THE UNIVERSAL SOUP by Richard Hooton (2nd place, Flash, Feb24)

Our anniversary meal was plodding along same as the previous thirteen when I noticed there was a universe in my soup. Eddying in the centre, a vast blackness teeming with galaxy clusters that reflected and refracted like diamonds.

I tore my eyes away; the restaurant’s walls, plates and tablecloths as clinically white as a hospital ward. The scent of vanilla, but something spicier, more exotic, in its slipstream. A sip of merlot. Another look. It was still there, pushing the warped, ruby-red soup to the ceramic bowl’s edges.

Ron was droning on about discrepancies in the MacAllister account and how someone ordering the wrong toner had caused an insufferable printing backlog. His bristly moustache twitched. ‘Are you listening, Debs?’

‘There’s a universe in my soup!’ I pointed at the dark matter.

‘Just get it down you.’ Ron didn’t even glance up from his prawn cocktail. ‘Won’t do you any harm.’

‘I can’t eat it!’ I couldn’t even toss in a crouton.

I gesticulated at the waiter.

‘Oh God, no, don’t complain.’ Ron blanched. ‘Last year it was a hair in your salad, before that the rump steak was too rare. Never bloody happy.’

The waiter, a runner bean of a man with oil-slick hair, hovered by our table. ‘Is everything to your satisfaction, madam?’

‘There’s a universe in my soup.’

‘People are looking.’ Ron hid his face by pretending to peruse the wine list and mumbled something about me being prone to flights of fantasy.

The bug-eyed waiter stared at the macrocosm in the microcosm with the startled look of someone whose induction hadn’t covered such a scenario.

‘I ordered cream of tomato,’ I said, as if that would clarify things.

‘I’ll fetch the chef.’

‘Great,’ muttered Ron, ‘more the merrier.’

The hum of chatter died down. I could feel eyes scrutinising us. Looking again, the universe was so beautiful and dazzling, its vivid colours little explosions of fresh paint, that I felt silly for complaining. Closer examination revealed that within the galaxies I could somehow see tiny planets, like swirl marbles, and moon specks, orbiting blazing suns surrounded by a sprinkling of stars. Unexplored civilisations both light years away and close at hand.

The chef marched over; a young, impossibly handsome chap whose rolled-up shirtsleeves revealed bulging biceps, his apron stained by saucy splodges in the shapes of continents. A saltiness in the air.

His face lit up.

‘The recipe worked,’ he breathed. ‘It actually worked.’

His eyes flashed violet and his skin a reptilian texture.

The dashing chef dived into the soup with a splash, sucked into the miniature universe like a piece of spaghetti into a child’s mouth.

The waiter fainted onto his stringy back. Ron’s face was a picture: Munch’s Scream to be precise.

I studied all the boring people with their boring meals and boring conversations. Then the universe that was now shrinking, closing in around where the chef had disappeared.

For a moment, my world stopped and I wondered whether to join him.