The Last Feast of Harlequin, by Thomas Ligotti, is spam musubi. It is all quite ceremonial, clutching our lanterns and entering this muffled maw, our bodies and faces cloaked with garb and gown and veil. Communicating not by voice but from the phosphorescent glow of our light. One by one, shining like little pieces of rice, we move deeper into this tunnel. We pass through labyrinthine corridors and tight, twisting halls until it opens in an unforgiving cavern of jagged rock. There is no revelry upon our arrival. The guests are draggy and lax, waiting with mute mouths, as if the glue from their painted masks has dripped into their lips, sealing their voices forever inside. They surround the altar in the center of the room, without much notice to the spam musubi that sits across the preceding tables. The taste of spam is not something you ever dreamt to contend with again, but hunger lacerates your gut with black claws. And so you slip a bite from it under your sweat-encrusted mask. It has been dressed with soy and eggs and seaweed and laid atop a bed of vinegar-soaked rice. But no matter the guise that wraps this meat, the taste of the salty pork still chokes you with a nauseating mouthful. The wet morsel slithers down your throat like a fat worm. You do not wait for it to hit bottom, instead purging the contents immediately. But the looks you receive are not kind around this room and the bodies swell closer and closer. It appears the ceremony has begun.