"Chill this," the waiter said, shoving the bowl with a plump lobster occupant into the hands of one of the kitchen staff.
Dan felt his walking legs rasp against the smooth curves of the stainless steel bowl as his scuttling produced none of the expected momentum.
"My, you're a fat one," the worker said as he placed Dan and the bowl beneath the ice machine's dispenser.
"Why does everyone keep saying that?" Dan objected to the worker's observation regarding his overly plump state.
The worker unleashed a frozen avalanche of ice cubes into the bowl, nearly burying Dan beneath them.
Dan clicked his mouthparts, but the negligible sound he produced was overcome by the raspy scuttling of his claws and walking legs as he tried to burrow his way out of the ice cubes.
"Please, just get me out of here," Dan begged. "Any of the other lobsters will do."
The frigid water penetrated through his shell, chilling him to the core and making his thoughts feel sluggish.
“I didn’t want this,” Dan lied to himself, but it was his own obsession that had landed him in this situation.
The fear that gripped him was real now, but he couldn’t completely detach himself from the fantasy.
“Maybe this is Kat’s idea of a joke,” he reasoned. He squirmed in the chilly pool of melting ice cubes. His sister wouldn’t really let him get cooked and eaten.
A man approached the work station and activated one of the stove’s burners. From the icy haze of the bowl, Dan got his eyestalks above water and watched the burner gradually glow red and bright as the kitchen worker placed a large kettle filled with salty water on the burner.
Once that water reached a boil it would be curtains. Dan felt powerful tingles of arousal at the thought. “Oh god, no…”
He knew he had a limited time before the water reached its boiling point, and as much as Dan enjoyed the dark fantasy, but he needed to survive until Kat returned for her party and could put things right. With a determination born of desperation, Dan clambered out of the bowl and scuttled across the stainless steel countertop and right over the edge.