Eel — Soup Disturbing

You swallow once. The soup swallows back.

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

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. You swallow once

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. not from your breath