Joint First Place:

Table for two, dinner for one.

By Lana Dove

Starter.

Isolation Carpaccio. Thin slices of loneliness drizzled with self-doubt vinaigrette. 

She orders a glass of merlot, attempting to swallow her nerves. Her phone stays silent—no message, no excuse.

Main Course.

Hopelessness Risotto. Slow-cooked in rising anxiety and stirred with long pauses. 

The richness feels like mockery. She watches the couples around her, forks clinking, laughter cutting through the low hum of her thoughts. Her stomach drops as the waiter clears away the unused setting opposite. 

Dessert. 

Resignation Crème Brûlée. Fragile sugar-crisp confidence shatters with a tap of reality.

Barely touched, she quickly pays and leaves alone in embarrassment.

Joint First Place:

World’s Worst Customer

By Maddie Logemann

She takes a bite. The earth’s crust snaps in tandem with crisped dough. Cheese stretches, satisfyingly greasy; distant cries fill her bones. Sauce slicks her chin, hot as magma flooding city streets.

She chews up planetary slices the same as pizza pepperoni. There’s only crumbs left, crumbling meteors in space.

“Check, please,” she calls.

The waitress has star-crusted skin, black hole eyes.

“Cash or card?”

She grins siren-sweet. “Do you deal in souls?”

The waitress’s eyes roll, depths swirling whirlpools. She’ll need her manager, says as much, then turns, grumbling under her breath.

“This is why I hate calamity gods.”

Second Place:

Steak Night

By Sarah Haggett

“There must be some mistake,” he said, when they declined his voucher. 

She knew exactly who he’d consumed his annual beef allowance with: a girl lean as sirloin who hadn’t been born when they began rationing meat to save the planet. He blustered to the waiter about dratted technology as his gammon cheeks grew redder.

“Let it go, dear.” She used the phrase he was so fond of. “I’ll have the rump, please. Rare.”

He didn’t dare say a word to her as he chewed his rubbery mushroom.

She savoured the steak and the silence, each mouthful a bloody revenge.

Third Place:

Gustatory Delights

By Cage Dunn

The delights of life breathed on Liana’s tongue; the tang of garlic caramelised in rich butter, lemon-herb butter on basted lobster, tarragon butter over steaming escargot, and the rich aroma of truffle as it wafted from within gently cooked eggs on the fresh green smell of baby spinach. People laughed and clinked glasses, cooks clanked pans and swore in French, and the night sky hid beyond flickering candles. This was her life now, as it had been her father’s. Gustation to feed the soul as much as to fill the need to eat.