The Tang

By Jeremy Qu

Martin lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment on the third floor of a low-rise building just off the highway. The place was clean. The sink was empty. The carpet was thin but vacuumed twice a week. The small table by the window was set with one plate, one fork, one knife. He had two of each, in case of a guest, but only used the second set when the first was drying.

He worked in quality control at a food packaging facility. Mainly sealing, temperature checks. It was quiet work. Some days he didn’t speak until he got home and called his ex-wife.

The divorce had been a few years ago. No bad blood. They still talked once a week, usually Thursdays. She asked how he was doing. He asked how her job was. Sometimes they talked about books they hadn’t both read.

Martin ate at the same time each day. He chose his meals carefully. Bitter things after a bad workday—black coffee, arugula. Sweet things in the morning after bad dreams—milk, melon, sometimes a spoon of jam. When the day was neutral, he made toast with no butter and ate it standing up.

He had a system. It wasn’t about taste in the usual sense. He ate to level out. To put the day where it belonged.

His mother had done this too, in her way. When he got in trouble, she served him bitter things. Mustard greens, vinegar in warm water. “This’ll smarten you up,” she said. When he did well, she gave him something sweet—rice pudding, or a spoon of condensed milk straight from the can. “You’ve earned a treat.”

Salt was when he’d been careless. Sour things when she said he was being “ugly.” Some days he was punished without even being told what for. A bitter dish served without comment. A withheld meal after he thought he’d done everything right. He came to understand the logic was internal to her, and his job was to adapt to it.

He didn’t think about it much. That was just how it had always worked. 

There were rules. Pickled vegetables were for disappointment, when the day had gotten away from him but not gone wrong. Oats were for long days, when he could already feel tomorrow forming behind his eyes. Hard things—raw carrots, plain toast, nuts—were for dull days. Something to bite into. And no condiments on the table. He believed in letting the food speak for itself.

He didn’t drink alcohol. He drank coffee, water, milk. Occasionally, ginger tea. If he felt uncertain. Ginger helped with that.

The fridge wasn’t full. Inside: one small container of blackberries, a glass bottle of milk, a few eggs, leftover boiled potatoes. A head of cauliflower. Two rice cakes in a resealable bag. Everything labeled. He knew what they all were, but it felt right to do it.

The notebook lay on the counter. Not for recipes—he didn’t use those. It was a log. Some categories: what he ate, when, and why. And a short entry after each meal. For Monday lunch: soft egg, dry toast. Tuesday breakfast was black coffee and grapefruit.

He only wrote the flavours themselves under “why”. The rest could be inferred.

On Thursday he made toast, again without butter. He’d slept fine but didn’t want the morning to move too quickly. At noon he’d eat an egg salad sandwich from the vending machine at work. The egg was always a little rubbery. That was fine. He liked that it didn’t pretend to be better than it was.

That evening he called his ex-wife. She answered on the second ring. She was cooking something. He could hear the clatter of a pan, the hiss of oil. He pictured her at the stove, wearing the apron he’d given her one Christmas. A quiet shape at the window behind her, maybe someone new, maybe not.

They talked for eleven minutes. He asked if her car had been fixed. She said yes, it had just been the battery. She asked if he was eating well. He said yes, and meant it.

After they hung up, he rinsed his cup and wiped the counter twice, once with the sponge, once with a dry towel. The night was mild. The window was open a crack, and a breeze moved the curtain.
​
He didn’t eat anything else. The day had been clean enough.

---

The first time it happened was at work. A conversation in the hallway. It was a new hire from procurement—Martin couldn’t remember her name. She smiled a lot, too widely. She asked if he liked working in quality control, if the job was “as boring as it sounded.”

He gave a neutral answer. She laughed. Said she was joking.

In the elevator, he pressed the button for the basement. That’s where the lab was. Halfway down, the taste hit him.

Not strong, but distinct. A sour film coating the back of his tongue. Like the white edge of an underripe plum. He coughed once, quietly.

In the lab, he ran the day’s samples. Logged a few temperature variances. By the time he went to lunch, the taste had faded.

That evening he made soft rice with steamed greens. He made some ginger tea, poured hot water over the tea bag, watched the colour rise.

