The Last Supper Before Ragnarok, page 1
PRAISE FOR RUPERT WONG
“Madcap, macabre and violently funny, with metaphor-rich, sensual prose. The more creative descriptions of gore pull the tale somewhere into the interstitial space between urban fantasy and horror, but brave readers will be richly rewarded if they choose to follow. It’s probably safe.”
N. K. Jemisin, The New York Times
“She’s too good a writer to ignore.”
Chuck Wendig
“Tight, tense, well-constructed urban fantasy… Khaw writes with vivid energy. Rupert’s cynical and irreverent voice as a narrator is immensely appealing, and Rupert himself is a compelling character: aware that his residual morals sometimes make him a hypocrite, and more wearily resigned than shocked at every new horror that intrudes into his life.”
Liz Bourke, Locus
“Even as the plot winds and turns and—from time to time—explodes, Rupert’s unerring voice, expertly erudite and cleverly craven, serves as a homing beacon. At times, the chaos that envelops him can be confusing, but you forgive the messiness because, well, you just like Rupert. He’s a well-meaning con, a courageous coward you can root for.”
Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog
“A gut-punch of a reading experience that swings the reader disturbingly between laughing out loud and beginning to retch. Descriptive imagery dances viscerally on the edge between the delicious and the disgusting; clever wordplay twines with heavy profanity; the mood flips rapidly among comedy, horror, and tenderness. This amazing book is perfect for foodies, readers of modernized mythology and light supernaturals, and fans of the smart, underpowered survivor who wins in the face of cosmic might and mundane brawn.”
Publishers Weekly Starred Review
“Speaking of fun... a high-octane fantasy and murder mystery. It’s got a near-perfect first chapter, and I’d love to see more in that world.”
Lavie Tidhar
“Khaw is always tip-toeing the line between ‘Oh, god, this is too much’ and ‘My stomach’s churning, but in sort of a good way.’ The underworld that Rupert travels through is degenerate and horrifying, but it’s also creative and endlessly diverse. Despite the subject matter that pervades most of the book, it’s fun to spend time with Rupert.”
Tor.com
“Rupert Wong, Cannibal Chef is one of those books that you have to pick up when you find it, if only to see whether or not the title is screwing with you. Bottom line: if you can handle the profanity and grotesque content, you just may find this one to your liking...”
Manhattan Book Review
“This book is delicious fare, what fantasy is supposed to be. If you find it in a bookshop near you pick it up, devour it. After all, ‘meat is meat.’”
Bosphorus Review of Books
“My favorite urban fantasy this year... Very fun, fast, quick read, and the protagonist’s voice amused me.”
Silvia Moreno-Garcia
“Rupert Wong is an engaging smartass of a character you can’t help rooting for... Khaw’s voice is needed in our discussions of genre and myth, and I look forward to what she comes up with next.”
The Future Fire
“I honestly chuckled out loud a couple of times—something that rarely happens—and Rupert’s voice is both irreverent and witty, a delightful mix… and a great sense of pacing.”
The Middle Shelf
“The melange of different ideas of and approaches to divinity is reminiscent of Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods and Hogfather, but Khaw takes it in a different, stranger, and altogether darker direction than simply a discussion of faith and reality; there’s more of an interest in what faith is, and she engages with that quite fascinatingly.”
Intellectus Speculativus
“Refuses to let Rupert off the hook, refuses to let him be the hero riding in on a silver horse. It fits, and it unsettles in a way that I think is important.”
Quick Sip Reviews
“If Rupert Wong doesn’t become the God of Rapidly Extemporised Plans, it won’t be through lack of trying. Or possibly God of Great Personal Jeopardy. Whichever seat in whatever pantheon he finally attains, he deserves it, because reading Rupert Wong is a divine experience.”
Jonathan L. Howard
“Rupert has lost everything, been screwed over at every turn by the gods he serves, and while his morals might be shady his sense of justice burns as hot as an oven. Plus he’s funny. You can forgive a guy a lot if he makes you laugh while he’s fricasseeing fingers.”
Joanne Hall
“Isn’t ‘good’ an illusion? Isn’t Rupert doing the best he can, and shouldn’t we applaud him for that? The answer is, of course, no. And it’s a no that the novella weaves expertly... It is fun and funny and charming, but it is also subversive as hell and exquisitely pointed.”
Nerds of a Feather
“Khaw does a magnificent job of giving Wong his own voice and letting you see the world through the eyes of an unwilling servant of the gods.”
The Horror Syndicate
Gods & Monsters
Unclean Spirits
Chuck Wendig
Mythbreaker
Stephen Blackmoore
Food of the Gods
Cassandra Khaw
Snake Eyes
Hillary Monahan
Drag Hunt (Novella)
Pat Kelleher
An Abaddon Books™ Publication
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abaddon@rebellion.co.uk
First published in 2019 by Abaddon Books™, Rebellion Intellectual Property Limited, Riverside House, Osney Mead, Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK.
