Crime Scene on a Plate

It slumped there on the plate like roadkill, bloated and leaking, a swollen thing that had been left too long under the wrong sun. The ketchup on top had blistered and cracked like dried blood, curling up at the edges in scabs, hiding whatever sins had been folded into the meat below. And the smell...Gosh, the smell. Not quite rotten, but something worse. Something wrong. A hot, humid stink, like the breath of an animal that should have died but didn’t, still wheezing, still dripping.

The inside was mottled, speckled with soggy breadcrumbs and wet lumps of egg that hadn’t mixed right, the yolk gone rubbery, clinging to the ground-up sinew like tiny tumors. It wasn’t solid so much as…coagulated. It wobbled when the fork sank in, shivering in slow motion, releasing a glistening ooze of meat-sweat. And when you chewed? God help you.

It didn’t break down. It mushed. Spread across the tongue like warm clay, coating the teeth in a thick, greasy film. No matter how much you swallowed, it stayed. Clung to the back of your throat, slithered down slow, like something still alive. And when you thought you were done? When you took a sip of water to wash it down? The taste came back, resurrected, stronger than before, crawling up from the pit of your stomach with the slow, inevitable dread of a nightmare you know you won’t wake up from.

Meatloaf wasn't food. Meatloaf was a dare.