Gehaffrey was enjoying the mindless, repetitive task that was shucking oysters with the old, manual oyster shucker down in the basement of the restaurant. It was rusty, and it creaked in a resonant, almost melodic way every time he raised it up and smashed it down on an oyster. It felt to Gehaffrey like a kind of a meditation, a time to zone out and forget completely about the outside world.

As a small business owner, Gehaffrey's life was full of numerous stressors, and he was constantly concerned with the bottom line. Restaurants in Nomachiato weren't known as massively prosperous enterprises, it was much more common for them to be small and barely scraping by. Gehaffrey's own restaurant was no exception, despite the fact that it had been kicking around for over three decades.

Truly, Gehaffrey was always working towards something. Whether it was back alley deals on shrimp sourcing, bets on the lobster market, choosing new cocktails for the menu, or even just simple spice trading and recipe bartering with like minded restaurateurs, every decision and action that Gehaffrey took was massively impactful on the aforementioned bottom line. And Gehaffrey really didn't want to think about the bottom line.

In fact, Gehaffrey wished the the bottom line didn't exist. Why did there have to be a bottom? Why couldn't the lines be bottomless? Surely, his life would be less full of stress, if the lines were bottomless. But either way, Gehaffrey found himself at every turn worrying about his business, at almost any time. Even when he was supposed to be relaxing, decompressing, and doing things outside work, he truly was not able to.

Instead, what did Gehaffrey do? Gehaffrey did the only thing that Gehaffrey could do when he was stressed out about the restaurant business. He put on some smooth jazz, took a big drag from some of his prized smoking leaves, and shucked those fucking oysters like his life depended on it. Because, as far as his mental health was concerned, in many ways it did.

Gehaffrey shucked oysters for his business every day, without fail, for at least an hour. On good days, he'd shuck the oysters for up to four hours, though really he wasn't supposed to.

Indeed, if people caught him shucking oysters, they'd tell him that he should hire someone else to do it. But Gehaffrey couldn't give that away, he couldn't bare to delegate shucking the oysters. Shucking the oysters was all he had.

So his restaurant always sold oysters. In season, out of season, hell, even if the oysters were ruined and rancid he would shuck them all the same. Of course, he wouldn't sell these oysters after he shelled them, not if they'd gone bad so to speak, but he would always shuck them.

His shucking them was a bit of an open secret around the restaurant. Everyone knew instinctively that he shucked the oysters. Those shells had to come from somewhere, and there was no indication that anyone other than Gehaffrey had ever even been near an oyster shucker in the whole wide history of the restaurant. And indeed, there was also the strange manner in which he would announce to Sharhen every morning whether or not oysters were on the menu. It was like a decree, and of course Gehaffrey knew this ahead of time because he was always keeping a fierce watch on the restaurant's oyster supply. There was not a day that the restaurant was open that oysters were not there, in stock, to be observed and indeed shucked by Gehaffrey. It was the simulacrum with which his life turned, it was the key to his soul. To Gehaffrey, the oysters were everything. To the oysters, Gehaffrey was a cold, uncaring presence that split them in twain and, occasionally, sent them up and out of the basement to be char grilled to perfection, or otherwise served raw.

There was of course the question of what Gehaffrey did with the bad oysters. Shucking them daily obviously necessitated that there would be situations wherein bad oysters popped up and needed to be disposed of in some way or another. And, with the absolutely inane volume of oysters that Gehaffrey went through on the daily regardless of season or genuine availability, he oft found that there were some oysters that had to be disposed of almost every day.

Those oysters went to the pit.

Not the Pit of Despair, mind you, but a pit all the same. Gehaffrey called it, affectionately, the Pit of Entrees. This was because not only his bad oysters went into this pit. Indeed, Gehaffrey dumped all sorts of edible discards, including botched meals, unfinished scraps, and spoiled oysters into one foul source that smelled like a scourge.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

There was, strangely enough, an entity that lived at the bottom of the Pit of Entrees.

Gehaffrey had never seen the entity that lived at the bottom of the Pit of Entrees, but he had heard it. And he had dreamt of it.

In fact, it was a dream of the existence of this strange, pit-dwelling creature that originally drew Gehaffrey to the restaurant, at that time up for sale by business owner. Gehaffrey had, after a night of half-sleep damaged by the blaring lights and sirens from an old neighbor who was constantly running apocalypse drills, had a miasmic, hypnagogic dream wherein a strange, murky voice had begged him to come forth and dump food into a deep, dark pit. When Gehaffrey bought the restaurant, he found the pit, and when he first accidentally dropped a wayward apple with a bad spot down into that pit, he first heard the voice.

