Send It, Chef!
Jenny’s nan had a saying for every possible situation.
“Always unpack your kitchen first!” she had said, years earlier, seemingly apropos of nothing at the time.
But, as with so much of her advice and words of wisdom and truisms, it stuck with Jenny long into adulthood, far beyond her nan’s passing.
And so it was that Jenny found herself in the tiny kitchenette of her new flat, having made good her escape from her disastrous last relationship.
Jenny slid the next box over the lino with her foot until it was in front of her. It said ‘KITCHEN #1 FOR JEN’ on the top. She smiled and ripped off the brown tape. She had left considerably lighter on possessions than she would have liked, but her friends had rallied round and she had half a dozen or so boxes of miscellaneous ‘new home’ necessities to open.
Opening the flaps on the box, she peered inside. On top of the contents was a handwritten note. It read:
Welcome home, Jen!
We can’t wait to come round for dinner soon – now you’ve got no excuses!
Love Charlotte and Simon xx
Jen smiled, took the note out, folded it in half and stuffed it into her jeans pocket.
Inside the box was a stack of dented metal saucepans and frying pans, a dog-eared recipe book, a colander and a menagerie of weathered utensils – tongs, wooden spoons, a potato masher, a couple of spatulas and a ladle - bound together with a tangled mess of elastic bands.
Jen got each item out and started finding them new homes in her kitchen cupboards. The utensils went into a draw under the hob and there was a big deep drawer by the sink for the pots and pans and colander. She wasn’t sure where she was going to keep the recipe book, so she slid it along the counter to sort later.
She tore the rest of the tape off the box, folded it down and stacked it by the back door.
Onto the next box – ‘KITCHEN #2 FOR JEN’. She pulled it open and started unpacking the contents: a mismatched kettle and toaster, a chopping board, a ziplock bag of assorted cutlery, three mugs, a couple of chipped ceramic baking trays, a jumble of spice jars in varying states of emptiness, a jar of instant coffee, a bag of sugar and a frankly ludicrously big box of tea bags.
Everything found a home. Jen filled up the kettle, plugged it in and turned it on. She heaped in a spoonful of coffee and one of sugar as a treat. While the kettle chugged and rattled its way to boiling, she leant back on the kitchen counter and looked down at the book.
“Cooking With Friends”. It was old and well-loved, a thick tome with foxing on the edges of the pages and deep burgundy stains from various attempted dishes on the dust jacket.
She flicked it open and looked idly through the pages. ‘Rognons à la Moutarde’, ‘Coniglio alla Cacciatora’, ‘Agnello Brodettato’. The photos looked rich and sumptuous, almost as if she could reach in with a fork, pull out a morsel and it would taste as fresh and as delicious as if it had just been cooked right there in her home.
But they were complicated. Seemingly deliberately and unnecessarily so.
She looked at what seemed to be a simple stew.
A quick scan down the list of ingredients and Jenny only recognised about half.
And then there were the methods. Julienne. Coddle. Emulsify. Bard.
It was kind of Charlotte to send this book over, but the recipes were far too rich for her blood.
She kept flicking back through. As she got closer to the front, photos of the dishes became less fancy, but no less appetising – and the familiarity made Jenny slow down. It was the kind of thing her nan had made for her growing up. Shepherd’s Pie. Cauliflower Cheese. Spaghetti Bolognese.
She looked at the list of ingredients. There were only eight. She recognised them all.
The cooking time? 45 minutes.
“Oh, this is much more my speed,” Jenny said to the empty room.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket and called Charlotte.
“Charl? Thanks so much for the welcome gifts… so when can you and Simon come over for dinner?”
The kettle shook itself to a gurgling crescendo and switched itself off.
The ingredients were out on the laminate worktop, alongside ‘Cooking With Friends’, which was open on the page for Spaghetti Bolognese.
Jenny pulled the apron over her head, secured it with a bow and clapped her hands.
“Right,” she rubbed her palms together nervously, “I can do this!”
This was more to convince herself than anything. Even though Charlotte and Simon were her oldest friends, she still wanted to impress them and thank them for their kindness. They had always been there for her when no one else was and it was the least she could do.
Jenny placed her finger on the first line of the recipe and mouthed each word as she read, to help keep it in her head.
She dutifully put her largest saucepan on the hob and turned on the electric ring. It glowed a startling hue of orange, the colour of a child’s drawing of fire.
