The bowl arrives beige and wrong. Not the creamy beige of chowder, but the flat beige of a sickroom wall.

The spoon sinks as if through mud. When you lift it, a long strand of gelatinous meat clings, stretching, stretching—elastic, stubborn, refusing to break. It pulses faintly in the steam.

You lean in. The surface trembles, not from your breath, but from something beneath—a slow, coiling shift. Then you see it: an eye. Small, black, and perfectly aware, it surfaces for a half-second before a slick coil of grey flesh rolls over it and drags it back down.