dreamszilla

In 1947 London, under the shadows of wartime events, mystical savant Chef Amos takes over a hotel restaurant, where Clementine and Nicholas's relationship intensifies while they prepare the perfect tomato soup. Image generated with OpenAI He was a darling chef. Darling, really. The best. Oh, the odes the boys in the kitchen were singing on the morning of his arrival; Friday, December 5, 1947. They floated chatter about the exotic woods where he foraged his ingredients: Tasmania for the saffron, Ceylon for the cardamom. Who'd heard of any of it? Not me. He himself sprang up in Italy. Somewhere in the mountains, but it was also France depending on whom you asked. He had come to take over the restaurant and the tune was electric. There are certain sequences of Amos' history that I knew to be undeniably true. First, that Amos was a Jew. Second, that Amos opened L'appartmento in Paris two years prior, one month after the Nazi surrender. Those were true for ce...

When an apocalyptic storm floods the Bangladeshi city of Chattogram, residents Shafaet and Azim scramble to find hope in their community. Image generated with OpenAI The bruised sky hung low over Chattogram, a swollen wound pressing down on the city's restless heart. Before dawn, at 4:30am, the air was thick and heavy, a damp shroud suffocating the narrow lanes of Halishahar. Walls wept in silence, slick with the fevered breath of a monsoon unleashed too early, too fiercely. The scent of wet earth, rotting wood, and yesterday's curry clung stubbornly to every cracked surface, as if the city itself exhaled a mournful prayer. Shafaet woke before the alarm, the tightness in his chest refusing to relent. His small room smelled of damp blankets and thin, frayed hope. Fatima lay beside him, breathing slowly and steadily in sleep's fragile embrace. Their son, Rumi, six years old and already learning the weight of the world, curled beneath a threadbare sheet, lips mo...

Ten-year-old Ella's body starts developing in a surprising way. Image generated with OpenAI Ma's been burning incense and chanting, but the bumps aren't going away. At first they itched, but now they're big and burny and the only relief is to rub them against the doorjamb, a tree or the rusty aluminum siding on our doublewide. The skin oozes pus. If it doesn't get better, Ma swears she'll take me to a doctor. When feathers break the skin, Ma stops praying. She says if the feathers were white, she'd know I'm an angel for sure. If they were black, it'd be a different story. But gray with dun stripes? I look like a pigeon. I put on my first bra backwards to cup the wings. At school I wear my backpack in the hall, keep my coat on through class. At recess I stand with my back to the wall, grinning incessantly. The most difficult part is faking sick for gym, but not so sick they send me to the nurse. I have to tell the gym teacher I got di...

Oge is exasperated by her sister Ulari's decision to marry a beautiful but self-centred man. Image generated with OpenAI One time, my sister, Ulari, married an idiot. One time. She is remarried now, and this husband is no fool. This is not about the good one, Bayo, whom we all love - but after Ayo, we would have loved just about anybody. Everyone knew Ayo was no good - even Ulari, but like many women, she was afraid of the big, bad monster that was coming for her; her forties loomed with a growling menace, and to escape its ignominious clutches, she decided to marry an ex-boyfriend. She had dated Ayo for three years, from two days after her nineteenth birthday till her twenty-second birthday. That night, as I let Ulari in through the kitchen, she whispered, 'It's over between us; he is going nowhere.' She described the night in a monotonous whisper as we lay in bed together: The misogynistic remarks Ayo laughed at with his friends, his frenzied dancing a...