Chapter 1: Chapter 1: Octopus Al Pastor

She didn’t remember storing the carcass of the creature that tried to kill her in the mini-cooler.

When Nay first woke up and saw one of the tentacles hanging down the side of the cooler, she had jumped in fright. But then her memories of her near-death experience the previous night came rushing back to her. At first she was trying to figure out why she put the body on ice. What was the initial plan?

I was drunk last night and this monster with tentacles tried to strangle me in an alleyway, better save the body so I have proof in case no one believes me. Call the authorities and say, “Yo I was attacked by a tentacle abomination, officer. Don’t know how I survived. But here’s the body, which proves I’m not a drunk liar. Maybe you can show it to the local Cryptozoological Society or something.”

But after she was fully awake, recovering from her hangover, she was struck with a crazy and sick idea. She could be a vindictive person, but this was something on another level. It was maybe a little too spontaneous and reactive. She had never tried to hurt someone with her food before, but she had taken a bad hit from that terrible review. She had felt the reviewer to be particularly cruel and it had put a dent in her business. Against her better judgment, she took the lifeless monster out of the cooler and got to work.

Now, she had it impaled on the vertical spit in the back of her taco truck, Taco the Town. She had soaked the thing in vinegar for the remainder of the morning to remove whatever funky taste it might have. She figured the more palatable she could make it the better. She didn’t need the reviewer to know he had consumed something questionable. Her knowing about it would be enough satisfaction for her. In her mind, it was a twisted sense of justice.

Then she had moved the carcass to a pineapple-based marinade for a few more hours, and now it sat on the spit looking like al pastor octopus. Some sort of black foam bubbled out of the rubbery flesh under the heat lamp.

“The fuck is this?”

Remi arrived, climbing into the truck, smelling like too many Natty Lights and fresh-baked donuts. He held a cardboard tray with cups of espresso and a paper bag from Simone’s Donuts nestled on top. Nay could see one side of the bag was wet from moisture, which told her the donuts within were placed inside while still steaming.

She wasn’t hungry, but now felt herself jonesing for something sweet and fluffy.

“That’s gnarly,” Remi said. He untangled himself from his backpack and handed Nay the drink tray and bag of baked goods. He took a closer look at the thing on the spit. It looked like he had a late night, too. From Nay’s experience, most of her comrades in the food industry were night owls. The type of people who truly awaken once the sun is down and the moon is up.

“Octopus al pastor?” he asked. “It’s genius. What’s this black marinade?”

Nay grabbed her cup of espresso and took a whiff. Steam rose off the foamy surface. A triple-shot. Her go-to every day. Simone’s always used dark roast beans and she loved the intoxicating aroma. She threw her head back and downed it one go, letting the hot bitter liquid wash over her tongue. It filled her body with warmth and already she could feel the rush of caffeine in her blood stream.

“Just something I threw together,” she said. “Pineapple juice and balsamic.”

“I can dig it,” he said. “Wait, where’d you get the octopus from?”

There was no way she was going to tell him the truth. No way to explain that it wasn’t an octopus but some thing she had fought to the death. And she certainly wasn’t going to explain that she was going to serve it as a dish of revenge for the social media influencer who had given their truck a bad review. Foodie TikTok could be a harsh place.

“I picked it up at the new market,” she said.

“Which one?”

“It’s in Little Toyko, bunch of vendors are out there all hours of the night.”

“Sounds dope.”

Remi sipped his espresso like it was an aperitif, the stark opposite of how Nay consumed her caffeine. He savored the taste when she would inject it if it were a choice. Even before Covid-19 had wrecked her taste buds, she consumed her coffee more for the effect than the flavor. It didn’t mean she didn’t care about the flavor or the quality. She wasn’t a fan of shitty coffee, she just rarely took the time to enjoy the journey as opposed to the destination.

He pulled his phone out and snapped a pic of the spit.

“Don’t post that,” she said.

“Why not?”

“I want it to be a surprise for the festival today.”

“Whatever.”

He pocketed his phone and began preparing his station for prep work. As her sous chef, Remi’s job was to get all the vegetables chopped, the tortilla batter mixed and the sauces made.

Nay had a flash of one of the thing’s tentacles trying to coil around her neck. She wondered if it would have been her on some kind of spit if she hadn’t of managed to stab it multiple times with her Konosuke knife.