“OK, so now I put the mince in and…” Jenny picked up the packet of beef mince and started to twist her body back to tip it into the waiting pan. But, as she did so, the pan jolted sideways, off the hob and onto the adjacent worksurface.
“What the f…”
The pan continued sliding and clattered to the floor.
“UUUUCK?!”
The pan stopped dead, as if it was being pulled into the lino by some huge magnet.
Jenny was frozen.
An itchy sensation prickled at the back of her neck.
Her brain kicked back into action. “It must’ve been wet on the bottom of the pan and it’s just - slipped off…”
She was still trying to make sense of it all as she automatically bent down to pick up the saucepan and put it back on the hob.
As she did, the jar of oregano tipped over, clattering loudly and spilling a drift of the fragrant leaves out over the counter.
Jenny instinctively jumped back with a start, wide-eyed and open-mouthed.
And then the oregano started moving.
It was slow at first, almost as if it was caught in the breeze from an open window, but then it became more definite in its movements. It was being worked by an external force.
Shaped.
Sculpted even.
Jenny caught herself leaning in for a closer look.
There, in swirling, crumbly green was a word.
help
As she watched on, agog, a fifth character drew itself out of the spillage.
help?
Jenny was frozen.
It seemed like ages before she could do anything other than stand and stare open-mouthed at what was happening.
“H-hello. I’m Jenny,” she felt ridiculous introducing herself to her kitchen - and especially a pile of spilled herbs - but this wasn’t your every day occurrence and she had no idea what else to do.
“Ummm, ‘help?’ Do you mean you want help, or you want to… help me or..?”
She tailed off.
“This is ridiculous,” she thought and she was just about to say the same thing out loud – albeit with a few more expletives thrown in for good measure – but before she could, the herbs started moving again.
The leaves whorled and skittered across the counter and spelled out a new word:
yes
Then a line appeared under the word to add extra emphasis.
Before Jenny could respond, all the ingredients on the counter snapped to attention, lining up neatly as if ready to action. Even the spice jars had been alphabetised.
It was one of those moments where, 99 times out of 100, in the same situation, you would have just turned around, taken your keys back to the lettings agent’s office, thanked them and said “I’m moving out.”
But Jenny hesitated.
Yes, she should have wanted to run to the hills, but something else burned brighter and deeper than any fear ever could.
More than anything she wanted to allow herself to trust again.
And, before she could think any further, another flurry of movement.
The script of oregano had changed:
yes?
Before she knew what she was doing, Jenny found herself nodding.
“Yes,” she said quietly, before clearing her throat, “Yes, help.”
A warmth pulsed through the room and made Jenny’s skin flush.
The ingredients started to vibrate, rattling rhythmically against each other. The pans and utensils thrummed with a heavy energy. The book lay motionless at the eye of this culinary storm, as if nailed to the worktop.
And then silence, stillness.
‘Cooking With Friends’ slammed shut, loudly enough to make Jenny step back.
The herbs tumbled and crumbled around the book, while another new word appeared:
hold
Jenny looked from the word to the book and back again.
“Hold the book? I, uh – I can do that. I guess…”
She picked it up, grasped it with both hands and held it aloft.
Nothing.
Jenny chuckled to herself: “What am I doing, this is so ridi…”
A sudden pulse of electricity in the air made Jenny’s hair stand up. Everything started to vibrate again with a strange potential. Her skin felt tight and itchy and she could taste metal.
The sworl of oregano changed again:
good
Jenny’s eyes rolled upwards, her eyelids flickered and spasmed, and then everything went black––
And then, a flutter of light, her eyes blinked open and the smell of simmering tomatoes and garlic filled her nose and flooded her senses.
Jenny let out a satisfied sigh.
She looked down and saw the pan of simmering Bolognese sauce on the hob. It looked as mouth-watering as it did in the photo in the book – if not better.
“What’s your name?” Jenny said to the empty space where she thought the helpful entity might be resting.
There was a moment of silence before the bag of flour on the counter suddenly tipped over, spilling a handful of its contents. It smeared and flattened itself across the surface, and then a trough ploughed by an unseen finger started to trace itself in the powder:
zeb
“Nice to meet you, Zeb,” she said, “And thank you so much.”
She gestured at the bubbling pans: “This all looks amazing and…”
The doorbell went and Jenny stopped abruptly mid-sentence, excitedly put her glass of wine down and rushed to welcome her friends.
As she led them into the flat and down the hall to the kitchen, she looked over at the counter.