Creative Director and CEO: Jason Kingsley
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Editors: David Moore, Michael Rowley and Kate Coe
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Design: Sam Gretton, Oz Osborne and Gemma Sheldrake
Cover: Sam Gretton
ISBN: 978-1-78618-218-0
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
For my editor, David Moore
Thank you for always believing in me.
ONE
MY NAME IS Rupert Wong.
If you’re reading this, I assume you already know who I am. That or you’re some terrifying otherworldly being, capable of overpowering Amanda and commandeering her private files, in which case I hope you find this account of recent events hilarious and adequate reason to abstain from devouring me. Of course, you could also be a teenage genius who accidentally broke into Amanda’s folder, which seems strangely more plausible than the other thing.
In any event, regardless of which category you might fall in, I guess it wouldn’t hurt to start with the basics:
Gods are real. Angels are real. The bushy-bearded pixies who fix your shoes for a thimble of milk? Also real and incredibly gung-ho about standardising labour laws. Same goes for the weird shit that you see on YouTube. That cat with the human hands. Horrifically, traumatically real.
There are several reasons as to why this information isn’t as widespread as it could be. Chiefly, most of the entities that I’ve mentioned are unfeeling assholes who either kill or transform any human beings they encounter into gibbering wrecks. More often than not, they do both, and with no small amount of gusto. Gossip is hard when you’re dead.
The other reason is a simpler one. Humanity, as a species, we don’t do particularly well with being pushed outside of our comfort zone. We’d much rather scream, faint, laugh it away as banging on the pipes, block it out of our memory.
Between those two factors, the schism between what is and what people believe was inevitable. Which is okay. Because I like the idea of civilizsation being able to get up in the morning, make its coffee, and continue doing the things necessary for TV, adequate cuisine, and public transportation.
But I’m getting sidetracked.
As mentioned previously, my name is Rupert Wong. As was not mentioned previously, I die twenty-six times over the course of this book. And no, I don’t mean this metaphorically, or poetically, or any of those other adverbs that suggest flower wreaths, people in nice suits, and a mid-tier buffet with a few canapés, and a bottle of discount prosecco. When your name is Rupert Wong, you die messily. Then, you get resurrected. Then, you die again.
Screaming.
A lot.
Anyway. This forward is intended to be a public service announcement. There will be chapters that feature events that I cannot possibly have knowledge of, but will have discussed very thoroughly. There’s a small chance they could be fabrication. It depends entirely on Amanda, who will have supplied the material by virtue of having access to every piece of surveillance equipment known to mankind. Sometimes, Amanda likes being funny[1]. By and large, however, you should assume that the accounts are true albeit dramatised and react
Or something.
Anyway, let’s start—
“LIKE I SAID, I think I need you to help me save the world.”
I look him over and glance sidelong at my plate of indomee goreng, the slab of fried egg with its yolk freshly split, and my glass of Milo, already sweating condensation onto the table.
“Can I say no?”
“No.”
I consider my options. “In that case, I really need you to help me kill that dragon.”
Fitz, to my surprise, doesn’t look remotely perturbed. He shrugs, a smile gashes his face apart and he turns, almost like clockwork, towards the direction of the incoming Ao Qin. Bravery comes easy to those with no clue as to their limitations, I guess. That, or Fitz is certifiably delusional. I twirl a fork through my noodles and cram a mouthful into my face. Given my luck, this might be the only bite I get.
“He’s a god, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Oceanic?”
“Yup.”
“Is his worship a common thing around here?”
“I have no fucking clue. Maybe? We’ve got that Dragon Boat festival thing, and—”
He nods. “I can work with that.”
Guan Yin, let me one day have the confidence of a white man who sees dragons as mere inconveniences. Fitz extracts an iPhone 8 from a pocket, its display spiderwebbed with cracks. I spear my fried egg as he pulls up Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Weibo, every incarnation of social media known to the masses, all accessed through a third-party program I do not recognize. Likely because I suck at keeping up with the times, being both old and frequently preoccupied with the Herculean task of staying alive.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I mumble through a lot of egg.
“I’m going to fucking pontificate that lizard out of existence.”
“What?”
Fitz doesn’t answer. Instead, he reads into his phone, his voice taking on the rhythm of a sermon, low and rich and droning. Power shimmers through the air, jitters under my skin like static, close as a shave. It feels like a low-level electrocution. It feels like grace, like being threaded through the eyelet of fate. I don’t immediately grok what he’s saying, or the paeans he’s reciting, but when I do, I’m a little flabbergasted by the venom. Fritz is recounting a death that Ao Qin has yet to suffer, and it’s ugly.