Hello, Gehaff. It was always so unsettling how it spoke in Gehaffrey's mind instead of speaking with normal sounds, then again, it was a disembodied voice emanating from the pit.

Well, at least as Gehaffrey knew it, it was disembodied - but in actuality, he felt certain there was a physical entity attached. And the entity, after the first apple, was always begging him for food. Indeed, sometimes it would even distract Gehaffrey when he was trying to conduct business - he'd hear the voice when he was making those aforementioned back alley deals. He'd hear the voice in his dreams sometimes. Sometimes, Gehaffrey would even hear it so loudly in his mind that he would have trouble talking to people, though usually the entity was kind and left him be enough to function as a normal person. The key word here was, of course, almost.

Sometimes, Gehaffrey wondered if he shucked the oysters for himself, or for the entity. He did, almost always, end up dropping at least one oyster into the pit. So, he did sometimes wonder if it was all some big charade, some method with which he'd hoodwinked or otherwise brainwashed himself into doing and believing as truth.

Regardless, on he had shucked, until feeling that he'd reached an adequate quota for the day and indeed feeling like a rest was in order. As Gehaffrey dumped the oyster refuse, for all of this batch had been bad, into the pit, he continued to hear the entity thought-speak with him.

Thank you, Gehaff, for this delicious meal.

"Absolutely."

You've done well, today. Be warned, there are changes coming.

"Changes?" Gehaffrey felt his face grow cold with fear underneath his living wood. "Are you saying that you're going to leave the pit? Are you preparing to emerge?"

Emerge? The voice in Gehaffrey's head made a strange wheezing sound, almost like laughter. Oh, gods, no. I won't be emerging from anywhere, don't you worry, Gehaff. Not any time soon, at least, as you've done an excellent job of appeasing me.

"Thank you for saying so."

That being said, do be careful when you leave the basement. Strange tidings are afoot today.

Gehaffrey was confused, and didn't know what the entity meant, but he nodded obediently. "Of course, you know I'll always listen to you."

Oh, I know that all right. The entity laughed lightly and non-threateningly in Gehaffrey's mind. Now go on up and see your employees, I'm sure they've got a lot to talk with you about.

Gehaffrey felt a painful stone well up in his chest at the entity's mention of his employees telling him something, and indeed also at the thought of talking to them about it. Talking to his employees was pretty much the last thing Gehaffrey wanted to do, ever. And yet, he found himself stuck doing it all the time.

And so it was that Gehaffrey slowly, hesitantly climbed up the rickety basement steps with a sigh and a groan. What the hell was he about to stumble into, now?

"Gehaff!" cried Brahd, who had burst into the basement suddenly at the top of the steps. It looked like Sahdi was holding him up, for some reason, almost like he had no use of his legs or feet. "Gehaff, you need to take us all to the study, right away!"

Gehaff groaned. The study was an old, dusty room that he'd discovered when he'd first purchased the business. It was deep in the basement, behind a false wall, and held ancient texts from about five centuries ago. He'd had a couple surveyors come out to look at it, but in order to perform a full investigation he would've had to let them shut down the restaurant for at minimum a week, and with that, Gehaffrey also would've had to reason with the entity whose voice was often echoing in his mind why it wouldn't be getting any meals for a week. And Gehaffrey couldn't take that risk, so these strange, hidden texts had really just been left untouched.

"Why?" Gehaff said with a sigh. "Why do you need to go to the study? Why could you possibly need to see texts from five fucking centuries ago, from back when Curr was all over the place, now, in this remarkably modern age?"

"Because," said Sahdi, "Curr has returned, and it claimed both of Brah'ds feet!"

Gehaffrey spat out the cold coffee he'd been sipping. "Shut the fuck up. You've got to be kidding."

"I wish she was," said Brad, holding up his leg stumps. "But I did get Curr. There must be a new strain."

I told you, Gehaff, said the entity's voice in Gehaffrey's head. You've got a lot of catching up to do from today.

"So you want access to the study in order to hopefully figure out how the Curr has returned? Because it's, apparently, returned?"

"Not only has it returned, Gehaff, but it's infested your restroom and liquor cabinet!" said Sahdi.

"Ah, shucks!" said Gehaffrey with a sigh. "Alright, fuck it, let's go to the study and figure this shit out."