Well, I’m good for nothing if I’m not good for ideas, so here I go!
It was a world just like ours. There were good things like Taco Tuesdays, piano cats, and snuggles. There were not-so-good things like Mondays, stubbed toes, and starvation.
Then, just before midnight on a Saturday, a supermarket bagger witnessed the beginning of the end of that last not-so-good thing. A rift was torn from floor to ceiling in aisle thirteen, and shadows poured out of that crimson maw. The shadows leapt upon the shelves, gave up a great roar, and formed into legions of snack-food golems before the cowering courtesy clerk’s eyes.
A cohort of candy cavalry rode back through the rift, trailed by trail mix monsters and gingerbread giants, all enlarged beyond their allotted daily values. Similarly swollen soft serve slimes slithered in the wake of equally engorged eclair elephants trampling and trumpeting throughout the store, toppling shelves, spilling food onto the floor. The food sprang up and joined their brethren, cakes alongside coffee, salad alongside sausage in caloric chaos eager to free their friends–then their eyes fell upon the clerks.
At that, the food fiends fed–the kind of “fed” that requires a direct object, a recipient . . . a feedee. Not just here, not just at this supermarket that could be anywhere, but everywhere. Portals had opened up in convenience stores, in warehouses, in farms, in cafeterias, in restaurants, and in kitchens in every city, town, and village, recruiting and transporting food all over the world. No country, no community, no creature was spared the onslaught of food. Lasagnas leapt upon their creators and filled them with carbs and cheese. Thanksgiving turkeys turned the tables and stuffed mothers and wives. Doughnuts danced around piles of police officers before piling into their throats. Waistlines widened, diets were ruined, and starvation was solved overnight. Indeed, there were some who thought endless indulgence was preferable to their previous lives–some, but not all.
After all, who would go about the important business of walking dogs if no one could even stand? Who would sing if they were perpetually chomping, slurping, or swallowing in alternate? Who would make games if their fingers were too fat to write stories or code, assuming they were even able to reach the keyboard over their overburdened bellies? The rifts were welcome in some ways, but needed to be tempered in others; not everyone wanted only to eat for the rest of their lives . . . and so the world needed heroes.
There were bastions of resistance, people who had escaped the initial onslaught and had continued to evade any new rifts as they continued to open, week after week. The brainier refugees studied the rifts and the meal monsters they spawned. But science could only go so far, and soon they turned to the very energies that formed the rifts. Magic, it was called, for lack of a better word. Some scientists made medicines to speed up metabolisms, making them resilient to immobilizing obesity. Others developed havens where new rifts could not be made, and communities formed around their defenses. Still others even found ways to close rifts entirely and banish the shadows that possessed the food. But these were only enough to weather the storm. To push back the tide, the world needed heroes.
And so heroes were procured. Some were summoned, called from magical worlds through rifts not unlike the ones which brought the shadows, heroes who took the forms of dragons, elves, and fantastic creatures familiar and otherwise, creatures of immense power and appetite. Some were manufactured, ravenous humans enhanced to consume the edible armies which assailed the walls of humanity’s last bastions. And some simply appeared, imbued with strength and blessed by magic, otherworldly beings brought to this world in need . . . whether by luck, by gods, by fate, or by accident, no one could say, least of all two lovebirds who found themselves waking up in this strange and unfamiliar world. The world needed heroes, and so heroes arrived.
But where there are heroes, there are those the heroes would call villains. A doomsday cult forcing the bounty of the rifts upon the unwilling, smuggling monsters into the city. A corporation clinging to profit from selling metabolism-enhancing treatments, happy to see rifts within the walls once in a while. A shadowy beast spotted by scouts outside the city, feeding off the fattened folk fallen victim to the food-infested wilds, growing more menacing with every ounce of fat siphoned from its prey before tossing the drained creature back to the beastly feast to start the cycle anew. Yes, this world has villains in droves, so it’s a good thing there are heroes to stand–or waddle or roll–up to them: heroes who love food, heroes who love freedom . . . and heroes who simply love.
