He should be glad it’s over. He isn’t.
His breathing still comes broken, full of leftover panic. The bastard field—whatever it is—flickered back into existence exactly two hours after he slammed the door behind him, and everything snaps back to boring kitchen tiles and mockingly silent appliances. Reality resets. Back to the safe version. The one that pretends nothing is wrong.
And without the sirens, the steel jaws, or the world coming apart like wet copy paper, the house is suddenly too quiet. Too safe. Like a padded room with better lighting and a fully stocked pantry.
Aster paces. Back and forth. One hand in his hair, the other dragging along the back of a chair until he leans his forehead against it with a muted thud.
“Fuck this,” he mutters. “I’m not apologizing for thinking my brain is a glitchy nightmare machine, but,” and he lifts a finger toward the universe, “I now recognize staying alive means listening to my hallucination. There. I said it.”
He exhales. Sharply. Spins around and stomps to the kitchen table where the envelope still sits, flapping against reality like a paper bird having an identity crisis.
“No more excuses,” he says, grabbing it. He peels the list from the table like it’s grown roots.
“What’s the worst that could happen?”
A part of him shrieks, We literally just saw the worst, but he ignores it. That was earlier’s problem. Now, he’s playing “Let’s Pretend The Insane Recipe Is Rational.”
The paper is cool against his fingers. Too cool. Like a passive-aggressive fridge note from a roommate you barely tolerate. Aster squints at the looping letters. The sheer capital-G Gothic of the handwriting already annoys him.
No hidden code. No ancient sigils. Just a fucking list.
And a note highlighting the fact that under no circumstances should he leave the house, with a kids drawing of the bloodhounds looking nothing noting more like a misshapen dog with lightbulbs for eyes.
He promptly crumbles the note, forgiving himself for that lack of judgement, reframing his incredible lapse of judgment, as a small oopsie daisy.
He scans through the list.
And snorts. “Blessed by the full moon? Yeah. Good. Great. I’ll be sure to plan my next psychotic break around lunar phases.”
Further down—worse.
“Dassie fur. Seashells. Really. Why not toss in a mood ring and a selfie stick to summon the spirit of Gwyneth Paltrow while we’re at it.”
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He lets the list fall flat on the counter like a surrender flag. “It’s a recipe,” he says to himself. “I don’t need to understand it. I just need to follow it. And judging by the week I’ve had, this thing is either going to fix me or take out a 30-year loan on my kidneys.”
He drags his hands down his face, accidentally smearing oils across the page. Doesn’t matter. If the world could crumble, a little skin grease isn’t going to drop the bar.
He sighs, turning away from the kitchen table—and spots something he somehow hadn’t registered before. A rectangular bulge on the fridge, taped low and half-covered by the shopping list.
He peels it off. A padded envelope. Weighty. Real.
Heartbeat rising, he tears it open.
Inside? Not another recipe. Not an eldritch note. Just:
- A property deed. In his name.
- A bank card. No activation code required.
- A phone. Latest model. Fully charged. No lock screen.
- And a keyring. Three keys. One of which matches the door he is standing next to.
Aster blinks as his brain cartwheels between shock and nausea.
The property deed stares up at him like a slap. Something so normal, it feels hostile. The world is offering him safety. Shelter. Stability. And after the shit he’s come from? That’s a monster in its own right.
He drops heavily into a chair.
This is worse than monsters. Worse than the hallucinations. Worse than the screaming sirens of metal nightmares.
Someone has just taken care of him.
He doesn’t know what to do with that.
The next day is spent in motion.
Aster stays indoors, pacing between tasks. Checking things off the list, making calls, avoiding thinking too much. Some ingredients are easy—he’s had a knack for procurement ever since teenage Aster played sous-chef to D-list alchemists and B-tier drug dealers. The trick is keeping your head low, your product high quality, and your dignity in a dumpster out back where no one can trip over it.
By afternoon, most of what he needs is at least in motion. Just in time to hear from her—Albie. One of his foster mother's last surviving contacts. She’ll be here in an hour, bringing the hard-to-locate bits.
He is left alone with time—and his own buzzing nerve endings.
Aster yanks open one of the cupboards for distraction and freezes. His eyes immediately latch onto three full bags of whole coffee beans.
Real beans. Proper shit. Not instant granules or budget dreck.
Of all the alien horrors, of all the metaphysical violence, this is what breaks him.
Something as uselessly kind as bags of coffee.
His chest tightens and releases. Just slightly. Like someone somewhere rubbed a balm over the screaming hole in his soul.
Before he can sabotage the moment, muscle memory takes over. Grinder. Tamper. Frother. Years behind the counter come flooding back, and his hands move like they are committing a sin.
Then the smell hits.
Dark. Earthy. The kind of smell that seeps straight into your spine and rewires the ache into something survivable. He pours honey into the milk and it gossips sweetly against the ceramic as he stirs, almost making him forget his world is a horror anthology.
The first sip makes him moan.
Honest-to-god coffee. Warmth threads through his chest like a slow wonder and, for a minute—all the shit, the horror, the paranoia—flickers out.
Then his stomach grumbles.
Of course he’s forgotten to eat. Of course food only matters after the near-death, surreal cosmic murder marathon. But this kitchen—fully stocked. Eggs. Bacon. Flour. Cream.
His brain lights up like someone has plugged him back into himself.
He cooks. And doesn’t stop.
Pancakes. Scones. Bacon sizzling like a love song in a hot pan. It’s absurd, glorious therapy. For a full hour, he just… exists. Eating. Breathing. Cooking. The house smells like Saturday morning, and his bones feel warm again.
Then he catches himself smiling, and the warmth curdles a little.
It feels too nice.
Too. Fucking. Nice.
Like someone out there knows what he’s been missing and just handed him a version of home he’s never had.
He can’t handle that.
Aster stares at the walls, the quiet, the stability like it has slapped him.
That’s when his phone buzzes.
Her.
‘Warm up the Pizza Pockets. I’m 10min away.’