🍲 Pressure Cooker + 📆 Expiry Date

Guks had been a chain smoker who somehow averted lung cancer but got taken out by a flood. And while he actively exercised his right to ruin himself, it was nature’s elements that conspired to deal Shosh her worst heartbreak. Hinga tried to push these self-defeating thoughts aside as he took the 12 steps.

In the realm of culinary dreams, he tread,

With spirits as mixers, he’d forge ahead.

Yet control, like a dish, did shatter and crack,

High-functioning façade, a cloak gone slack. 

Mistakes like uncooked soufflés, they did rise,

Neglected kin, trust’s fragile demise.

In the pursuit of bottles, a desperate spree,

Family, friends, and dreams, casualties be. 

Beneath Beaumont’s gaze, a new dawn did rise,

Sobriety’s promise whispered in hushed sighs,

No more a masquerade, no more to pretend,

A journey, rebirth, a heart on the mend.

In AA halls, voices intertwined,

Tales of redemption, broken souls aligned.

Verbalizing transgressions, a healing potion,

Emotions unburdened, like a literary notion. 

A son’s bitter failure, long kept in his chest,

A liberation through confession, truth’s bequest.

With every sip, he’d tried to forget,

But sobriety unveiled his life’s silhouette. 

From a life of evasion, he’d find his way,

Facing conflicts head-on, come what may.

Like ink on a page, fluid lies he’d spill,

Apologies due, a conscience to fulfill. 

Acting into thinking, transformation’s sway,

A symphony of recovery, notes on display.

Just as Gatsby pursued his green light,

Hinga embarked on his sobering flight.

11 years, 132 months, 4,017 days.

Hinga’s first order of business when he returned to the U.S. was reconnecting with Stevie. She was a mother now, going on her own recovery journey because “a baby does that to a person.” The coincidence was almost too twisted to believe, him asking for a chance to be Sam’s stepdad 14 years after killing his. But Stevie was moved by his transformation and commitment to the lifelong pursuit of sobriety. Besides, Sam's father was only as present as he assumed he needed to be, which was apparently never.

“By the way, you’re not the one who ‘dragged me into the depths of addiction.’ That was one wacky email, Hinges.”

“You know how it is. No holds barred.”

He named his restaurant Hinges as a nod to her nickname for him. Beaumont had given him incredible liberty over the management of his restaurant. His restaurant. The words tasted thrillingly foreign in his mouth, like the cornucopia of flavors that strike one new to African cuisine. However, his vision of what this strange thing would represent had already formed vividly. Expanding into import was a natural next step. He and Stevie got a little girl of their own, Xaviera. Finally, Hinga had everything he wanted, but in his experience, such were the times when everything fell apart.

11 years, 132 months, 4,017 days.

Murmurs about a highly transmissible disease played on televisions and pulled people’s attention to newspapers. Humans can be quite the downstream species, though, only addressing a danger when it’s knocking their door down. True to character, a decisive, concerted effort against Geink Echon was only taken after it claimed its first 1,000 lives. A third of the carnage occurred in Africa. One of the victims was Shosh.

Hinga and Stevie had been off-grid on an idyllic Scottish island during the initial throes of the merciless disease. The couple yearned for some alone time to unwind, rewind, and rediscover their identities beyond being caregivers. The two were the only human inhabitants of the crescent-shaped slice of the past. They fished and foraged for food and bathed under the expansive blanket of stars. Musical crickets, frogs, and owls sang the chorus to which they slept and made love. Electricity, running water, and the endless news cycle were traded in for a snail’s pace the lifelong city dwellers had never known. The couple thought they could keep it up ad infinitum. When they sailed back to connectivity in Aberdeen, they wished they had.

11 years, 132 months, 4,017 days.

There’s a fruitlessness to our exertions in dreams that’s as frustrating as it is comical. You try to outrun the monster, but your foot gets stuck in some adhesive goo. You try to hide from an intruder; they teleport to your hollowed nest. You try to attend your beloved grandmother’s funeral; Geink Echon travel restrictions ground all flights to and from your location. Only this wasn’t a dream, and Hinga and Stevie really were stuck in Scotland, unable to fall back on the comforts of either of their homes as reality shifted under their feet. No one was finding this fruitlessness comical.

Hinga struggled to verbalize the extent of his pain in this foreign place. He followed a livestream of his closest confidant’s funeral, feeling like a spectating millipede whose shoes continued to drop. Hinges was in dire straits as communal activities succumbed to the disease’s wrath. International trade slowed significantly, particularly the exchange of foodstuffs and other goods susceptible to contamination. Sam and Xaviera became characters on a screen who were growing up faster than he could account for. Stevie offered a reliable shoulder to lean on, but the last thing he wanted was to multiply her uncertainty about the bleak dystopia they’d stepped into. Grief clung to him like flies to unattended dessert. This would’ve been an excellent time to be black-out drunk, but he just wanted to sleep. A telehealth professional prescribed Stilnoct.

11 years, 132 months, 4,017 days.