Work Text:
You're feeling a bit under the weather. Still, it's nothing a good meal can't fix.
Whatever might be happening outside, the food supply inside the manor is untouched. You have all the ingredients you could ask for, plenty of time to put them to good use, and so many people in need of feeding. You're sure some of them will start to arrive soon. With how loud the clock is getting, it can't be long until dinner time. Your head hurts.
Really, you're spoilt for choice on what to make. You've never felt so inspired before! Nothing has ever come to you easily, not even cooking; you're good at that, unlike everything else you've tried, but you're still always striving for some level of skill, of recognition, that's just out of reach. You want something that you are incapable of achieving or even naming. Despite your best efforts to find meaning, nothing has ever genuinely satisfied you. Today, you think you'll make goulash. What better way to celebrate returning to your hometown than by making a local delicacy?
You perch on the edge of the kitchen counter and rest your leg on the chopping board, rolling your trousers up. The angle is a little awkward. But you've managed much harder dishes under much worse conditions - at least you don't have to share this kitchen with anyone else! When you worked at your parents' restaurant, it used to drive you crazy to have them getting in your way while you tried to work. You're a bit of a lone wolf like that. People are very difficult. This is easy; all you have to do is cut.
A swing of the meat cleaver. Blood sprays your face with surprising force, and you grimace - you hate a mess with food and drink.
The blood makes it difficult to see, but you can feel that you didn't manage to break through the bone first try. It doesn't hurt enough for that. You take another stab (that would be funny, if you were stabbing instead of cutting, but you aren't, and so it isn't) at it. Flesh splits. Tendons snap. You sever veins and arteries and you forget the difference. Eventually, you cut through your leg just below the knee.
Satisfied, you hop down off of the counter so that you can start chopping the meat-
-and slip in the pool of your own blood. Whoops.
You lay there winded for a long moment, blood soaking into your clothes, your vision too blurry to even think about trying to get up, before your newfound sense of urgency drags you back into yourself. Never in your life have you been as motivated as you are now. You have ideas, you have a train full of hungry mouths to feed, an appreciative audience. You're a vessel for something greater than yourself, filled with a sense of purpose that is so unfamiliar it would kill you if you could truly appreciate it. The pain barely even registers past the sound of ticking, counting down ever louder. You'd be glad of it if you noticed; it's nice to feel anything at all. The only thought you have room for is that you're starving. And you're a chef, aren't you? Isn't this the one thing you can do?
For most of your life, your predominant emotion has been lethargy. You bore yourself to the point of tears. There is nothing you wouldn't do to keep hold of this frantic, desperate energy you feel moving inside of you, pushing at the seams of your body, reshaping it. You want it to tear its way out of you.
Something in you aches like hunger. You claw your way upright, bloody hands slipping on the smooth tile, until you're leaning heavily on the counter.
Goulash is popular, more so than most Prehevilian dishes, which tend to be an acquired taste. People don't know what they're missing; you'd lived in Rondon for nearly two decades, and their cuisine pales in comparison. You wonder how this town has changed so much since your time. What happened to the mayor? There's a darkness below this manor that calls to you, but something else got there first. It's popular, but what if someone doesn't like goulash? You should cook an alternative, just in case.
You feel lazy, but it's a relief to slump over the chopping board. Takes some of the weight off of your remaining leg. You roll up your sleeves, irritated by the red stains littering them, blood smeared across your skin. The meat cleaver is heavy in your hand as you bring it down across your arm.
It doesn't hurt enough.