Chapter 1: Home Cooking with a Side of Screams
The wok screamed when the scallops hit the oil. A high, sharp hiss that Bella answered with a delighted squeal. She danced back, a spatula in one hand, a bottle of Shaoxing wine in the other, her hip bumping the cupboard door that never quite closed.
“Hot, hot, hot!” she sang, though she wasn’t talking about the pan.
The kitchen was a chaos of good smells. Ginger and garlic fought with the briny scent of fresh shellfish, and the steam from the rice cooker fogged the lone window overlooking the parking lot. Every burner was on. A crab pot bubbled violently. Soup steamed. And in the center of it all, Bella, a petite commander in a strawberry-print apron, her black hair piled in a messy bun, tendrils sticking to her damp neck.
“Almost time, friends!” she called out to the empty living room, then giggled to herself. She was always talking to the food. It tasted better that way, she was sure.
She poked the scallops with a chopstick. They were plump, searing to a perfect golden brown around the edges, their centers like opaque, quivering moons. She leaned in close, her nose inches from the sizzling surface.
“Ohhh, little fishy,” she cooed, her Mandarin melodic and soft. “Why you cry? So lucky! You get to be so yummy.” She switched to her broken English, a private game. “Big flavor. Very happy ending.”
A faint, almost imperceptible tremor ran through the platter where the remaining raw scallops lay on ice. Bella didn’t notice. She was too busy licking a drip of sauce from her wrist.
From the living room, her phone buzzed against the coffee table. A text from Lian: On our way! Got the beer!
Bella grinned, her whole face transforming with a wide, gummy smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes. She loved feeding people. It was her love language, louder than any words, especially English words, which always tangled up in her mouth.
She turned back to the feast. The crab legs, cracked and gleaming. The prawns, their antennae still crisp. And the scallops. Her favorite. They were so… responsive.
Another tremor. This one stronger. A single scallop slid a centimeter on the bed of ice.
“You excited too?” Bella laughed, sprinkling chopped scallions over the searing ones in the wok. The aromatic oil spattered. “I excited. Very hungry.”
A sound, then. Not the pop of oil, or the rumble of the boiling pot. A thin, wet, rasping whisper. It came from the platter of raw scallops. It was the sound of a dozen small, desperate voices, choked and airy, murmuring in Mandarin.
“Please… no fire…”
“It’s dark…”
“Mama…”
The words were swallowed by the loud plink of a shrimp tail hitting the ceramic tile as Bella flipped the ones in the pan. She hummed along to a TikTok song in her head.
She lifted the wok, giving it a expert flick. The scallops tossed, a beautiful, seared cascade. The pleas from the platter rose to a collective, shivering whimper, lost in the clatter of metal on metal.
“Okay, okay, little fishy. Bella finish you now.”
She plated them, beautiful on the white porcelain. They glistened. She leaned in one last time, inhaling the sweet, oceanic scent. The voices were silent now. Just the gentle, sickening simmer of their own cooked flesh.
The doorbell rang.
“Coming!” she chirped. She grabbed a crab leg from the pile, snapping it between her fingers with a clean, sharp crack. She sucked the meat out in one quick, joyful slurp, tossing the empty shell into a growing mound on the counter.
The doorbell rang again, impatient.
“I said coming!” she laughed, wiping her hands on her apron. She gave the still-smiling plate of scallops a final, affectionate pat. “You be good. I come back for you.”
As she skipped out of the kitchen, the steamed whole fish on the counter, its eye clouded and milky, let out a soft, final sigh that misted the glass plate covering it. The garlic in the mortar by the sink, freshly crushed, pulsed once with a faint, phosphorescent light.
Bella flung the apartment door open, her gummy smile blazing. “You late! Food get lonely without you!”
Her friends piled in, bringing the cold night air and laughter. The kitchen waited, a universe of silent screams and fading heat. And on the stove, a single pot of soup, thick with vermicelli and herbs, began to bubble with a rhythm that matched, beat for beat, a frantic, trapped heartbeat.