The next time it happened was a few days later. He was taking out the trash. His downstairs neighbour was outside, smoking on the stoop. Her dog barked at him.

She tugged the leash once, hard. “He does that,” she said, not looking at him. “Some people just set him off.”

Martin nodded. The trash bag was heavier than usual.

She exhaled smoke sideways. “Anyway. Night.”

He said, “You too,” but she was halfway through the door.

Back in the apartment, he washed his hands. Then it came. Sweet. Not pleasant—it was sharp at the back of the throat. When he drank water, it didn’t go away.

He sat down, still tasting it. Read some of a book. He rubbed his tongue against the roof of his mouth. Still there.

That night, he wrote a note on the back page of his food log. Just the word: Sweet.

The next week, it happened again. After a meeting with his supervisor—they had spoken about packaging errors. Martin had made none. Still, on the way back to his desk: bitterness. Dull and medicinal.

When he got home, he turned the note over and made a grid. Columns: Time, Person, Situation, Taste. At the end, he added one more: Meaning.

He filled in the three lines he could remember. Then left the notebook open on the counter.

After that, the events increased. Always after something. Not always unpleasant, but never neutral.

He began describing them in more detail. Not just “bitter” or “sweet” anymore. He used phrases like “dry bitterness, with a green aftertaste,” “warm sugar, melted too fast,” and “the smell of bleach, translated into flavour.” He quite liked the last one.

He began to think of the notebook not as a log but a map. If he charted the tastes with enough clarity, something would resolve.

He started bringing crackers to work, plain ones. To help clear the mouth. At home, he rinsed with warm salt water. He bought a small tongue scraper online. Began using it after each interaction.

The tastes weren’t coming from the food. That was obvious now. They came from people. From what passed between them.

And they always came after. Like the air thickened behind him as he walked away.

He didn’t talk to his ex-wife about it. Didn’t think it worth mentioning.

On the phone that Thursday, he said he was fine. Asked about her car again, even though it had already been fixed. She hesitated, then said it was running fine.

He heard something faint behind her voice. A clink of glass, maybe music. He tried to imagine where she was taking the call from.

After they hung up, he sat at the table, not moving. His mouth was clean. No taste.
​
He wasn’t sure what that meant.

---

The dentist checked for abscesses, gum lesions, anything that might explain it. Martin sat still in the chair, eyes on the speckled ceiling tile above. The suction tube clicked softly beside him.

“Teeth are fine,” the dentist said. “Gums look good. Do you grind at night?”

“Not that I know of,” Martin said.

“Could be dry mouth. Could be stress. Try drinking more water. Maybe cut back on coffee.”

Martin didn’t drink coffee anymore. Too bitter for the past few weeks.

He nodded anyway.

Next was the general practitioner. She looked in his ears, his throat. Asked about his sleep. Tapped notes into a laptop without looking at him.

“Sometimes the brain gets its wires crossed,” she said. “Taste and smell are close to memory. Emotions. Maybe this is a kind of feedback loop.”

He said nothing.

She asked if he was experiencing stress.

“No more than usual.”

“Well,” she said. “That's something.”

She gave him a referral for a neurologist.

The neurologist’s office smelled like lemon cleaner. The man wore square glasses and had a soft voice. He asked if Martin had ever had seizures. Migraines. Sensitivity to sound or light.

Martin said no.

The neurologist shined lights in his eyes. Asked him to touch his finger to his nose. Pressed a tuning fork to his temple.

Finally, he said, “What you’re describing might be a kind of gustatory hallucination. Psychosomatic, possibly stress-related. It’s not uncommon.”

Martin asked what that meant.

“Nothing dangerous. Just the brain’s way of processing unresolved stimuli. Like phantom limb pain, but with taste.”

The neurologist smiled gently, as if trying to be kind. “It tends to pass. Just avoid unnecessary stress.”

Martin nodded, stood, thanked him.

On the train ride home, he held the strap with both hands and looked out the window.

They were wrong. Or rather, they didn’t understand. There were patterns. Recurrences. He knew the difference between false taste and real taste. This was real.

That Thursday, his ex-wife asked if he was sleeping well.

