0038 — The Screaming Mashed Potatoes
1847 Words
The hunger returned as a vacancy.
It was a hollow, echoing sensation in Victor's chest, a drafty hallway where his organs used to be. The "borrowed satiety" from Yggdrasil’s consumption of the intruder had faded, burning off like morning fog under the glare of his metabolic demands.
He stood in the greenhouse, staring down at the patch of disturbed earth.
The single, massive tuber that had grown from Grizzwald’s remains sat half-buried in the loam. It didn't look like a vegetable. It looked like a tumor the earth had decided to reject.
Victor knelt, his lab coat trailing in the dirt. He reached out, his fingers brushing the rough, pebbled skin of the crop. It radiated a sickly, feverish heat.
"Extraction," Victor whispered to himself. He needed to frame this correctly. He was performing an extraction of biological assets, not harvesting dinner.
He gripped the base of the plant.
It didn't yield.
Usually, potatoes came up with a satisfying, earthy pop. This one held on. Victor pulled harder, and the soil around the root system shifted with a wet, heavy sound, like a lung inhaling. The roots weren't just sitting in the dirt; they were clutching it. White, fibrous tendrils were wrapped around stones and clumps of clay, gripping them with the desperation of a mountaineer hanging off a ledge.
"Let go," Victor hissed, bracing his boot against the planter box.
He heaved.
The ground bruised. That was the only word for it. The soil turned a deep, purplish black where the roots tore free, oozing a thick, sap-like fluid. The sound was distinct—the wet tear of cartilage rather than the snap of a root.
With a final, sickening squelch, the potato came free.
Victor stumbled back, the heavy tuber cradled in his arms. It was heavier than it looked, dense and wet. He looked down at it.
The potato looked back.
The features were crude, like a sculpture made of wet dough that had been dropped on the floor. The eyes were small black pebbles, blinking erratically. The mouth was a slit that kept opening and closing, producing a faint, static hiss.
"Target acquired," the potato whispered. Its voice was tinny, distorted, like a radio tuned between stations. "Sector 4... compromised. Requesting backup."
Victor closed his eyes. "It's just residual instinct," he told himself. "Echoes in the starch."
He marched toward the kitchen.
The kitchen of Blackwood Manor was a marvel of modern convenience and gothic architecture. A stainless steel Sub-Zero fridge hummed next to a cast-iron wood stove that looked like it had been used to burn witches.
Victor set the Grizzwald-tuber on the cutting board.
He retrieved his favorite peeler—a Swiss-made instrument with a carbon steel blade. He tested the edge against his thumb. Surgical precision.
"Unit 734 reporting," the potato buzzed. "Visibility is low. The fog is... thick. Requesting immediate extraction from Sector Delta. I have intel on the oversized rats. They are planning a coup. Over."
Victor positioned the peeler at the top of the tuber, right above the "forehead."
"Just a haircut," Victor muttered, his voice tight. "Standard dermatological procedure. Removing necrotic tissue. Patient is sedated. Or should be."
He drew the blade down.
The skin peeled like a sunburn—thin, translucent layers sloughing off to reveal raw, white flesh underneath.
"Armor breach!" the potato shrieked. The volume spiked, modulating into a high-pitched feedback loop. "Dorsal plating compromised! Medic! I need a medic! The sky is peeling away! I can see the void!"
Victor’s hand trembled. He sliced a strip of skin off the "cheek."
"My face!" the potato garbled. "Why is the sky peeling? Sergeant, the sky is falling! Tell my mother I hid the shiny spoon under the floorboards! Tell her!"
It wasn't begging. It wasn't pleading for its life. It was reporting its own deconstruction with the detached panic of a soldier radioing in coordinates while bleeding out. It was a glitch. A biological error code.
Victor reached for the small radio on the counter. He turned the dial until he found a classical station. Vivaldi’s Winter poured out of the speakers, aggressive and sharp.
He turned the volume up. Then up again.
The strings shrieked, competing with the potato.
"Coordinates lost! Coordinates lost! System failure imminent!"
Srrrt. Srrrt. The peeler moved faster, finding a rhythm. Strip. Strip. Strip. He wasn't peeling a face; he was exfoliating a necrotic lesion. He was removing the pathology to get to the healthy tissue beneath. "You are not sentient," he said loudly, drowning out the violin. "You are a carbohydrate structure mimicking pain signals. Cease."
"It's dark," the potato whispered, its voice dropping to a low, static-filled mumble as the last of the skin fell away. "Mother... the rain burns. I can't feel my roots..."
Victor dropped the n***d, white lump into the pot of boiling water.
"Acid rain!" the potato screamed, the sound bubbling up through the water. "Deployment failed! Abort! Abort!"
Victor slammed the lid down.
He stood there, gripping the handles of the pot, his knuckles white. The lid rattled. Inside, the water churned violently, not just from the heat, but from the thrashing.