The words had gone, the flour now in a neat little pile next to the hob.
Jenny let a little smile drift across her lips.
“What do you think, Zeb? Chicken? Beef?”
Jenny was flicking through ‘Cooking With Friends’ and looking for new recipes to try.
Her dinner parties had started to get a reputation among her friends – and their friends too. She regularly hosted half a dozen or so people, every couple of weeks and she loved it. She was meeting new people all the time and she had settled into a nice routine and ritual with Zeb, who seemed to be enjoying it too, creating more and more elaborate dishes each time.
The pans and utensils buzzed with a heavy energy for a moment and then a jar of rosemary tipped over.
The fragrant shards flipped and bristled around on the worktop, like iron filings drawn by an unseen magnet.
The reply came:
lamb
“Oh, nice – that’s a bit different, good to mix things up a bit, right?”
Jenny flicked through the pages of the recipe book and found a lamb recipe that looked incredible.
“How about this one? I mean it looks a bit complicated but maybe…”
A new word agitated itself in the rosemary:
good
Over the last few months of working together, Jenny and Zeb had reached something approaching an understanding and she knew that this was the one.
“OK, let’s go for it, now what do we need? Lamb, obviously!”
She smiled to herself, tapped the remaining list of ingredients into a note on her phone, threw on her coat and went down the road to the supermarket.
On her return, she lifted her tote up onto the counter and started to unpack her groceries. As she did, the packets and boxes and plastic bags skittered and slid and snapped into neat rows under Zeb’s unseen hand.
“Looking forward to this one, Zeb? It looks a bit more complicated than the last few we’ve done…”
easy
The letters in the dried leaves looked confident at least.
“Well, OK, if you say so,” Jenny replied, “Let me just get ready and then I’ll be right down and we can get started.”
Another ripple through the rosemary:
good
A short while later, Jenny came bounding back into the kitchenette, singing to herself.
“How’s about cooking something up with,” She took a breath, “Meeeeeeee-EEEEEEE!”
She waited a beat to see if she would get some kind of congratulatory message from Zeb, but instead the message simply read:
cook
“Wow, you’re a tough crowd, Zeb,” she said as she reached for ‘Cooking With Friends’. She held it with both hands and closed her eyes. “Come on then, let’s get coo…”
That familiar burst of static. Jenny’s hair spiked away from her face. Her skin puckered and prickled and tightened. And then the flavour of old coins flooded from her throat and filled her mouth.
The muscles around her eyes contracted and convulsed and then… darkness.
And a flicker of light.
Jenny’s eyes fluttered open and the smell of crisp lamb skin and honey and thyme seemed to fill her whole head.
She looked down at the roasting tray that was still sizzling away. The meat looked rich and succulent, as if under the slightest pressure from a fork it would just fall apart, before melting in her mouth.
“Zeb, this looks just… heavenly. You’re incredible. What a team we make!”
The doorbell rang and the silhouette of her visitors bustled through the glass of her front door like a tangle of blurry shadow puppets. Jenny clapped her hands together, ran excitedly down the hallway and threw open the door to hoots of raucous laughter.
Meanwhile in the kitchen a pile of flaked almonds briefly spelled out a new word:
team
And then:
team?
Jenny led her friends down the hall and the nuts scattered and swept themselves into a small pile on the counter.
The low winter sun played off the foil decoration hanging in the kitchen window, which made Jenny squint and put her hand up to shield her face.
She was not in the mood to find a recipe for tonight. She was far too hungover to even think about it and she hadn’t been hungry since Christmas Eve Eve.
Before the boozy pre-holiday party at Sara’s.
Before the full-on Christmas dinner with Charlotte and Simon.
Before the subsequent days of leftovers and crisps and pickles.
No, food was the last thing on her mind and she was very much beginning to regret offering to do anything on New Year’s Eve, let alone a fancy-as-hell dinner party for all her friends at once.
Jenny groaned loudly and leant her head onto her hand.
“Zeb, I hope you’re ready buddy because I am not feeling this today at all.”
There was a soft crackle in the air and Jenny’s new spice rack – a Christmas gift from Charlotte and Simon – played a thin melody as the jars clinked against each other.
“This is the big one, Zeb,” Jenny explained, “Everyone’s going to be here and it’s got to be the meal to end all meals. It has to be one people will be talking about forever.”
Another tuneless tinkle through the jars. She plucked the nearest one – cinnamon - out of the rack and half-dropped it onto the counter.