She began making a list in her little Moleskine notebook of ingredients and possible flavor combinations. A list for a pico mixture with Cherokee tomatoes and pickled okra and a tartar-sauce with lemon juice and fresh dill. She had the perfect vehicle in mind for how she was going to serve this monster meat.

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The food festival was in full swing and already news of her truck was spreading via word of mouth thanks to a social media post making the rounds.

As Nay shaved some more of the meat off the strange-tentacled creature, she glanced at the TikTok playing on her phone. The TikToker was her target. He was one of the more popular foodie influencers in Los Angeles, a Pakistani guy whose account was called, How Dev Eats It.

He was showing off a burrito the size of a brick. The burrito that she gave him. “Hey fam, it’s yo boy How Dev Eats It! Tonight, I’m at the Anaheim Food Festival and I’m about to try the new El Diablo Burrito from Taco the Town! Listen, I know I was a bit harsh the last time I tried their food, and I like to think of myself as a fair but honest critic. So, that’s why I’m giving them a second chance.”

Next, there were brief glimpses of Nay’s food truck from different angles. Then a close-up of the logo she designed, which was a Chupacabra with a taco in one hand and a burrito in the other.

“Look at this big boy,” Dev said. He held the massive burrito up and slapped the end of it. It jiggled. “It’s massive!”

Finally, the money shot. A close-up of the El Diablo Burrito, glistening in all its moist and meaty glory. Dev split it open for his viewers to see. The cross-section of black-tentacled mystery meat oozed creamy tartar sauce and red pico de gallo. It actually looked tasty. “Get a peep at this cross-section. Look at the drip. Now, let’s see if it’s the real deal. I’m about to get my mouth pregnant!”

Dev took a bite and chewed. His eyes widened in surprise, then they closed and he softly moaned, swallowing. He took another bite. A more ravenous one. A bigger one. He opened his eyes so his viewers could see them roll into the back of his head as the flavors triggered some type of ecstatic experience. His whole body quivered like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally.

“Jesus Christ,” Nay said. “He’s loving it.”

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She wondered if the initial euphoric experience would lead to something more diabolical. Would the flesh of the dead creature try to kill its eaters just as it had tried to kill her when it was alive? This was supposed to be a form of revenge but it was backfiring in a spectacular but not wholly unwelcome way.

She remembered that first video he made and how he had shit on her street tacos that everyone else in town had seemed to love. He called her, her cooking and her truck mediocre. The spread and fall-out of that review had really done a number on her business. It didn’t really affect her regulars who visited her truck for lunch like clockwork every day, but when it came to the potential of new customers, Dev had really screwed her over. His TikTok had left a bad taste in her mouth.

But this new one more than made up for it.

It had only been two hours since he made the video and now the special ingredient for her El Diablo Burrito was almost gone. Either she had poisoned the entire foodie influencer attendees at this fest or she had made them ravenous for more. Her revenge scheme transformed into something else.

Remi called her over to him. He was gawking at his phone, amazed. “The El Diablo Burrito went viral, Nay.”

She looked over and he scrolled through all the posts people had made. Hell, the burrito even had its own hashtag and the photo of the octopus-looking creature on the spit was all over Instagram, TikTok and twitter. “Looks like you got Dev to finally say something good about us,” Remi said. “Maybe he’ll take his first review down.”

Nay wished she could feel elation instead of dread. It was always her dream for Taco of the Town to go viral, and now that it finally had, she had run out of the one ingredient that had made it possible. How would she explain to people that the meat came from an otherworldly creature that might not be of earth? The El Diablo Burrito was a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Unless she could find another monster, survive the encounter, and kill it for its flesh.

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Later that night, unable to sleep, Nay found herself outside the Potions & Poisons bar in Koreatown. She figured her best bet at finding another one of those creatures and harvesting its meat would be retracing her steps from the night before. Only problem was, she had been on the precipice of blackout drunk that night so her memory was super hazy.

She remembered going to Potions & Poisons after a long shift to unwind. It was her place to go to nurse a cocktail and eat French fries. Their basket of fries was the perfect nosh, fried to a crispy perfection and sprinkled with parmesan, garlic powder and the ingredient that took it to another level, a light sprinkle of curry powder. She couldn’t taste much since Covid, but Nay was a creature of habit.

She figured the alleyway where she was attacked was near the restaurant, so she sparked up her Zippo and lit an American Spirit Black as she observed the street and the crowd. It was a Saturday night so the place was packed with casuals trying to impress their dates.

