Page 23 of Aftertaste

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YOU’LL DO ANYTHING to avoid becoming a Hangry Ghost.

So you start searching for a way back.

A way to make peace. A last conversation. A chance to explain. To tell Maura to let you go. To stop hurting you. To stop haunting you.

You know there are ways to travel; you heard the stories even when you were alive. Spirits returning for festivals. For offerings left in their name. For Halloween. There were spirits that haunted old Victorians, and gas station bathrooms, and amusement parks. It can’t be that hard.

But when you start asking around, other spirits—Hungry ones who’ve been in the Food Hall much longer, old-timers with sunken faces, shadowed limbs—tell you that there’s only one way back that can sate the Hunger.

They call it the Magic Meal. A Reincarnosh. An Aftertaste.

It has a lot of names, but if you find yours, it’s a Golden Ticket. A way to return to your Living. A last meal to help them finally let you go.

All you have to do is find the right dish, the combination that unlocks your pathway back to them. Only, no one’s ever managed to do it, and no one you ask can agree on what it is you’re looking for.

Some say it’s supposed to be the best meal you ever ate. Others are convinced it has to do with your Living, a dish you ate together. Some claim it’s the flavor of your Living’s grief. Others, the flavor of their love. One guy says it isn’t about the food at all, but about how it makes you feel. Some lady has this whole theory about meals, and memory, and ties that bind.

In the end, you hedge, and take all of their advice.

It doesn’t bother you that it hasn’t been done before; you don’t mind being the first.

But that doesn’t make finding your Aftertaste any easier.