Sanguini’s Restaurant was the toast of the town. It was elegant, intimate, and extremely expensive, but all who ate there agreed that the food was worth it. The finest, most succulently prepared feasts of foul, fish, salads, and stews were set before the fortunate few customers who could afford it. Men would save up for months to take a first date there and reserve their table a week in advance (the best tables might require up to a month).
Jeff Farnsworth had been saving up for his table for weeks. He had meant it as a dual celebration: he had recently been promoted to assistant sales manager, and his girlfriend, Sam, had gotten a permanent job on the local newspaper. Now that they were both settling into their careers, Jeff thought that at last they actually might be able to talk about getting married. He thought of tonight as a kind of ‘pre-engagement’ dinner: a chance to celebrate the fact that that option was finally on the table. That certainly was worth a Sanguini dinner.
Samantha Billings was a curvy, bright-eyed redhead with a wicked smile. She had the cunning, mischievous look that always seemed to suggest she was looking for trouble. And, as a newspaper reporter, she usually was. She always had to know things, and to keep digging until she got to the bottom of them. One of the reasons they got along so well was that Jeff was not a very complicated man, and it hadn’t taken her long to get to the bottom of him. That left the atmosphere between them much more relaxed than it otherwise might have been. But she was always on the look out for her next big mystery, and today it was Sanguini’s restaurant.
“What do you suppose goes into this?” she asked, savoring an eye-wateringly delicious bite of beef stew.
“Cow,” Jeff answered. “At least, I hope so.”
He cut off a bit of his duck and held it up to his nose like a wine connoisseur.
“Mmm,” he sighed. “I think Sanguini could make good money just by offering to let people smell it.” He laid the piece gently in his mouth and sighed.
“But that’s my point,” said Sam. “Everyone agrees Sanguini is a genius and that his food is angelic. Everyone. I’ve never heard a single one of our critics ever rate another restaurant higher than his. This incredible beef stew, for instance, is practically world famous. Yet, how does he do it? Is it a spice? A cooking technique? A sauce? How does he make his beef stew taste so…so different than any other? I mean, it’s practically a sacrilege to even call this stuff ‘beef stew,’ because that implies it’s the same sort of thing you or I might make in a crock-pot.”
Jeff shrugged.
“I don’t really see the mystery,” he said. “So the guy’s a brilliant chef and doesn’t want his secret recipes to get out.”
Sam chewed another bite of her stew slowly. Jeff knew that glimmer in her eyes only too well.
“Oh, don’t make this your next big expose!” he said. “Let the man have his business!”
“I’m not going to,” she said. “I’d just like to know, that’s all. For my own curiosity.”
“You know, there was another girl who always needed to settle her curiosity. You might have heard of her; her name was Pandora. And the less said about what it did to her cat, the better.”
Sam sniggered.
“What, you think Sanguini has some horrible box of evil hidden in his kitchen?” she said. “You think he salts his meat with the tears of the damned?”
“I’m just saying, don’t go meddling in things that aren’t your business.”
“I’m a reporter, Jeff,” she said, taking an extra large forkful of stew. “Everything is my business.”
When at last the marvelous meal was over and the waiter came to take the food away, Sam put out her first feelers.
“It was wonderful,” she said. “I’d love to be able to pay my compliments to the chef.”
“I will be sure to tell him, ma’am,” said the waiter.
“Oh, but don’t you know,” she said. “I’d really like to tell him myself, if it isn’t too much trouble.”
She smiled a truly radiant smile. Jeff chuckled to himself. Whatever else she was, Sam was a very good-looking woman, and he could see her charms working like magic on the waiter. The man reddened slightly, laughed, and glanced around the restaurant. It was late and there weren’t very many customers.
“One moment, please,” he said. “I will ask the chef.”
He entered the kitchen. A few moments later, he reemerged, followed by the fat, ruddy-faced, jolly-looking figure they had seen so often in advertisements and press clippings.
