The Chef of Saint Dymphna

(Recovered statement from the case files of Saint Dymphna Asylum, 1936)

They say I am unwell.

They whisper that grief has eaten my mind, that memory has spoiled and fermented in me. But they are wrong. I remember too much to be mad. The mad forget; I remember everything.

The doctors think I’m crazy, but what do doctors know of appetite? Fools. They do not understand that hunger is not in the stomach – it is in the soul. Mine has been starving for years.

So you understand – I had no choice.

It began with the challenge: Recreate the flavor of a long-forgotten memory.

A simple game to them, but to me divine irony. At last, the world had offered me a kitchen fit for justice.

The lights at the exhibition were merciless, white as bone, humming like flies over meat. I carried the plate down the long aisle towards the table in both hands like a sacrament. The audience leaned forward as though they could already smell the reckoning. Three judges waited there – Calder, Havel, Reed – their names gilded with stolen praise. Their faces were the same as the photographs that had haunted every cookbook, every banner, every corner of my life.

I greeted them kindly. They smiled, oh yes, those benevolent smiles, the smiles of men and women who believe that blood washes off when you wear gloves.

They did not know who I was. Of course not. They hadn’t known me the night they killed her either.

My sister.

Kokki.

I still taste her name like sugar left in your mouth too long – sweet, then bitter, then gone.

She was better than them – infinitely better. She understood flavor the way a composer understands silence. Even as an apprentice, she made food that sang in your bones. The master at Marrowhall adored her, favored her above the others, and said she had the makings of a legend. He even said he wanted her to lead his kitchen, one day. Calder, Havel, Reed were fading stars watching a new sun rise. They couldn’t bear it.

Jealousy is the hungriest thing alive. It eats good people whole.

They invited her to a private dinner, said it was to celebrate her genius. They toasted her with wine and compliments until her cheeks radiated with warmth. And when the laughter turned sharp, when praise curdled to accusation, she stood her ground, proud as ever. She must have thought they’d only argue. She didn’t know they’d already decided.

I know what happened. I saw it, though I wasn’t there. They said there was an accident – a fall, a spill, a neck broken on the kitchen tiles.

The police believed them. The story was clean.

But a week later, Calder published her recipes under his name. Havel opened a restaurant serving her menu.

Reed took her signature dish – Reminiscence a la Marrowhall – and built an empire from it. They made the world believe her brilliance was theirs. They buried Kokki beneath lilacs and dined on her ghost.

I found her knife three years later, beneath those same lilacs. The initials K.M were carved into the handle. When I touched it, the metal whispered – soft, warm, and wet with memory. I heard her voice then, gentle as butter melting in a pan: They didn’t cook me well enough.

So I finished it.

I made her dish again – exactly as she wrote it before they stole it, before they stole her life. Red wine-glazed quail, roasted until the skin blistered gold. A puree of pear and parsnip, pale as a shroud. Lilac petals crystallized in sugar, because she said that was what made Marrowhall special. I remembered her hands, how they trembled when she cooked but were so steady when she plated.

When I served it, they leaned close and breathed deep. I saw Calder’s nostrils flare. He remembered the scent of the Marrowhall kitchen, though he would not admit it – not yet.

They cut in. The glaze gleamed under the lights, simple and perfect. The smell rose like a confession. They smiled, the same greedy, polished smiles that devoured her brilliance years before.

And I watched the taste drag them backward. I saw recognition bloom like a bruise. Their jaws slowed. Their eyes clouded. The memory crawled up their throats. They remembered the chandeliers. The laughter. The quarrel. The blow. The silence that followed. The warmth leaving her body. The decision to clean the tiles, pour another glass, and tell the world it was an accident.

They began to sweat. Havel’s hand trembled around her napkin. Reed swallowed hard, throat spasming. Calder’s fork fell to the table, clattering like a bell calling the dead to dinner.

He looked at me then, really looked. His voice rasped through the heat. “What – what have you done?”

“Nothing new,” I said. “I followed the original recipe.”

The poison moved quietly, elegant as guilt. I had infused it in the glaze, the same way they had infused her wine that night to dull her nerves. Fair is fair.

Calder’s chair tipped backward. Reed convulsed. Havel gasped for air that would not come. The audience applauded, thinking it was theater. They clapped while justice took its course.

I smiled. I remember that clearly – the exact weight of the smile, the stretch of it, how my teeth ached. I heard Kokki’s laughter behind me, soft and content. “You made it right this time,” she whispered.

I walked from the stage. I did not run. You do not flee from perfection. Outside, the night smelled of rain and lilacs – the same scent that clung to her hair when we buried her.

They call me a murderer. I call myself a chef. We differ only in seasoning.

Sometimes, when the lights in my cell flicker, I can smell the glaze again. Sweet and red and final. She hums while I write, and I hum with her. She tells me she is proud. She tells me to keep the knife close. I do. It still smells of lilac when I press it to my lips.

Tell them I am not sorry. Tell them I served the truth.

And tell them Kokki left me her recipe.

She left it in me.

Postscript — From the notes of Dr. Maxwell Raines, Chief Psychiatrist, Saint Dymphna Asylum

Patient remains convinced of a sister named “Kokki M–” allegedly murdered by three culinary figures at “Marrowhall Estate.”

No records, birth certificate, or apprenticeship rosters list any such individual.The estate in question burned down in 1907; no evidence of foul play was ever discovered.

Subject’s fixation includes auditory and olfactory hallucination (“smell of lilac”, “voice giving instructions"), delusional justifications for homicide, and persistent belief that victims plagiarized nonexistent recipes.

When pressed on the motive, the patient insists: “They were jealous of her hands, her skill, her art.”

At the time of the final interview, the subject appeared calm, even proud, and requested kitchen access “to prepare something special for the staff.”

Request denied.

–M. Raines, M.D.