The Aftertaste

The restaurant sat on a narrow corner of a street that pulsed with neon. Its crimson sign flickered in the rain, promising authentic Korean BBQ. Locals filed inside with an almost feverish hunger, as if the smell itself dragged them forward. You hesitated at the door, but curiosity won. Once inside, the sizzle of meat on hot grills filled the air, smoke curling like fingers across the tables. A server guided you to a booth. The food arrived quickly, steaming, savory, and rich beyond anything you had ever tasted. Each bite was bliss, an explosion of flavor unlike any meal before. The first bites felt decadent, addictive. But then a strange sensation crept over your tongue, as though something slick clung stubbornly to it. You reached for water, gulped, but the coating remained. Metallic bitterness tinged every swallow, souring the perfect meal. The server hovered nearby, their smile stiff, eyes watching too intently. Around you, diners devoured their food with unsettling eagerness, chewing too fast, too loudly. Their laughter was brittle, off-key. You glanced at the glossy grill, at the meat that now glistened unnaturally under the light, and felt a ripple of unease. Something here wasn’t right, but you couldn’t stop.

By the time you finished, colors seemed sharper. The red walls throbbed like living veins. Conversations from the next booth blurred, voices distorted as if underwater, and then too close, whispering in your ear. Your cravings twisted. You wanted more—meats you had never liked, strange cuts you wouldn’t normally touch. The diners around you shoveled food into their mouths, eyes glassy, hands trembling with urgency. You blinked hard, disoriented, but when you looked again, everything appeared normal. Almost. The server leaned in with the check. For a second, you thought you heard a faint clicking sound coming from their jaw. You staggered outside, rain washing over your face, but the coating on your tongue persisted. Hours later, in your apartment, no amount of brushing, rinsing, or scraping would remove it. Sleep brought no relief. You woke to find the world subtly altered—colors oversaturated, the hum of appliances unbearably loud. The taste of your toothpaste turned metallic, wrong. Hunger gnawed at you relentlessly, but ordinary food tasted like ash. The memory of the restaurant’s sizzling plates haunted you, tugging at your will. You swore you’d never go back, but by evening, your hands trembled as cravings twisted into full desperation.

The second visit was easier than admitting to yourself why you returned. The restaurant’s windows glowed, inviting, as if the sign pulsed in rhythm with your heart. Inside, the scent struck you like a drug, your body almost collapsing with relief. The meat dissolved on your tongue, and for the first time all day, the gnawing hunger quieted. Diners around you looked worse—some with twitching hands, others with dark circles under their eyes. They smiled too widely, greasy lips stretched thin. You tried not to look at the booth across from you, where a man chewed long after his plate was empty. You overheard whispers at work days later. A colleague, pale and jittery, mentioned the restaurant in passing. “It’s not food,” she muttered under her breath, clutching her coffee cup. When you pressed her, she refused to say more. Later, you searched online. Buried in forums and rumor boards, threads warned of “the experiment.” Some said the grease wasn’t grease at all, but a living film designed to bind to nerve endings. Once inside, it rewired perception. Food became secondary. The biofilm fed itself, altered cravings, made people return. One post claimed taste of “home” disappeared forever, replaced by synthetic hunger.

Nights grew unbearable. You began to hear faint clicking deep in your jaw whenever you chewed. It wasn’t pain, but pressure, like something was adjusting inside you. Mirrors became untrustworthy; your tongue looked slick, almost glossy under the bathroom light. Friends avoided you now. They said your eyes seemed too sharp, movements twitchy, voice off-key. Still, you craved the food. Each visit stretched longer, meals devoured faster. You began to lose track of time in the restaurant. Hours felt like minutes. The servers never stopped smiling, though their faces sometimes rippled strangely, as if their skin was only an approximation. One night, you pushed past the curtain near the back. A kitchen should have been there. Instead, you found a white room glowing sterile and cold. Diners slumped in chairs, heads tilted back, wires feeding into their mouths. Machines hummed, screens displaying brainwaves and taste receptors. A vat pulsed in the center, filled with thick, glistening fluid. It shifted when you looked at it, like something alive under the surface. A server spotted you, lips pulling back too wide. Their jaw clicked audibly as they said, “Customers aren’t allowed back here.” You fled before they could take a step closer.