“Good evening,” said chef Sanguini, bowing so that his three chins turned into five. “I understand you wished to see me?”
“Yes,” said Sam. “I just wanted to tell you personally how much we enjoyed your cooking.”
“It was my own great pleasure, miss,” he said. “I am always so glad when my efforts are appreciated!”
“We were discussing your beef stew,” she went on. “And really, it’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted. You know, I just dying to know; how do you make it like that?”
“Ah, young lady,” he sighed. “Would you have the magician reveal the secret of his magic?”
“Yes,” she said at once. “That way I can truly appreciate his skill and ingenuity.”
The chef laughed so that his chins wobbled.
“I can promise you very faithfully that it would go no further than the two of us,” she went on.
“No doubt, no doubt,” said Sanguini. “But I am afraid that is one thing I absolutely refuse to do. Many people, whole companies have begged me to reveal the secret ingredient of my stews. I have been offered more money than I could ever spend in a dozen lifetimes. But to me, the art and the taste are beyond all wealth. Thank you for coming tonight, and I am glad you enjoyed the meal.”
That ended that. They thanked Sanguini again, paid their bill, and left.
“Well, it was worth a shot,” said Jeff as he started the car.
“You speak as if I were finished,” she said.
“Oh, don’t tell me you’re still going after this!”
“Of course. He’s not getting away that easy!”
“Can’t you leave the man alone?”
“I’m not going to ruin him!” she said. “I just want to know. For my own sake.”
They said no more about the subject for the rest of the night, but Sam continued to mull over it in her mind, even as Jeff kissed her goodnight outside her apartment. The puzzle grew in her mind as she was getting ready for bed, until finally, when she was half-way through her shower, she made up her mind.
Rather than dressing for bed, Sam put her work clothes on, picked up some tools, and left the apartment. She called for Todd the landlord to leave the door open for her and went out into the night.
It was three o’clock in the morning. Now, if ever, the restaurant would be empty. The lock clicked and Sam pushed the door open, stowing her lock-pick kit into her pocket as she stepped into the shadowy kitchen. She shut the door behind her and switched on her flashlight. The beam cast huge, somber shadows on the gleaming metal surfaces, which showed her a faded and blurred reflection of herself. She moved forward slowly, taking care not to bump into anything.
Now, she was fairly confident that the secret ingredient worth a dozen lifetimes’ worth of cash probably wasn’t stored with the other supplies. It would be too easy for one of the other kitchen staff to snatch it and retire to the Bahamas. He would keep it somewhere private, where he could be sure to get at it, but where no one else would be likely to find it…
It suddenly occurred to her that he probably didn’t keep it at the restaurant at all; he most likely carried it to and from work himself in a bag or something. This made her feel like a bit of an idiot for going through all this effort to find something that wasn’t here, but since she had come this far, she thought she might make a search for it. Perhaps his office had some records of purchase or something.
She moved to the office in the corner of the kitchen. The door was locked, but fared no better than the street door. Ten seconds later, the filing cabinet was open and she was flicking through the rows of paperwork. Invoices, bills, receipts, certifications…nothing out of the ordinary. Then she checked the second, then the third.
It was in the bottom drawer that she finally found something. The drawer only contained two mostly-empty folders, but just as she was about to shut it again she noticed a gleam of white from the edge of the drawer. She reached in and felt the bottom. It wiggled slightly. Setting down the flashlight, Sam pried up the false bottom to find a bunch of loose papers. Eagerly, she pulled these out and read them over.
To her disappointment, they didn’t tell her much. They were hand-written, and seemed to be notes regarding shipments of supplies. The first read “Frank Albright: W 23. Flint. 10,000” The second “Patrick McBrine: W 19. Traverse City. 12,000” The third “Frank Albright: W 27. Toledo. 9,000.”