She noticed a red light emanating from the alleyway across from her. A memory flashed in front of her eyes then. A red neon light in Korean script burned in her mind. She headed across the street and entered the alleyway. There seemed to be a temperature change as she entered the corridor. She suddenly wished she had brought her jacket or at least her long-sleeve flannel that she usually took with her to the beach. But the source of the red glow was at the end of the alley.

It was a neon red cross with flowing Korean script. She couldn’t read Korean but she knew it was a church sign. She felt called to it like a moth to the flame.

She got to the side of the building, finding a door underneath the neon cross. She was surprised to find that it was unlocked. She stepped in.

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She entered what looked to be a Korean community center. It was one of those multi-purpose rooms that could serve as both a gymnasium and a meeting center. Stacks of metal folding chairs were pressed against the walls. There was a podium on one end. Flyers and ads were hung on a large bulletin board, but the feature that was currently holding Nay’s attention was what appeared to be a pentagram-like symbol scrawled on the floor.

It wasn’t quite a pentagram, but it definitely looked occult-like in nature.

“What the hell?” Nay muttered. The sight of it alarmed her and that’s when she noticed the forms on the floor. There were three people lying on the ground, their bodies mostly covered by robes and cloaks. There was an open book between the three of them. As she got closer, she saw blood and other wet matter stained on the floor around their heads, as if there was an explosion resulting in a red and crusty halo.

These people were dead. These were corpses.

Nay was struck with the uneasy sensation that she was being watched. She looked around and noticed the half of the room across from her was in total shadow. She thought she saw something there. She rose to her feet, squinting into the dark. She thought she could make out a shape that reminded her of a leg, cut-out in the darkness.

Not a human leg either.

A jointed appendage, long, thin and dark red as it moved into the moonlight coming in through the window. Nay could feel the hair on the back of her arms rising. The skin on her neck hackled, crawling. A primal instinct, a response collectively etched into her DNA as a member of the human race long ago when every person had to worry about predators. As her stomach twisted into knots, every nerve in her body was sending the same message.

Run.

Another crimson leg emerged out of the shadows. It too was segmented and jointed. More legs emerged, the torso they carried swaying into the blue moonlight shining in through a window. It was a giant spider, skin a slick red like it was covered in blood. But its head was not arachnid in origin. But human. A human infant head. An extra set of hooked appendages hung below its face like butcher’s chains ending in hooks.

Nay heard herself scream.

She turned to run but felt something cold and rope-like go taut against her shins. She tripped and fell forward, caught herself with the heels of her hands on the floor. Something slippery and serpentine scrambled over her and squeezed ahead of her. She looked up to see the bulbous body of a land octopus. It squirted a dark green ink at the spider and the air filled with a gaseous cloud of the stuff. Nay coughed, sputtering. She dragged herself forward out of the edge of the ink cloud. It was like being blasted in the face and breathing in a broccoli and asparagus smoothie. She sputtered for air.

She pushed herself up and ran for the exit. She glanced behind her to see the spider recoiling from the cloud and having to skitter around it. Tentacles coiled around her ankle again, pulling her back. She got the distinct feeling that this new creature was trying to throw her at the spider so it could get away, too. She didn’t have time to dwell on it, but she was pretty sure it was also operating purely on fear.

She wrestled with the purple tentacles coiling around her. Her hands unable to get a grip. It was like trying to grab at rubber and muscle. She caught a glimpse of eyeballs and beaks on these stalks. She drew her Konosuke chef’s knife from its leather sheath and went to hacking. She could feel the edge of the blade cutting into the muscular flesh and for a moment she swung with such frenzy the creature must have felt it was like on the wrong side of a Cuisinart. Nay used her other hand to draw her taser and she deployed the button, jolting the thing with electricity while she severed one of the appendages.

The air filled with purple ichor that must have been its blood and then another spray of that green ink surrounded both Nay and the monster. Her eyes burned and her airways filled with the revolting ink. Through her own tears and the cloud she caught a glimpse of the underside of the spider’s hourglass torso appearing above them. A neon red outline formed underneath it, like the outline of a door. Then her vision was blinded by a burst of the red light and then the chaos stopped.

There was stillness in her going unconscious.

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Nay woke up coughing and cold and extremely disoriented. She heard the howling wind around her and could feel it on her skin. She vomited green bile onto the snow. When her vision cleared from the red after-image of the light, she caught glimpses of white, as if she woke up in the midst of a blizzard. And something else appeared in her vision, some glowing text that hovered in front of her, at the center of her vision.

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