The God of Ruin’s Pocket Change

CHAPTER 2: The Gastronomy of Despair

I was standing in the mud, the rain plastering my white hoodie to my skin, when my knees simply decided they didn't want to support the weight of the universe anymore. I stumbled, catching myself on the rough, wet brick of the alley wall.

"Poison," I wheezed, clutching my stomach. "Assassination."

It felt like something was trying to claw its way out of me. A sharp, rhythmic contraction that squeezed my insides until I saw spots dancing in the grey air. It was a violence I hadn't experienced since the Great War of the Nebulas, and even then, that was just a metaphysical headache.

This? This was biological treason.

My stomach growled.

It wasn't a polite rumble. It was a roar. A guttural, wet, demanding sound that vibrated through my ribs and echoed off the brickwork.

I froze. I knew what this was. I had read about it in the manuals for managing mortal species. Step one: The subject requires fuel. Step two: If fuel is not provided, the subject ceases to function.

"Hunger," I whispered. The word tasted like ash.

I had never been hungry. Not really. In the Celestial Palace, eating was an art form. It was recreational. You ate a moon-tart because the texture amused you, or you sipped starlight wine because it made your thoughts sparkle. You didn't eat because you had to.

But down here? In this wet, rotting trash can of a world?

My body was an engine, and the warning light was flashing red.

I pushed myself off the wall. The effort made my head swim. I felt heavy. My bones felt like lead pipes. My muscles felt like wet sandbags.

"I need..." I swallowed, my throat dry and clicking. "I need sustenance."

I turned my head.

The smell hit me before I even saw where it was coming from.

This smell was aggressive. It was greasy. It was thick. It smelled of charred meat, burning chemicals, and something distinctively metallic, like blood on a hot engine block.

I followed it.

My sneakers, the Celestial Weaves, squelched through the sludge. I walked out of the alley and onto the main drag of Sector Z.

The street was a river of misery.

Hundreds of people— shuffled through the rain. They were wrapped in plastic tarps and grey rags. They kept their heads down, eyes fixed on the pavement, moving with the synchronized apathy of the defeated.

Neon signs sputtered above us, casting sickly pools of pink and green light on the wet asphalt.

I was a head taller than everyone else. My white hoodie, glowing faintly with its own residual divinity, acted like a beacon. People bumped into me, hard, unyielding shoulders checking mine.

"Watch it, lighthouse," a woman hissed, shoving past me. She had a metal plate bolted over her nose.

I didn't have the energy to flick her. I didn't have the energy to be offended.

I just locked onto that smell.

It was coming from a stall wedged between a collapsed pawn shop and a overflowing storm drain.

The stall was barely a structure. It was a sheet of corrugated tin propped up by rusted poles. Underneath the tin, a fire burned.

It wasn't a wood fire. It was a metal barrel, a fifty-gallon drum painted with warning symbols that had long since peeled away filled with something that burned a bright, toxic blue.

Standing over the barrel was a man.

He looked like he had been cured in smoke. His skin was the color of old leather, cracked and mapped with grime. He wore a stained apron that might have once been white but was now a stiff, black shield of grease.

One of his eyes was organic, yellowed and watery. The other was a crude cybernetic implant—a red lens screwed directly into his orbital socket, whirring softly as it zoomed in and out.

Old Man Jori. The name was scrawled on a piece of cardboard taped to the barrel: JORI’S GRILL. NO CREDIT. NO REFUNDS.

I stopped at the edge of the stall. The heat from the toxic fire washed over me, battling the damp chill of the rain.

I stared at the grill.

Laid out on a rusty grate over the blue flames were... things.

They were skewered on metal rods. Lumps of meat. Charred black on the outside, dripping fat into the fire below. 

I leaned closer, my divine senses trying to parse the anatomy.

I saw a tail. A long, hairless tail curled around the stick like a burnt ribbon.

I saw a claw. Small. curled.