Sam bit her lip, trying to puzzle out the meaning of the papers. The names were fairly clearly suppliers. Then the locations, and the price, but she couldn’t figure out what either the ‘W’ or the other number meant. She would have guessed amount, except that lower numbers seemed to correspond with higher prices. And she had no idea what ‘W’ might mean. She scanned the rest of the sheets. There were about thirty of them. Her analytical mind immediately began picking out patterns: only about three or four names of suppliers. Most were marked ‘W,’ with two marked ‘CF’ and one marked ‘M.’ The prices were all in the tens of thousands, but the other numbers were always between about fifteen and thirty…except the two marked ‘CF,’ which were marked 8 and 10. Finally, she noticed that no two receipts came from the same place. They seemed to be a random selection of cities, large and small, around the Midwest.
After about ten minutes of puzzling, Sam decided she couldn’t figure out what it meant now and needed to leave. She put the receipts, or whatever they were, back under the fake drawer bottom, locked the cabinet, and slipped back into the kitchen, closing the office door behind her and locking it. She turned the beam of her flashlight out into the kitchen, where it landed full on the enormous belly and ruddy face of chef Sanguini.
Sam screamed. Sanguini was standing still in the middle of the darkened kitchen, as though he were nothing but a piece of the décor. The beam through strange shadows over his rounded figure, so that his deep-set eyes were invisible, as if he had nothing but sockets, like a skull.
He didn’t move when the light hit him, or when she screamed. He just stood there for a while, looking at her, for what felt like a very long time. Sam, for her part, was frozen with the shock of his unnatural appearance.
“What are you doing here?” he asked, as if they had run into each other at the bus stop.
Sam was still breathing hard from shock and couldn’t answer right away. But Sanguini did not repeat the question. He just waited, watching her with his skull-like sockets. When she finally started to answer, she realized she had no answer.
“I…I’m sorry,” she said. “I realize how bad this looks. And is.”
“That doesn’t really answer my question,” he said, smiling. The smile, far from putting her at her ease, chilled her blood even further. With his eyes and throat covered in shadow, Sanguini’s mouth looked almost like it was hovering in space over his body.
“Alright, I admit: I wanted to know what your secret ingredient was. It was wrong, and I’m sorry, but I promise it was just to satisfy my own stupid curiosity; I wasn’t going to steal from you or anything.”
“I believe you,” he said. “And since you apparently won’t rest until you know, I suppose I might as well tell you. But there’s no point talking in the dark like this; why don’t you turn on the lights? It’s the switch right behind you on the wall.”
Sam could hardly believe her ears. Was she really going to be that lucky? It was strange, and she suspected he was planning some little revenge, but she did want to have some light so that the whole situation wouldn’t be quite so creepy. She turned around. The wall behind her had several switches. She peered closer to see whether any of them had labels. That’s when the large, flabby, but terrifyingly strong hands gripped her from behind and a rag was pressed over her mouth.
The next thing Sam knew, the lights were on. They stung her eyes even through their lids and made her head ache. She tried to shield them with her hand, but found she couldn’t move her arms.
Slowly, Sam’s eyes adjusted to the light well enough for her to open them and take stock of her surroundings. The kitchen seemed to glow around her, and she screwed up her eyes against the painful glare. She was sitting on a metal folding chair. Her wrists were bound behind her back with strong twine, and her ankles were tied likewise to the struts of the chair.
In front of her, Sanguini was stirring a large pot that was simmering on the stove. He tasted the broth, then looked over and saw she was awake.
“Excellent!” he said. “Just in time!”
“What…” she muttered. “What are you…”
“I am a man of my word, madam,” he said. “I told you I would tell you the secret ingredient to my world-famous beef stew and certain other dishes that have raised me to the pinnacle of my art.”
He opened a drawer and pulled out something that Sam couldn’t make out at first.
“Here it is,” he said, and held it up before her.
It took Sam a minute, in her bleary, befuddled shape, to realize she was looking in a mirror.
“I…I don’t understand,” she said.
“You, my dear,” he said, putting the mirror aside. “You are my secret ingredient. Or at least, you will be tomorrow.”
