambly story, but in a different sense. It's not exactly purple prose, but it's coming close. On the one hand, that gives us some nice descriptions, on the other, it's a bit tedious to read.
The main character is not particularly well defined. In the beginning, they say their hunger is for revange - so one can expect the story to be about revenge. But it isn't. We get told that the narrator hunted the monster for a while, but not why except that he wanted to and in the end when he would have a reason for revenge, having lost lost an ear and an arm, the monster is already dead. All in all, the narrator's characterization is not very stable. We just do not learn the most important informations about him.
As with Mandle's story, I notice a lack of a frying pan here. It's in the title, but I can hardly count this metaphorical usage (that's only slightly fitting for the story as well). At least cooking has more importance here - it's certainly a huge part of the characterization and motivation of the rich man.


Best use of a frying pan or other cooking tool: Baron - There was nothing in Mandle's story to fit this description and Baron at least has the rich man attack the monster with a fork. That has to count, I guess.
Best overall story: Mandle - It feels more consistent and the overall theme makes more sense.
Best technical writing: Baron - Mainly for the beginning before the actual story starts. The setup is more interesting than the plot.

[WHAM]

Best use of a frying pan or other cooking tool: Sinitrena, for the rich and detailed depiction of some truly mouthwatering baking.
Best overall story: Baron, for the colourful set of characters and motivations, and a final line that made me smile. (Though Sinitrena was very close here, I must admit!)
Best technical writing: Sinitrena, for despite the colourful languages used by others, I could find no flaw or stumbling in this text.

[Baron]

Best use of a frying pan or other cooking tool:  I'm going with Sinitrena because of the use of frying pans and other cooking tools.  Mandle kind of had a few cooking implements on the periphery (as did I), but Sinitrena really made the story about the process of cooking, so a well deserved vote here.

Best overall story:  I'll throw my vote for Mandle on this one, but only by a whisker.  His story had a lot of teases to draw the reader onward, and the authentic (unedited) text was true to the writer's voice, if a bit difficult to read at times.  I was disappointed by the ending of his story (as it really wasn't much of an ending at all), but that attests to his ability to build up expectation, which is deserving of recognition.  Sinitrena's story was much more conventional in terms of the author's voice, but I had a harder time getting into the story.  Maybe I'm a poor baker because I don't slow down to appreciate the details, but I found myself often agreeing with Meara that the whole cake baking process was dragging on a bit too much.  Perhaps a big pay-off at the end of the story would have made the wait worth while, but alas there was no cake for me.  What did the cake taste like?  What did the grandmother do when she tasted the special ingredient (as surely she would)?  How did the nobles react?  The only pleasure I got out of the ending was the hollow self-satisfaction of pointing out that the story seemed to end just as it was about to- 
   
Best technical writing:  I vote Sinitrena here for the proper use of writing conventions, syntax, spelling, tense, and ingredients.  I think Mandle's choice of technique was bold and had potential, but in the end it wasn't really an integral part of the story.  Ross - who if he's that interested in writing as to watch a YouTube course might well be expected to be capable of a quick revision - could easily have told the same story in proper English without losing any meaning.

[Sinitrena]

Sinitrena's story was much more conventional in terms of the author's voice, but I had a harder time getting into the story.  Maybe I'm a poor baker because I don't slow down to appreciate the details, but I found myself often agreeing with Meara that the whole cake baking process was dragging on a bit too much.  Perhaps a big pay-off at the end of the story would have made the wait worth while, but alas there was no cake for me.  What did the cake taste like?  What did the grandmother do when she tasted the special ingredient (as surely she would)?  How did the nobles react?  The only pleasure I got out of the ending was the hollow self-satisfaction of pointing out that the story seemed to end just as it was about to- 

From this little bit of critique, I get the impression that you might not have figured out what the special ingredient actually is? For one, the grandmother would not taste the ingredient, because the person eating is not supposed to taste anything, that's kind of important when you poison people, you know... Therefore, the nobles also didn't react, because they think everything is normal, they didn't want to get poisoned after all. And the ending is that Meara eats the cake, therefore poisoning herself unknowingly (also: unknowingly to Granny - only the reader should be aware of this.)

[WHAM]

And the ending is that Meara eats the cake, therefore poisoning herself unknowingly (also: unknowingly to Granny - only the reader should be aware of this.)

That's how I read it, too, and I both hate the granny for her carelessness and I hate the story for turning such childish innocence into something so twisted and cruel. :C

Oh, but our voting deadline is also at its end!
Math is not my strong suite, but I'm fairly sure I managed it without error this time. The score is:

Slice of Life by Sinitrena - 4

Out of the Frying Pan by Baron - 3

The Exit Ramp For Home by Mandle - 2

Now have a cookie (unpoisoned) for being good sports, and I look forward to the next fortnight!

[Baron]

Huh.  Am I the only person who thought the special white powder was cocaine?  Huh.... 

Congratulations Sinitrena!  I look forward to the next comp! 

[Sinitrena]

I think you were bored to death by how mundane the story seems, that you simply didn't read these lines: "Meara put her chin into her fist and pouted. This was so boring: Waiting for the cake to bake, waiting for it to cool, listening to some adults talking about time â€" three days â€" effects â€" stomach pains, headache, cough, growing pains â€" traces â€" none â€"  and the guild’s honour, was just so uninteresting. Meara rather dreamed."

I had a last symptom listed first - death - but left it out in the end because that would be too obvious. (And I couldn't reasonably argue that Meara wouldn't pick up on that word, she's not that young.) There are no positive symptoms of the powder described, except in Meara's imagination; and Meara clearly doesn't listen to the important part, so the assumption that it could actually be somthing to make the cake better is only in her imagination. Meara is an unreliable narrator.


Thanks for your votes, guys, and see you in the next round, where we have fun with some Pirates!

[WHAM]

I'm just angry at grandma. She should have known better.