"Rats," I whispered.

My stomach roared again. It didn't care. It didn't care that the meat was vermin. It didn't care that the fire was probably radioactive. 

I stepped up to the barrel.

Jori didn't look up. He was busy flipping a skewer with his bare hand, his calloused fingers impervious to the heat.

"You buyin' or lookin'?" he rasped. His voice sounded like gravel grinding in a cement mixer. "Looking costs extra. Breathing my air costs extra. Blocking my light costs double."

I tried to stand straight. I tried to summon the dignity of a being who used to use galaxies as coasters.

"I require... nutrition," I said. My voice wavered, betraying me.

Jori looked up.

His red mechanical eye whirred, the lens spinning as it focused on my face. He took in the clean skin. The lack of scars. The impossible white of my hoodie.

He sneered. It was a majestic expression of contempt, revealing a mouth full of metal teeth.

"Nutrition," he mocked, mimicking my accent. "Oh, la-di-da. We got a tourist. You get lost on your way to the Golden Zone, pretty boy? Mommy drop you off at the wrong spaceport?"

"I am not a tourist." I said, gripping the edge of the barrel to keep myself upright. The metal was hot, but the pain felt distant compared to the hunger. 

"Displaced," Jori scoffed. He grabbed a shaker of grey powder—salt? ash? gunpowder? and dusted the rats. "That's a fancy word for homeless."

He pointed the skewer at me.

"This ain't a charity kitchen, soft-skin. This is Jori's. You got credits?"

"I have currency," I said.

"Then order or move. You're scaring the regulars."

I looked around. There were no regulars. Just a stray dog with three legs sniffing a puddle of grease nearby.

I looked back at the meat.

It was repulsive. It was a crime against gastronomy. It was a biological hazard.

And I wanted it more than I had ever wanted anything in my infinite life.

"I will take..." I paused, trying to find words that fit the situation. "I will take the Chef's Special."

Jori stared at me.

The silence stretched out, filled only by the hiss of the rain and the popping of the rat fat.

He thought I was making fun of him. I could see it in his real eye—the flash of anger. He saw a giant in clean clothes, standing in the mud, using fancy words to order roadkill. He thought it was a joke. A slumming rich kid getting a laugh.

"Chef's Special," Jori repeated, his voice flat and dangerous.

"Yes," I said. "Medium rare, if possible. I prefer the... texture."

Jori let out a short, sharp bark of laughter. It wasn't a happy sound. It was the sound of a man who had seen too much misery to be surprised by stupidity.

"Medium rare," he muttered, shaking his head. "Right. Coming right up, Your Highness."

He reached into the back of the grill, where the fire was hottest.

He pulled out the biggest, blackest, ugliest skewer on the rack.

It was a monstrosity. A large rat perhaps the king of rats charred to a crisp, its teeth bared in a final, eternal scream. Grease dripped from it like black oil.

Jori held it out to me. He didn't offer a napkin. He didn't offer a plate. He just thrust the sharp metal stick toward my chest.

"Here," Jori spat. "The finest dining in Sector Z. Don't choke on the bones."

I reached out.

My hand trembled. Not from fear, but from the sheer, overwhelming anticipation.

I took the skewer.

It was heavy. Heavier than it looked. The heat radiated through the metal rod, warming my cold, wet palm.

I brought it closer to my face.

The smell was overpowering. Burnt hair. Rancid fat. And underneath it, the undeniable, primal scent of protein.

I looked at Jori. He was watching me, arms crossed over his greasy apron, waiting for me to vomit. Waiting for the rich kid to realize his mistake and run back to the upper city.

"Thank you," I said.

And I meant it.

I really, really meant it.

I was holding a dead rat on a stick, standing in toxic mud, surrounded by the dregs of the universe.

But before I could take a bite, the hunger cramped again, doubling me over.

I needed to pay. I needed to finish the transaction so I could eat.