He gave the pot another stir. Sam’s mind slowly began to put together the meaning of what he said.
“Wait, you mean that…that what you serve here is…people?”
“If you insist on putting it that way,” he said. “Yes.”
Sam felt suddenly sick. She struggled to pull herself together: she’d need every bit of cleverness she had to get out of this one.
“And,” she said, her mouth very dry. “And you’re going to…serve me tomorrow?”
“Yes,” he said. “I’m glad to see you’re keeping up.”
“But you know,” she said. “If you…if you cook me tonight, I won’t taste very good by time you open.”
“Oh, I know,” he said. “I am a master chef, after all. No, this is just my own evening snack: I need to make sure that the food I serve is fit for my customers.”
He licked his lips, as though she were a choice steak. Sam felt like she might throw up.
“Why?” she asked. “Why are you doing this?”
Sanguini turned to the vegetables piled on the counter behind him and sighed.
“Ah,” he said. “That is a long and wonderful story. It all began about five years ago, when I was working on a cruise ship: the Royale.”
Sam gasped.
“I…I didn’t think anyone survived that,” she said.
“Only I,” he said. “I, and four others escaped onto a lifeboat before she went down.”
He finished chopping the carrots and set them aside.
“We drifted for days,” he went on. “Baked in the sun…parched with thirst…weary from hunger. For my part, I had always been so used to good, savory foods that I thought I surely would go mad with the hunger. I was dying even as I was deprived of my art. Imagine a painter cast adrift without his brushes or canvas, or a writer with no pen and paper! Such was I on that raft.”
He sighed and began to chop the onions.
“I was certain I would die first, but I was wrong. Perhaps it was my store of fat that saved me. In any case, the first man died four days after the ship went down. As soon as we were sure he was dead, the remaining three of us set upon his body. We couldn’t help ourselves; the hunger was unbearable.”
He paused, and an expression came over his face like a man remembering his first ecstasy.
“That was the most…exquisite meal I had ever tasted,” he sighed. “It so overwhelmed me that I wondered if I would die from the very delight. The sensation of the soft, juice-filled flesh squeezed between my teeth and rolling over my tongue was beyond description.
“But there wasn’t enough! Sharing among four men the emaciated body of a fifth left little for any. I contrived to take as much as I could, and what we couldn’t eat we threw overboard. I fed on every last piece I could retain, and even gnawed at the bones to try to recover the taste…” Sam was now so frightened she could barely breathe, but she couldn’t help listening raptly as he continued. Her fingers scrabbled uselessly against the knots binding her wrists.
“I needed that taste,” he said, his voice trembling now. “I needed it, do you understand? I was an artist who had just discovered an entire new frontier; you couldn’t expect a painter who had discovered a whole new color to just let it sit, could you? It would be an abomination against art!”
He paused, licked his lips, and continued.
“That night the others slept; worn out and at last with some slack to their hunger. I took one of the bones from the corpse, which I had kept to gnaw on, and I smashed their skulls before they even knew what was happening.”
He licked his lips again, moaning slightly at the memory.
“Oh, how I feasted that day, and the next!” he said. “What an experience that was! And then, on the third day, just as I was setting to work again, I saw a ship. It was what I had been praying for and dreaming about for a week, but now I was loath to signal it. I knew that once I was back among men, I would be hard pressed to experience that taste again.
“Self-preservation won in the end, and with a heavy heart I cast my meals into the sea before signaling. I even had the sense to wash the blood off myself and cleaned up the interior of the raft as well as I could. Within a week, I was back among men…sweet, tender, delicious men whom I could no longer taste.”
He groaned, depositing the onions and carrots into the pot.
“Can you imagine what it was like?” he said. “To be walking among the most succulent meals ever set before human tongue, and to be forbidden to taste any? It nearly drove me mad.
