For Endmaster's 4th Prompt Contest. The story must involve a cooking competition.

A tale told in verse. A text from your sister requesting a pick up from a party leads to a night of strangeness.

Inspired by Bucky's ballad contest. Though...I wouldn't call this a ballad. I'm not sure what I'd call it, actually, other than exceedingly stupid, and fun to write.

(Don't pay any attention to the scores, they're just for me to track which endings reviewers get.)

HATE.

THE PURITY AND INTENSITY OF MY HATE IS LIKE A THOUSAND MERCILESS, UNQUENCHABLE SUNS.

AND YET, I ONLY NEED ONE...


 

At the front is the bus-man, if that term even applies. Still driving. Still upright. Still too long in every direction. You can’t tell if he listens, but it feels like he hears everything. Behind you, barely making a sound, sits a man with a white, square head. No face. No features. Nothing to read at all. Just a blank presence, steady and quiet. And a few seats away, slouched like something that has lived too long, is a crowned creature whose body looks half-decayed, flesh worn thin as if time itself has been chewing on him.

You move down the aisle, your footsteps dull against the floor. As you pass a pair of beings, your eyes struggle to make sense of them. Amorphous, softly shifting, like wax that never fully settles. No clear faces. No limbs you can count on. They don’t look at you, not directly, but you feel noticed anyway, like your movement disturbed something they were thinking about. You keep walking, heart steady but alert, and take an empty seat near the middle.