WHO ATE ALL THE PIES

The sunset over the city walls at last, and the festival began. As if waiting on their cue, thousands of lights sprung to life one by one, from the trees along the roadside to hanging lanterns stretched over what we will generously call a river; lights were lit over every threshold too. (The claim was this was to reduce the number of places between midnight on a new year was, according to the stories, a dangerous time. Between one year and the next, between day and night, this city being part on land and part on water, took that seriously. Gaps between are like a welcome mat for pretty much everything that lurks in the void, but since getting all mopey about that benefits nobody, a pretty and fun festival that serves the same purpose was a better option. The lights over the door served a purpose here, too; they blurred the line between indoors and out while not being a proper invitation. Vampires were a thing after all and thrived as door to door salesmen.)

Music played loudly via a calliope every once in a while, expertly synchronised. Of course, for pickpockets today was an absolute bonanza, so every year, there was a glut of newly invented anti-theft measures, from the most simple (elastic) to much more complicated designs (custom made pressure sensor activated tranquiliser injectors keyed to activate if a hand entered the pouch not wearing a special key. Of course, given that, as you know, everybody loses keys, they usually wound up in the pouch, rendering the entire bloody thing useless.) Yet somehow, every year, no matter how elaborate the device, somebody would always find a way around it. (Of course, this was not because the makers paid their apprentices a crap wage, tempting them to leak the designs to earn a decent income, there was no way something like that ever happened.)

There was some kind of dance contest going on in the middle of the city too, but Mibbet avoided that like that plague. Rosalind hated the idea of being paraded around in front of that many people, all of whom would be expecting her to strut what little stuff she had on the dance floor. As for Mibbet herself....frogs don’t really get dancing; it seemed that showing how good a mate you’d be there were far better options than spasming about like you just got stung by a scorpion, getting into a fight with rivals, who are only rivals if you insist on exclusivity and getting into drunken brawls. The one who finds your spawn, for example, eliminates all the guesswork and the need to give a damn. Also gets rid of the compulsory social awkwardness and comes with a free trial to see if they’re fit for purpose in the form of a fun water-based scavenger hunt. It really was a win-win, but humans really did love over-complicating things wherever possible, which given how creative humans were in that particular field of expertise, was pretty much always.

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Now the eating contest, on the other hand? Mibbet was definitely up for that, though Rosalind blanched a little for a moment when she learned the food in question would be eel pie. For Mibbet, on the other hand? Well, that was a bonus, eels ate so many frogs in a year it was unbelievable, and now here she was being given the means, motive, and chompers for a full-on revenging; how could she resist?

So there she was sat between “Slack Jaw” Suzie Snax, the reigning champion, partially due to an uncanny knack for food-related dislocation to speed up the process, though that did slow her down a little long term as she kinda had to move her jaw with her hands. Terry “Tyke” Biteson, a man for whom the question was best put as “where the hell did it all go” when it came to food. The man was four foot nine in heels and could consume enough that there were rumours he actually ate a bag of holding as a kid, and given his sheer level of food consumption in past contests, the audience genuinely believed it.

Then last but by no means least, the largest entrant in the contest, one Andre Denise Gyant, who measured in at seven foot two in sensible flats, so had plenty of room for the food to go, who showed up in a dapper androgynous suit and glared at anybody who made assumptions about them. Which is, to be completely honest, absolutely fair.

Soon the competition began theoretically; it had unlimited ale, but Mibbet requested juice instead to the amusement and profit of the organisers as they dug in. Suzie got off to an early lead by shoving multiple pies in her pie hole at once but soon realised that manually moving a dislocated jaw came with hazards, one of which is repeatedly accidentally catching your own tongue in your chompers multiple times. Which seemed to slow her down a fair bit. While Andre was a poster child for slow and steady, taking a single bite, then a swig, then another bite, with almost mechanical precision.

Terry, meanwhile, was practically swimming in pie, and it seemed that his stomach never even bulged; it was like watching a very hungry black hole at work.

But none of those competitors had quite the same edge as Mibbet, who was the living embodiment of the expression. Hell hath no fury like a being avenging the systemic nomming of their ancestors by eels over many generations via the medium of a professional pie-eating contest. (What, somebody said it; therefore, it is a saying, true nobody ever did outside this text, but it still got said.) She was barely even slowing down to sip juice while Terry was drinking booze like it was water to help the pies down. Which, of course, had a consequence, and soon enough, he was out of the contest. Because no matter how much booze you pour down you booze it remains, and in that circumstance, what goes down always comes up (mercifully into a bucket.) Suzie was doing decently but starting to flag too, probably partially because by now, her tongue must have been bitten countless times, manual jaw navigation was no mean feat, and the beer meant to help.... well, have you ever had bad booze on a bitten tongue? So now it was down to Mibbet and Andre.