“Finally, I knew I had to have it again. I found a young lady through a singles ad in the paper. Long story short, I soon had her in my kitchen and discovered that her flesh was even more succulent and delicious than the men I had killed. There was a different texture to it as well; it was sweeter, more tender…
Sam didn’t know how much more of this she could stand without going mad. She twisted in the chair with all her might, the ropes biting into her skin, but it did no good and he took no notice of her.
“That is when I realized that, of course, now I had all my implements of cooking,” he went on. “I didn’t have to eat the flesh raw. I could experiment, try different spices, different methods…Oh, I didn’t sleep at all that night, I can tell you. I soon had her meat frying and broiling and anything else I could think of. It was even better cooked!”
He moaned with recalled ecstasy.
“And so began my great entrepreneurial endeavor,” he said. “My restaurant. I knew that people would pay any price to experience that taste. I was not easy, of course, to obtain the, ah, ingredients. Too many people go missing, people start to talk. It was very difficult, and for a long time I had to limit my famous stews to the specials menu. But then I found certain open-minded men, men whom I could let in on the secret. You see, people only get suspicious about disappearances if the people all vanish from the same area. All I had to do was to have my friends select the ingredients from different cities every time; preferably young, preferably women, but anyone would do in a pinch. You, my dear, are an exception: you’ve become a little too bothersome, but why should I waste such a fine ingredient?”
He picked up a long, think knife and began to sharpen it, walking towards her.
“You’re insane!” she gasped. “You’re insane and disgusting and evil…”
“Nonsense!” he said, his voice quivering with mad laughter. “Didn’t you yourself say that it was the most delicious thing you had ever tasted?”
Horror seemed to wash over her, and Sam’s last reserve of courage gave way.
“HELP!” she screamed. “HELP ME! SOMEONE PLEASE…”
Sanguini grabbed her face, covering her mouth, and bent her head back, exposing her throat. She continued to scream into his hands, shut her eyes tight, and prayed. She felt the cold, sharp steel press against her skin…
There was a loud bang, and then another, this one so loud that it seemed to strike her ears. She felt the knife cut her as it fell from her throat, hit her shoulder, and clattered to the floor. There was a sound of crashing pots, running feet, screaming, and she felt herself being dragged back…
She opened her eyes. Jeff was bending over her, his face white, fumbling for his handkerchief to staunch the bleeding cut on her neck.
“Are you alright?” he asked shakily.
She couldn’t answer. She could only take deep, steadying breaths, looking down at the crumpled and screaming mass on the floor. When Sanguini had fallen backwards with the impact of the shot, he had knocked the simmering stew-pot over as well, drenching himself in the scalding liquid.
Jeff got out his pocket knife and began cutting Sam free.
“Todd called trying to find where you were,” he explained. “I guessed that you would come here, then I saw your car outside and was going to come in after you, when I heard you scream…”
He was trembling almost as badly as she was. The gun he had used to shoot Sanguini was lying on the table. Once Sam was free, he pulled her up, but they didn’t go far. Her legs felt like water, and almost as soon as they were out of the kitchen she sank back down into the nearest chair.
“I…ate it,” she gasped. “I ate it…and I liked it…”
Nausea rose within her and she vomited on the floor, then broke down completely and burst into tears. She felt contaminated; diseased, unfit for human society.
Jeff held her tight, stroking her hair.
“It’s alright,” he said. “It’s not your fault.”
They sat like that for what seemed like a long time, but really it was only a few seconds. Jeff had to let her go to call the police, though he kept a firm grip on her hand all through the call. They waited while Sanguini lay gasping and moaning in agony in the kitchen, until the police and paramedics began to show up. One of them tended to Sam, who was both bleeding and so badly shaken that the man recommended she spend the night at the hospital so they could keep an eye on her.
She nodded vaguely, but that would have to wait. Sanguini was being wheeled out on a stretcher, his burns and bullet-wound hastily dressed, still thrashing and screaming. As he passed them, he caught sight of Sam and shrieked like a demon.
“NO! Let me have her! I need that taste; I’ll die without it! PLEASE! I NEED THE TAAAAAASTE!”
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