“Yes,” he said.

She asked if he was eating.

“Of course.”

There was a pause. He waited for her to ask something else, but she didn’t.

After the call, he rinsed his mouth with vinegar and scraped his tongue until it stung. Then he sat in silence for twenty minutes.

There was still a taste there, faint but distinct.

He wrote it down. Ashy. Slightly metallic. Like burnt copper.
​
He didn’t write what caused it.

---

​Martin was in the breakroom, standing near the microwave. A colleague—Alan, from logistics—told him he was doing a great job. 

“People notice,” Alan said, hand on the microwave door. “Keep it up.”

As he spoke, a taste bloomed at the back of Martin’s mouth. Thick. Cloying. Like overcooked caramel. It sat on his tongue and didn’t resolve.

This was the first time it had happened during a conversation.

Later that week, a report he had filed ended up in Alan’s hands. In the department meeting, Alan used it to support a proposal—without attribution. Martin didn’t speak up, only watched.

He began to carry the notebook everywhere. Small, black, tucked into his back pocket. He added a new column to his table: predicted outcomes.

Here was another example. He was speaking with the woman from procurement. She was telling him about her dog’s surgery. Her voice trembled at first, then steadied. He listened, nodded. 

Then a taste: sour, bright, high on the palate. Like a cleaning agent.

Three days later, she sent a department-wide email correcting an error in his last inventory submission. The tone was polite, but he felt something in it.

He revised the taxonomy. Sour was probably a soft form of disdain. Masked intent.

As for the others: bitterness had already revealed itself as duplicity. Burnt sugar was flattery. Metallic, though—he didn’t trust that one. It came rarely, and when it did, it stayed.

Martin started to test the system. Letting conversations play out longer, watching what arrived on his tongue. Sometimes nothing did. Those moments made him nervous.

He adjusted how he spoke. Less small talk. Fewer jokes. He listened with his mouth now.

At home, he reviewed his notes each night. Drew little arrows. Underlined. The pages became dense with annotations. 

He thought of it like quality control. An extension of his job. Except now he was testing people. 

He told no one. He knew what they would say. He didn’t need them to believe it.
​
He tasted it. That was enough.

---

The metallic tang arrived just past the underpass.

It hit clean. High and sharp, like a coin scraped across a filling. He stopped walking. His mouth flooded with it. Tin, maybe. A whisper of blood.

He wiped his lips, though there was nothing there.

The café was still four blocks away. He thought about turning back.

Instead, he kept walking. Slowly now, slower than before.

She was already seated when he arrived. Window table. Half-drunk tea.

He smiled. She smiled back. Her hair was tied up differently. She wore a scarf he hadn’t seen before.

They talked, the way they did. Weather, work, a book she was rereading. He nodded in all the right places. She was kind. Maybe a little tired.

But something shifted mid-conversation. Her hands moved more than usual. Her gaze broke off more often. She looked out the window. Looked down.

He watched her mouth.

Then, carefully, she told him. She was seeing someone. It had started recently. A few months. She hadn’t planned it. It just happened.

She said this without apology. She took a sip of tea and didn’t meet his eyes.

Martin nodded again. Said he was happy for her. He meant it, or thought he might. But the taste was still there. Stronger now.

He didn’t speak much after that. He asked no questions. He just let her talk, listening past the words. She reached for his hand at one point, but he had already folded it under the table.

Later, walking home, the logic clicked into place.

The metallic tang hadn’t followed the conversation. It had come first. It was a sign. Something in his mouth had known. Not when she said it. Not when she looked away. But before. Four blocks before.
​
He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. He stood there for a long time, tasting.

---

Martin stopped picking up the phone when the taste was wrong.

At first, he told himself it was temporary. A way of keeping the signal clean. But the days built on each other.

A neighbor called down the hall one evening, their voice muffled through the door. The air in his mouth thickened, bitter at the back. 

He stayed very still, holding his breath until they walked away.

One morning, standing on the landing, he felt a sour edge in the air before even opening the door. He locked it again and went back inside.

He called in sick the next day. Then the next week.

His ex-wife left messages. At first warm, then sharper at the edges. He listened to a few of them. No taste. Nothing.