At home, paranoia gnawed worse than hunger. You taped your mouth shut at night, terrified something might crawl out. The clicking in your jaw grew louder, sometimes echoing in your skull. Food outside the restaurant was useless now—spoiled, rancid, unrecognizable. Even water burned metallic. Your fridge rotted untouched. Still, your cravings intensified until your body shook violently. You swore you wouldn’t return, but days later, you woke at the restaurant door without memory of walking there. The server greeted you like family, sliding the plate in front of you before you even sat. You didn’t resist. You devoured everything. By the fifth week, you noticed changes in your neighbors. Several had begun frequenting the same place, eyes glassy, movements jerky. At night, you heard them outside your apartment, chewing noisily in the dark. They didn’t speak anymore—only clicked their jaws, over and over, a chorus of grinding teeth. Sleep became impossible. You started hearing whispers through the walls, voices in languages you didn’t know but somehow understood. They spoke of assimilation, of hunger as progress. You wondered if the city itself was changing, piece by piece, diner by diner. The restaurant never emptied. Its sign glowed brighter every night.

Your reflection betrayed you. The tongue that once seemed coated now glistened with a sheen, pulsing faintly as if alive. When you touched it, it recoiled from your finger like a slug. You gagged, but no matter how hard you tried, you couldn’t tear it free. The next morning, your cravings shifted further. Raw meat called to you now—strange cuts from butcher shops, offal you once despised. It tasted exquisite, electric. The restaurant encouraged it. They served you things without names, dishes slick with the biofilm. Your jaw clicked louder every bite, syncing with the chorus around the crowded room. Rumors spread faster online. Some claimed the place was a government front, testing sensory manipulation. Others swore it was something older, alien, seeding itself through taste. Posts were deleted as quickly as they appeared, accounts vanishing overnight. Meanwhile, the line outside the restaurant never shortened. People waited in the rain, trembling, begging to be seated. You stopped resisting altogether. The biofilm had become part of you, bonded with your nerves. Food outside the restaurant no longer existed. Friends, family, jobs—all blurred into irrelevance. Only hunger remained, guiding you back each night to sit, to chew, to click in rhythm.

On the tenth week, you saw someone collapse mid-meal. Their head lolled back, mouth still chewing reflexively though nothing remained on the plate. A server calmly slid the body aside and reseated another patron, who immediately began eating. No one reacted. The restaurant’s hum continued. You stared at the body, realization dawning: death meant nothing here. The biofilm carried on, chewing long after the host had ceased. You imagined your own body slumping forward, tongue still glistening, jaw still clicking as something else took over. The horror wasn’t death—it was continuation. Hunger eternal, appetite replacing identity. You kept chewing. Soon, you realized the restaurant was no longer confined to its corner. New locations sprouted across the city, then across states. Identical neon signs, identical menus, identical servers with smiles too sharp. Online maps couldn’t track them all—addresses shifted, sometimes appearing overnight. You tried to warn others, but words failed. Every time you opened your mouth, hunger hijacked your speech, twisting it into invitations: “You have to try it.” Strangers’ eyes lit up, pupils dilating. They went, they ate, and they returned. The world narrowed into a cycle of craving and feeding, a spreading contagion hidden in plain sight.

The clicking spread too. At first, it was faint—your jaw, your neighbors, fellow diners. But now, the entire city hummed with it. Elevators, buses, parks—everywhere, the sound of teeth clicking, echoing like locusts in summer. It synchronized at times, waves of crunching reverberating through the night. You couldn’t remember silence anymore. You couldn’t remember home, family, or even your own voice. Only hunger, gnawing and endless. The biofilm wasn’t just in you now—it was you. Your tongue pulsed with it, your nerves sang with it. And still, you returned to the restaurant, where the plates never emptied, where the chewing never stopped. One evening, as you sat devouring another nameless dish, you noticed something terrifying: the servers weren’t serving anymore. They sat among the diners, chewing, clicking, blending into the chorus. The restaurant had no staff now—only feeders, indistinguishable from the fed. The vats in the back no longer needed tending; they pulsed on their own, birthing more biofilm, spreading endlessly. Outside, the city glowed with new signs, red lights pulsing like veins. The hunger had become universal, identity erased in favor of appetite. You chewed faster, jaw clicking in rhythm, because you knew the truth: no one ever leaves the restaurant.