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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Theeaglestrikes on 2024-11-04 18:21:58+00:00.

“You must remain in the room whilst I dine,” he told me three years ago. “But face the wall, and do not turn around until I have finished.”

I nodded. “How will—”

“I will tell you when I’ve finished,” he brashly interrupted, having anticipated my question.

And when I made the mistake of breaking his one rule, I saw something terrifying.

I hate to disappoint you, but I won’t endanger myself by naming this world-famous figure. I’ve been lying low since February, praying to never cross his path again. I moved from Los Angeles to Toronto. Put more than two-thousand miles of deserts, mountains, and woodland between that man and me. Yet, I still feel watching eyes upon me. Every single day. I fear that he hopes to silence me before I spill his secret.

That’s why I won’t tell you to run from LA. Nowhere is safe from him. Instead, I’m hoping that putting this story out there will give him no reason to silence me. You’re all about to learn the truth, so he’ll have to tread carefully in the future. Right? I know I’ve not named him, but I’ve put a spotlight on the horrors of the Hills.

This is a Hollywood icon, and I cooked his lunches and dinners every day from November of 2021 to February of 2024. But one particular lunchtime, an act of recklessness brought my employment to end.

A flatbread topped with charred spring onions, chilli flakes, and feta. That was the dish. A modest lunch for a self-proclaimed modest man. Perfectly ordinary food. I didn’t serve the heart of a stillborn babe. Not the ribs of some famous rival. Just a light, nutritious dish to bridge breakfast and dinner.

That day was the same as any other, so I don’t know why I did it. Looked, I mean. I’d spent three years cooking for my client, and I’d never previously questioned his only rule. I hadn’t dreamt of disobeying him, as he paid such a disgustingly inflated salary. Not until one ordinary day in late February.

I placed the flatbread on the table, walked over to the kitchen counter, then focused my gaze on the wall ahead. Twiddled my thumbs and waited patiently whilst he tucked noisily into his meal.

That was something I’d always noticed. The sound. The slaps and smacks of his lips, tongue, and teeth meeting various food textures. I don’t have misophonia, but that man managed to produce noises which utterly perturbed me.

I don’t care about those who talk whilst they eat. Don’t even care about those who eat with their mouths open. No, the racket of this man’s feasting disturbed me because it always sounded like more than one person eating.

There were even the distant sounds of what I’d convinced myself were tiny voices, as if the man had spent four years sneaking friends into the kitchen behind my back. As if they were speaking amongst themselves in hushed tones. Muttering odd phrases. Not food reviews, but comments on culture. Comments on countries and histories.

“This tells us… In the mountains of Malaysia… Four-hundred years ago…”

The snippets of insights were always too quiet to fully distinguish. Of course, it was the wet sloshing and smacking that stole most of my attention.

I tried to make meals that were drier, in the hope that this would lead to quieter munching. I served yoghurt, risotto, and so on. No matter what I attempted, the sounds never lessened. And I knew that this was no mean-spirited joke. He wasn’t sharing a meal with hidden guests. Though I certainly wouldn’t have been the first woman to find myself at the receiving end of his bizarre antics.

Believe me. Over the years, I’d considered numerous scenarios in my head, but none of them felt right. None of them warmed my chilled flesh whilst that awful man ate, so I eventually broke. Something came over me. Madness, I suppose, born of years working in a draining environment. All for a healthy heap of bucks.

Well, I’d passed my threshold. The money no longer mattered. I had to know.

I turned away from the wall.

The man at the kitchen table was not eating. Not in any human sense of the word. The sides of his face had opened like the skin of a tangerine, revealing neither hidden tissue nor bone beneath. There was a crater within his skull. A crater into which he was shovelling torn strips of my lovingly-cooked flatbread. The meal was not disappearing into a mouth. There was no mouth below the celebrity’s unzipped face.

Chunks of bread and toppings were washing over a dozen rolling eyeballs — each with a black sclera, a white iris, and a red pupil. Inhuman eyes. Eyes that were not consuming the food, but letting the broken fragments slide off their rolling surfaces, as if absorbing the meal’s secrets. Learning something from it. And the flatbread did not disappear into the body below. It disintegrated in the black, watery film coating those many eyes.

I was too haunted to scream, but I’d already been detected.

The celebrity stopped. His hand hovered, and those many eyes, coated in the dissolving crumbs of my meal, swivelled to face me.

Then the man started to tremble violently, crushing the remaining handful of flatbread in the pit of his palm. I allowed my mouth to release a meek whimper as flecks of bread clattered against the china plate below. My eyes had already flitted towards the kitchen entrance and the lobby beyond it. The front door was in sight, and my weak legs carried me towards it.

But the man did not need to stand to pursue me. He punched his arm forwards, and a long, reptilian tentacle tore through his open palm. Escaped from its prison of human skin, then shot across the kitchen towards me.

I was already crossing the lobby as the lunging limb hissed at me from its black scales. I felt the alien arm’s stale breath against my back, cutting through my T-shirt, as that man sought my flesh. Not to eat, but to wash over his many eyeballs. He wanted to soak me up. Study me. And as I thought of all of the womanising he’d done over the years, the many flings who’d come and ‘gone’, I wondered whether any of them had met that fate.

I fumbled with the latch for an eternal second, flung the door open, and triumphantly made it to the porch. But the fine prick of a sharp limb caught my spine as I stumbled onto the driveway — instantly stained my shirt with a staggeringly-large pool of blood.

Yelping in agony, I pushed onwards. Pushed across the driveway, scaled the fence, and ran through the streets of Beverly Hills.

I remember little of what followed. Barely remember how I ended up in Toronto, in all honesty. I know that I abandoned everything. My home, my friends, my family, and my life.

In spite of that, this nightmare isn’t over. For months, I have felt something watching me. I’m convinced. Just as I’m convinced that this celebrity eats more than ‘people food’.

“I will handle my own breakfasts,” the star firmly told me back in 2021.

I replied, “Are you sure? I make a mean—”

“You would not want to cater to my morning needs,” he half-growled.

At the end of the day, this is about more than getting the truth out there. More than, hopefully, protecting myself from him. This is a cautionary tale.

No matter how good the pay, do not become any celebrity’s personal chef in LA.