“OK, so what do you say, Z?” she slid “Cooking With Friends” along the counter, “What are we going for this time?”
The cinnamon stayed upright, but the book opened dramatically, the pages fanning up as Zeb’s invisible touch rifled through trying to find the perfect recipe.
The motion stopped and the book slammed shut.
idea
“Oh!”
It was unusual for Zeb to say anything that needed more clarification.
“Well, this is new, Zeb!” Jenny said, surprised, “What are you thinking?”
The spice whisked across the surface.
need
A spark of confusion flashed over Jenny’s face.
“What do you need?”
time
Jenny picked up one of the spice jars. “Hey, I got some thyme for you right here, get it? Ahahaha!”
The cinnamon whirled again:
TIME
This was the first time Zeb had ever written in uppercase.
Zeb then underlined the word, disapprovingly.
“I know, I know... I get it,” Jenny said.
The spice whipped up and the message changed again:
more
And then.
time
And then shifting and slipping between those two words:
more
time
more
time
more
“Yes, I get it, Zeb – I GET IT!” Jenny raised her voice despite not having to be heard over the silent outburst, “OK, so we start early then, in the morning…”
The spice spelled out a new word:
now
“OH!”
She had helped Zeb make some incredible dishes over the last few months, but nothing that needed him to be in control for more than a couple of hours. But this would be nearly two days. She couldn’t just let Zeb take control for that long… could she?
“Zeb, why do you need so long? Jenny asked, “What have you got planned?”
gift
need
time
good
Before she could even think, Jenny felt the familiar thick electricity fill the room and all the ingredients and utensils shook excitedly.
time
now
cook
now
“OK, well if you think this will work..?”
Jenny looked down at ‘Cooking With Friends’ and it skittered in to her hand, nudging against her knuckles like a cat demanding affection and attention.
yes
good
best
meal
gift
good
yes
Zeb seemed excited, agitated.
She patted the book and picked it up, holding it in both hands.
She was about to tell Zeb she was ready, but the words didn’t come. Her skin was already alive with prickles, her mouth a flood of metal, her eyes straining, unable to resist, flickering and then she saw only black.
And then.
And then the flutter of her eyes and Jenny’s bleary, bloodshot eyes rolled back down.
Darkness.
Not the total darkness of being under Zeb’s control, but a dim, low light.
Candlelight.
Where was she? Sat down? At the table?
Her eyes blinked and she slowly began to bring the room back into focus.
Jenny was, indeed, sat at her dining room table. There were candles burning down in the centre, the places were fully laid out and she could just start to pick out the outlines of her guests sat around the table.
She looked at the watch on her wrist.
The backlight cast 23:58 out into the gloom.
“Ugh, Zeb,” she said groggily, “What… what the hell? How long was I out?”
Zeb didn’t answer.
She groaned to herself, kneading her eyes with the back of her hand.
Something felt… sticky.
Jenny rubbed her fingers together and looked at her hands.
Even in the darkness she could see the thick dark red that stained each finger, her palms, up her wrists and onto her forearms.
“What the...?”
As her eyes widened they adjusted more to the gloom and as she looked up at the table the silhouettes started to fill in and flesh out.
Seven figures were sat around the dining table. All seemingly frozen in a moment of revelry.
But something was wrong. Unnatural.
Jenny’s mouth dried.
Those closest to her – Charlotte, Simon, Sara - were silent, motionless, with a palpable chill groping out from them and reaching into the room towards Jenny.
Her eyes scoured the scene. The skin of each guest was pale and grey and puckered. Their eyes dry and lifeless.
She noticed the unmistakable deep red staining through their clothes. Grinning through and pooling around them.
And then.
And then she looked down at her place setting and the plate in front of her. The deep red was all over her plate too. Her knife and fork folded neatly to one side, as if she had just finished her meal.
Jenny pushed against the edge of the table and launched herself back onto her feet. The chair cracked down behind her. She was shaking and unsteady and her mind reeled at the macabre still life arranged in front of her.
She touched at the corner of her mouth and tried to scream, but her throat felt dry and wretched and thick with disgust. Instead she let out a croaky howl, staggering backwards into her chair as she did so.
“Z-Zeb… what did you do? What did you make us do?!”
The electricity filled the air.
An unseen finger scraped out the letters into the remains on the plate.
The thunderclap of a million fireworks started to erupt in the night sky outside.
And Zeb replied:
yum
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