The fluorescent lights of the discount grocery aisle hummed a tune of neglect, flickering just enough to make the packaged bread look like it was breathing. I was halfway through chewing the last bite of my onigiri—the one I'd been saving since morning, its plastic wrapper now a crumpled monument in my pocket—when the rice turned traitor.
First, it was just stale. Then it was metallic, thick, like I'd bitten down on a tin can filled with seawater. I gagged, a dry, heaving sound that echoed too loudly in the empty aisle. My hand flew to my throat. The linoleum floor, stained with ancient, unidentifiable spills, seemed to tilt. The fluorescent hum warped, deepening into a resonant, pulsing thrum that vibrated in my back teeth.
Wait, no—
[User "CosmicFlip" used Deepsea Gacha Coupon, this is your 5 millionth, 600th draw]
The light didn't just brighten; it bloomed, stretching like glowing taffy into the shimmering strands of a jellyfish's bell. The "No Loitering" sign on the freezer case melted into a swirl of bioluminescent algae. My sneakers—scuffed, once-white—sank. Not through linoleum, but into fine, whispering sand that carried a chill straight up my spine. The air left my lungs in a shocked puff, visible as a mist that smelled of brine and something older, like wet stone and forgotten prayers.
A sound clawed its way into the new silence. A wail, high and desperate, like a drowning opera singer being stepped on.
"I'M GOING TO DIE AHHHHH!"
I jerked my head, sand grating against my neck. The wail came from a shark. A shark the size of the last subway car I'd huddled in, grey and impossibly massive, tap-dancing on its tailfin in a cloud of iridescent sand. Its gills flared, not with water, but with despair—a visible, shimmering misery that leaked into the water like ink. In one claw-tipped fin, it shook a piece of shimmering, rainbow-foil parchment at me.
"My last coupon! YOU WASTED IT!" Its voice was a subwoofer dropped down a well, shaking my ribs. One massive, obsidian eye fixed on me, and in its depths, I saw stars being born and dying in fast-forward. "WHY DID I ROLL AN F-GRADE LIFEFORM?! RECHECK IT!"
Instinct took over. I scrambled backward, my hands digging trenches in the cold sand. My heart was a frantic bird against my ribs. The words tumbled out, thin and reedy against the shark's cosmic despair.
[ extradimensional creature.... evaluation.... evaluation.... grade F confirmed]
"Please don't bite me," I whispered, then flinched at how stupid it sounded. My fingers clenched around a handful of sand; the individual grains glowed faintly blue against my skin.
The cosmic shark froze mid-tantrum. Its obsidian eye narrowed, and it leaned in. Its shadow fell over me, cold and heavy, smelling of deep ocean trenches and ozone. I could see myself reflected in its pupil—a tiny, wide-eyed thing in a faded hoodie, dwarfed by galaxies.
"Bite you?" Its voice dropped to a contemptuous rumble. "BITTERNESS IS MY DOMAIN!" It exhaled. Not air, but a plume of brine-scented mist that washed over me. My tongue instantly shriveled, coated in the phantom, stomach-churning bitterness of every failed exam, every missed meal, every silent rejection. I retched, spitting uselessly into the sand.
The shark watched, unimpressed. "But no, little salt-grub. Teeth are for lesser beings. You're already bleeding metaphorical value."
[CosmicFlip do you want to return your draw box?]
[For a return of 10% of your 1000 Bubblepoints?]
[Y/N?]
With a dramatic flick of its tail—a motion that sent a wall of water-pressure shoving me back a foot—it gestured. "Fine, fine, I keep it. Maybe it is not that bad. It looks cute but weak."
[No]
The sand rippled away, revealing a rusted cooking knife half-buried nearby, its handle wrapped in rotting kelp-thread. My eyes followed the motion to where a crude stone counter was materializing from the gloom, assembled from coral skeletons and despair. On it, something gelatinous and faintly glowing pulsed like a sick heart atop a slab of veined coral.
The reality of the bubble pressed in on me. I pushed myself up on trembling arms, my clothes already soaked and heavy. I wiped my gritty mouth with the back of my hand, my voice a thin thread of sound in the immense, watery silence.