"It's just escaping steam," Victor said aloud. His voice sounded thin in the large kitchen. "Just air pockets expanding in the cellular structure."
The screaming turned into a high-pitched whine, a continuous, piercing frequency like a dying capacitor. It drilled into his teeth.
Victor stared at the digital timer on the stove. Ten minutes. He just had to wait ten minutes.
The mashing was the worst part.
By the time he drained the water, the potato was soft. The screaming had stopped, replaced by a silence that felt heavy and accusatory.
He dumped the cooked chunks back into the pot. They were stark white, glistening with starch. He added a stick of butter—the last of the good Kerrygold—and a splash of heavy cream.
He picked up the masher.
He looked into the pot. The chunks had settled in a way that looked disturbingly like a fragmented face. An eye here, a mouth there.
"Reformatting," Victor whispered.
He brought the masher down.
The structure collapsed with a wet squish.
The sound was visceral. He mashed with a fervor that bordered on manic. He needed to destroy the geometry. He needed to turn the "face" into an abstract concept. He mashed until there were no lumps, no features, no reminders of Grizzwald.
He mashed until it was just a pile of fluffy, grey-white static.
The mash resembled dissolved information more than food. It looked like the white noise on a dead television channel, given physical form.
Victor scooped a mound of it onto a plate. He didn't garnish it. He didn't add chives. That would be like putting a bow on a tombstone.
He carried the plate to the table and sat down.
The silence in the kitchen was absolute. The radio had stopped playing music and was now broadcasting a low hum, as if in sympathy.
Victor picked up his spoon.
He looked at the mash. It steamed gently, the smell rich and earthy. But beneath the butter and cream, there was another scent—sharp and metallic. The smell of adrenaline.
"It's just nutrients," he said. "Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen. Soul."
He lifted the spoon to his mouth.
He hesitated. His hand shook. The rational part of his brain—the part that remembered the Hippocratic Oath—was screaming that he was about to eat a patient.
The hunger screamed louder.
He shoved the spoon into his mouth.
The flavor hit him like a physical blow.
It wasn't just taste. It was synesthetic gastronomy.
The fear hit his palate first—it tasted like lemon zest, sharp, acidic, and awakening. It made his salivary glands spasm. Then came the confusion, a creamy, earthy base note that coated his tongue like mushroom umami. And buried deep in the aftertaste was the order—the military discipline of the goblin, tasting cold and metallic, like sucking on a penny.
It was horrifying.
It was complex.
It was the best thing he had ever eaten.
Victor didn't chew; the mash simply dissolved, flooding his system with memory. He shoveled another spoonful into his mouth. Then another. He ate with a primal, desperate efficiency. He wasn't just eating calories; he was digesting the goblin's existence. He was integrating the aberration.
He scraped the plate. The spoon screeched against the porcelain.
He licked the spoon.
He sat back, panting slightly. The hunger was gone. In its place was a dense, heavy sensation in his stomach, like he had swallowed a stone.
He waited for the familiar migraine. He waited for the taste of copper on his tongue, or the invasive, burning pressure in his parietal lobe that always accompanied a reward.
Nothing.
The air remained empty. His skull remained un-invaded.
Just a burp.
"Boss?"
The sound came from his own throat. It wasn't his voice. It was a small, confused croak.
Victor clamped a hand over his mouth. His pupils dilated, the reflection in the spoon warping as his jaw went slack.
He felt a sudden, overwhelming itch in his fingers. Not an itch on the skin, but under it. A compulsion. He looked at the tiled floor of the kitchen.
It looked... soft.
He felt a powerful urge to slide off his chair, get down on his hands and knees, and dig. To burrow into the grout. To make a hole and hide in it. To find a shiny rock and keep it safe.
"No," Victor gasped, gripping the edge of the table until the wood creaked.
He forced his body to remain in the chair. He fought the goblin instinct with every ounce of human will he had left. He was Victor Corvinus. He was a doctor. He did not live under the floorboards.
Not yet.
The urge slowly receded, leaving him trembling and covered in a cold sweat. He felt his sanity—that fragile, intricate sandcastle he had been building for years—lose a turret to the incoming tide.
He had crossed a line. He wasn't just the caretaker of the monsters anymore. He was becoming part of the ecosystem.
He stared at the empty plate. The white smears of mash looked like Rorschach tests.
Knock~ Knock~ Knock~
The sound echoed through the silent house. It was precise. Firm. Three distinct raps on the heavy oak front door.
Victor froze.
He looked down at himself. He was wearing a lab coat stained with "potato" juice. He smelled like butter and goblin fear. And he had just burped in the voice of a dead minion.
The knock came again.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
It wasn't the frantic pounding of a patient. It wasn't the heavy thud of a debt collector.
It was precise. Measured. The sound of knuckles that were insured for more than his entire house.
Victor stood up, his legs shaking. He grabbed a napkin and wiped his mouth, erasing the evidence of his crime.
"Coming," he called out.
His voice sounded almost normal. Almost.
- Writer
