It started with a smell.
Not just good—transcendent. Like memories you forgot you had, suddenly reheated and served under warm lights. It drifted from a newly opened restaurant on Holloway Street, wedged between a boarded-up vape shop and a laundromat that hadn't seen soap in years.
KOSMO BISTRO, the sign read. Block letters, sleek and matte, backlit with the faintest glow. The tagline beneath it:
> "The Taste Beyond Telling."
No ads. No website. No menu posted. But still, people went.
And they came back… different.
---
Jeremy Ortiz, assistant manager at Office World, was the first in the friend group to try it.
"You have to go," he said, licking invisible grease from his fingers days later. "I can't even explain it. I've been dreaming in flavors."
"What did you have?" asked Lisa.
Jeremy blinked. "That's the thing. I… I don't remember."
He swore he ordered something simple. A sandwich, maybe. Or soup. But the sensation, the aftertaste, clung to him like perfume. He'd lost weight in a week, but glowed like a man who'd finally prayed to the right god.
He never brought leftovers. Never showed receipts.
And he never stopped smiling.
---
Eventually, Lisa and Tom went.
The host was a woman—or something wearing a woman's shape. Skin waxen, eyes the color of blued steel. She greeted them without moving her lips.
"Welcome to Kosmo."
The restaurant was dim, lit by flickering candles that cast more shadow than light. Tables were obsidian-black, seemingly carved from one massive stone.
They were not given menus.
Instead, the host placed her hand gently on their foreheads and whispered:
> "What you hunger for shall be served."
---
Tom received a plate of shimmering red cubes, each pulsing slightly, like they had a heartbeat. He ate them in silence, tears running down his face.
Lisa was brought a soup that tasted like the ocean at sunset and something more—something like longing, like nostalgia, like the smell of your mother's perfume in a house that no longer exists.
They ate and ate.
Neither spoke.
By the end of the meal, the candles had gone out, though no one noticed.
The bill was just a whisper in Lisa's ear:
> "Your debt will ripen in time."
---
Afterward, Lisa couldn't eat anything else.
Not ramen. Not steak. Not even her favorite dumplings from Han's Corner.
Everything tasted… gray.
She tried cooking, tried spices, tried eating in the dark. Nothing worked. It all crumbled into ash on her tongue.
She began to lose weight. Her eyes sank. Her teeth felt loose.
Tom was worse.
He claimed he could feel flavors now.
Said he could taste people by being in the same room with them.
"Some are bitter. Some are sweet. Most are sour, though. Like rot beneath skin."
He stopped leaving the house.
Started keeping raw meat in his bedroom.
---
Jeremy disappeared first.
No one noticed until Lisa went by his apartment and found his door slightly ajar. Inside was a smell—not of rot, but overripeness. Like fruit forgotten in a sealed room. Sweet to the point of nausea.
The only thing in the fridge was a single Styrofoam box from Kosmo Bistro.
Lisa opened it.
Inside was a small, perfect slice of meat, glowing faintly purple under the kitchen light. It twitched.
She closed it and left, gagging.
Jeremy's body was never found.
But his tongue was nailed to the wall above his bed, wrapped in a cloth napkin embroidered with a tiny, stitched eye.
---
Tom said he was going to try cooking it himself.
"It's not the food," he whispered. "It's how it's prepared. Kosmo doesn't serve meals—it summons them."
He'd been collecting cookbooks. Old ones. Real old. Bound in leather, written in forgotten languages. He claimed they had recipes for flavor profiles that predated humanity.
One night, Lisa found him in the bathtub.
Not bathing.
Fermenting.
His skin bubbled slightly. There were herbs floating in the water. A smell of vinegar and sea brine.
He opened his eyes and said, "Just until I'm tender."
---
Lisa stopped going to work.
She spent hours outside Kosmo Bistro, just inhaling. Never brave enough to go in again.
But she began tasting dreams. She'd wake up chewing her pillow, whispering descriptions of impossible meals—"broiled horizon dust," "buttered void," "candied regret."
Her nails grew long and curved like talons. Her tongue forked slightly down the middle. She never felt pain.
Only hunger.
---
One man tried to shut the place down.
Health Inspector James Colgrave, known hardass, filed a report:
> "No kitchen. No staff. Only the host. Food appears as if materialized. No supply deliveries logged. No waste bins. Cold storage sealed with symbols. Possible cult involvement."
The next week, Colgrave's skull was found on the Bistro's doorstep, hollowed out and polished like a soup bowl.
Inside was a folded note:
> "Five stars. Would eat again."
The restaurant remained open.
---
Word spread.
People traveled from states away. From countries.
Michelin chefs vanished. Culinary bloggers posted incoherent five-star reviews.
People disappeared.
Others glowed with newfound light and sank into madness.
One woman birthed a tongue the size of a toddler, which sang lullabies in a language of boiling broth.
Still, Kosmo remained open.
No one ever saw the kitchen.
No one ever saw the host leave.
---
She had no choice.
She had wasted away. Skin to bone. Dreams to delirium.
Lisa stood before the host once more.
"What do you hunger for?" it asked.
Lisa fell to her knees. "I want to remember what food tastes like."
The host placed a single silver spoon on the obsidian table.
Then it took out a knife.
---
Lisa's screams were never heard outside the building.
The diners around her didn't look. Just chewed. Swallowed. Moaned.
On her plate was a piece of meat—warm, trembling, unmistakably human.
It was her own tongue.
But when she tasted it, she finally understood.
She tasted herself. Her memories. Her childhood. Her love. Her fear. Her soul.
And then, the taste of something deeper—something so vast and cold it shattered her sense of identity like a dropped glass.
It was the flavor of her insignificance.
And it was delicious.
---
New locations opened.
Unmarked. Unnamed. Only those who were truly hungry could find them.
No ads. No lines. Only whispers.
Some say the Earth itself is ripening. Marinating.
That humanity is a long-braised meal for something that dreams between galaxies.
And Kosmo is just the first bite.