[Installing.... new User found. Mental link formed. Adaptation to never seen before]
[three dimensionl species.]
[WELCOME TO THE ABYSSAL COOKING SYSTEM]
[New User Chiari]
"Why am I in a bubble?" I asked, turning in a slow, unsteady circle. The membrane holding back the endless black water was barely visible, a distorting sheen like heat haze. Beyond it, nothing. A void so complete it felt like a physical weight against my eyeballs. "There is nothing around us." The loneliness of it hit me, sharper than the bitterness. "What is your name?" I hugged myself, the wet fabric cold against my skin. The question that always followed, the one with the never-changing answer, slipped out with a familiar, hollow ache. "I want to go home? The uncle from the orphanage said I failed adoption again. He said I was... too much trouble."
The shark's magnificent fins drooped. The swirling galaxies in its eyes dimmed, as if someone had turned down a dial on the universe.
"Bubble?" It scoffed, a stream of perfect, silver bubbles jetting from its gills. Each one popped with a sound like distant, mocking laughter. "This is the Abyssal Gauntlet's waiting room, you ungrateful plankton. The 'nothing' is an audience. They're just… polite enough to stay in the cheap seats for now."
It drifted closer, and I forced myself not to flinch.
"As for names…" Its voice dropped to a subsonic rumble that vibrated in my marrow, making my teeth ache. "I am C'thullus the Ever-Hungering, Consumer of Light, The Final Appetizer." It paused, as if waiting for a reaction. I just stared, sand sticking to my wet cheeks. It sighed, a sound like a sinking ship. "But you," it flicked a fin, dismissively, "may call me Mr. Fin. Lest your mortal tongue unravel trying for the rest."
The mention of home made it bare its teeth in something that was not a smile. It was the geometry of a grimace, a threat display made of needles and shadows.
"Failed adoption?" it chuffed. "Ha! Mortals always fail at something. Here, you'll fail at cooking. Spectacularly. Unless you win." Its tailfin gestured vaguely at the gelatinous blob. "Then... well, even orphans get prizes. Sometimes."
As it spoke, the bubble's wall shimmered directly behind it. For a fraction of a second, the distorted surface clarified into a mirror. Not of the abyss, but of the orphanage's dim hallway. My uncle's scowling face was there, twisted by the curvature, his mouth moving in silent, familiar disapproval. Then it was gone, dissolved back into featureless, hungry black.
The image left me colder than the water. I looked from the terrifying shark to the pathetic knife to the pulsating… thing on the counter. A weird, desperate solidarity flickered. He had a coupon. I had a failed life. We were both in the wrong place.
I met its galactic gaze, my voice barely a whisper against the immense quiet.
"I call you Mr. Fin."
Mr. Fin's dorsal fin twitched upward, a slow, deliberate motion like a periscope breaking the surface. Its obsidian scales rippled, catching nonexistent light in a brief, prismatic flash.
"Finally," it huffed, the edges of its voice carrying a distorted wheeze, like a whale song filtered through a broken speaker. "Some respect."
The moment was shattered as the gelatinous blob on the coral slab convulsed. A single pseudopod, translucent and quivering, slapped wetly against the sand between my feet. It writhed, forming crude, glowing letters that sizzled into the sediment:
Starter Challenge: Assimilate Me.
[User Chiari do you agree to Assimilate with your owner user CosmicFlip?]
[Y/N?]
The shark's tailfin began to drum a slow, impatient rhythm against the sand. Thump. Thump. Thump. Each impact sent up a puff of bioluminescent spores that hung in the water like accusing stars.
"Clock's ticking, land-grub," Mr. Fin intoned. "The Abyssal Audience hates cold dishes. And wasted coupons."
[Abyssal Lobby, Judges present 6/8]
Behind me, the bubble's membrane pulsed with a sudden, sickly light. I turned. Where there was nothing before, now there were shapes. Elongated silhouettes, suggestions of limbs and too many eyes, pressed silently against the other side of the membrane. Watching. Waiting. Their hunger was a silence deeper than the void itself.
I was alone, in a bubble, at the bottom of everything, with a cosmic shark as my only guide.
And I had to cook.