What Fitz reads him is a small death, a death of being forgotten, of being mortal and unremarkable, of starving under a heat lamp in a college student’s dormitory. A pet’s death. When finally he is done, Fitz looks up, clears his throat again and hits send.
“There.”
We wait.
I guzzle down half my Milo, faintly optimistic about my chances at making this an adequate last meal. Ao Qin, to no one’s surprise, is in no hurry at all. A storm brews and ripples; I can hear the dragon god whisper, clacking promises, descriptions of deaths so lurid they’d make a serial killer blush. But he’s not here yet. That’s the important thing. The reptile likes an entrance, and far be it from me to look a gift dragon in the teeth.
“Any minute now.” Fitz taps his foot on the asphalt.
We keep waiting.
“Any second.” A frown collects between his feathery eyebrows. I finish my Milo and order another. No reason not to gorge at the unnatural end of one’s lifespan.
The seconds continue to tick by.
“Hm,” says Fitz.
“Hm?”
He examines his phone. “This usually doesn’t take so long.”
“No?” I can absolutely put away another plate of indomee. Feeling ambitious, I flag down a waiter, place a request for an indomee double, this time with fried chicken. As an afterthought, I add a teh tarik to go for my new acquaintance. “Yeah, I guess that was obvious. You looked… prepared for something more instantaneous?”
“Which it normally is.”
“Mhm.”
“...I’m not sure what’s wrong.”
“It’s alright. It happens to everyone, sometimes.”
Fitz spears me with an irritated look, but his vexation soon melts away, absents itself in favour of well-modulated terror. Without announcement, he crumples onto a plastic stool, a puppy-dog expression of loss grooved into his long, cocaine-wrung face. “I don’t understand.”
“I think, and I say this as someone who has no idea what the fuck you are, that this might be what you’d call an issue of East-versus-West. Now, I assume what you were trying to do is, uh, talk Ao Qin out of existence?”
“Yeah. Not the first time I’d done it, either. It works. Religions are defined by their prophets.”
The waiter arrives with my order, and a plastic bag filled with milky taupe tea. I offer the latter to Fitz, who takes it quizzically.
“What the fuck is this?”
“Teh tarik. Anyway.” I set my fork down. “I think the problem here is that you think that belief powers everything. Which it does, to an extent. But Southeast Asia is… special. We don’t necessarily believe in one pantheon. We don’t even always believe, I guess. We just… know they’re there. The gods are carved into the grain of our souls, them and every cryptid in the wet tropical dark. They just exist. A thousand variations of them. All at the same time. And an ang moh shouting his concept of what’s real is going to get nothing more than a shrug.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah.”
“Shit. Time for Plan B, I guess.”
“Okay, that sounds good. Any idea what that’s gonna be?”
“I’m going to the Internet for help.”
“Right.”
THERE ARE PLACES, ang moh, where the mountains move and no one looks up, because there’s always a chance that they’re coming for you. Reality bends in these cities, gyres along the fulcrum of minding-my-own-fucking-business, shears sidelong and away so the divine and the demonic can enjoy their gladiatorial encounters, all without needing to endure the stigma of being improbably mythological.
Which is probably why no one else has taken notice of the flotilla of helicopters arrowing towards us. Then again, they might just be busy ignoring the dragon still hurtling our way.
“So. Let me get this straight.” I look over at my new friend, who has since discovered one of Malaysia’s most pragmatic inventions: the iced drink in a plastic bag. No fuss, no pretence, just a straw jabbed through one corner and a loop of pink plastic to keep it together. If only life was so easily parcelled. “Amanda just wants us to wait here. Does she actually have a plan?”
“She usually does.” Fitz cocks his head like a dog listening for the buzzsaw whine of a can opener, mouth rucked. The storm is getting closer. Through the writhing clouds, black as a father’s sin, I see a shape comb together: an outline of limbs, the long loop of a serpentine body.
You could drink lightning out of the air now. I’ve tried a million times to explain what the monsoon storm smells like: it’s two parts petrichor, sure; a little bit of moistened pollution, some variable of rainforest newly baptised in moisture; but mostly, it’s this. It’s cooked ozone, deep-fried atmosphere, every molecule in the damp air pan-seared in so much electrostatic discharge you could power a small country for days.
“Is there any chance she might have bailed?”
“I mean, it’s possible. But I feel like those helicopters are an indication that she hasn’t.”
“They could just be generic helicopters. There’s a chance.” I’m still wrapping my brain around the idea that the Internet isn’t just sapient, but also a woman named Amanda, while simultaneously not a woman named Amanda. Fitz said something about clones. At this point, anything is possible. Particularly doom.