The absence itself was a sign. Concealment. Something hidden.

He deleted her messages without answering.

Food began to interfere with the signal. 

He stopped seasoning anything. Then he stopped cooking altogether. Water, crackers, white bread. Warm rice if his hands were shaking.

Every morning he rinsed with vinegar. Every night he brushed his tongue with the toothbrush until it bled a little. The scraper came after—flat and cold against the surface, removing the last of the film.

Some nights he woke up and did it again, convinced something had settled on him as he slept.

The apartment grew quiet. He kept the windows closed to block outside air.

The notebook filled quickly, then spilled over. Loose scraps of paper stacked on the counter. Arrows. Circles. Words written in thick strokes.

Entries became fragments. Phrases repeated. Columns without labels.

He stopped dating entries by time and began marking them by taste. Days were not Monday or Tuesday anymore. They were Bitter, then Sour, then Empty.

The taste was the only language he trusted. Words were unreliable. People lied.
​
The mouth didn’t.

---

It began one morning before dawn.

He hadn’t eaten. Hadn’t spoken. The apartment was still.

And yet, something. Heavy. Meaty. Not spoiled. Not clean either.

He froze, tongue pressed to the roof of his mouth.

It didn’t fade.

All morning it sat there, a warm film that didn’t dissolve with water or vinegar.

In the afternoon it was still there.

He fasted that day. Nothing but warm water. Brushed until his tongue throbbed. Scraped until he tasted blood. The meaty tang only thickened beneath it.

He lay on the couch with his mouth open, trying to breathe it out. It stayed.

At night, he woke up choking on nothing. The flavour had spread, filling the back of his throat. Oily. Coating. It clung like fat on cooled broth.

For a while, he thought maybe it was the building. Something in the air vents. He opened the window for the first time in weeks. The taste didn’t shift.

He stopped writing for a few days. The notebooks lay on the table, pages loose and sliding.

He tried describing it once, writing down “meat”, then crossed it out. It wasn’t meat. Not exactly. It was more than that.

When he walked from one room to another, it followed. When he rinsed, it came back stronger.

It had no shape but filled everything.

He was lying in bed one night when he considered something. Maybe it wasn’t a flavour. 

Maybe it was a presence.

The thought settled into him slowly, like the taste itself.

He imagined the warm weight of something on the tongue. Something familiar. Something already inside.

He stopped labelling after that. Stopped logging. There was nothing left to record. The taste didn’t change.
​
It was always there.

---

The knock came in the early evening. Three short taps.

He didn’t answer at first.

A pause. Then her voice, muffled. “Martin? It’s me.”

He opened the door.

She looked thinner than before. Tired. One hand holding the strap of her bag like she wasn’t sure how long she’d be staying.

“I was in the area,” she said. “I tried calling.”

He stepped aside. She entered.

The moment she crossed the threshold, it burst.

The taste. Full. Saturated. A thick bloom across the tongue, rising behind the eyes. Dense. Meaty.

He nearly gagged.

She looked around. “It’s warm in here. You keeping the windows shut?”

He stood still, watching her mouth move. The taste swelled, sliding behind his teeth, under his tongue.

She moved toward him. Not close, just a little.

“You don’t have to say anything,” she said. “I just wanted to see you. Make sure you were okay.”

He nodded once.

She smiled, small. “I’m glad,” she said, though there was no proof. Her voice was careful. “Do you want me to go?”

He didn’t answer. He kept tasting.

She looked down, then up again, still smiling but tighter. “I miss talking to you. Just… normally.”

He stepped past her, toward the kitchen.

She turned slightly, half-following him with her eyes.

“Martin?”

He opened a drawer. Something clinked softly.

She stopped speaking.

The taste was thick now. Full-bodied. Human. It coated everything.

He paused there, hand inside the drawer.

He wanted to know what the taste meant.
​
She had come at the perfect time.

---

​Jeremy Qu is a writer and engineering student at the University of Toronto. His work has appeared in Mnerva, a University of Toronto campus literary journal, and he is excited to debut in The /tƐmz/ Review. He is also developing his skills in fiction editing, with a focus on developmental editing.