How to Survive Shopping (Ruleshorror)

13 Rules to Survive Pizza Places

Like the previous chapter on the noble cafe, the pizza place is really the kind of place you can find all sorts of people. Some of other locations that I've described are really only frequented by people at certain points in their life, or more popular with different socioeconomic groups, but pizza is basically the universal unifier. Sure there are people who don't like it, but really, you can find almost anywhere at a pizza shop at some point. Similarly, you can find all sorts of Beings at a pizza place. I'm here to tell you about those, and how to stay safe.

1. If the last piece of pizza disappears when you aren't looking, let it go. Where it's gone, who it's gone to...you don't want it back.

2. Related: sometimes the slicers they let you use cut a little too deep, to the soul. You'll know if it did and if it did it's too late. Write your will.

3. Pizza can totally be cursed. When it's cursed, it's typically activated upon consumption. Toppings matter immensely:

3a. Cheese and Sauce: You will grow hair in strange proportions and colors. Like half your hair is shoulder length and the middle half becomes bald, or you suddenly have a unibrow, or only your left bicep will sprout green hair.
3b. Cheese no sauce: You'll develop a cheese intolerance. The Pizza Gods seem to be offended personally and pettily by this one.
3c. Mushrooms: You'll fall in a hole and be unable to rise. This will happen seven times before the mushrooms finish their consumption of you.
3d. Pepperoni: You'll get weird dreams with pigs.
3e. Pineapple: You'll lose the ability to see any color other than yellow.
3f. Onion: You'll develop permanent bad breath, so bad that no one can stand to be around you. Less of an issue in the zoom era, really.
3g. Pepper: All peppers you consume henceforth will be too damn spicy.

4. You can tell your pizza is cursed in a few ways:
4a. It smells, looks, or tastes off. You know what the deal is supposed to be. It's a popular food. There better be a great explanation for why it smells by acetone and looks purple.
4b. The local ghosts and Beings are desperately trying to dissuade you from eating it. How do you think they got the way they are?
4c. It burns through the table. C'mon, don't put anything in your mouth that melts tables.

5. How to uncurse yourself depends intensely on the curse, but generally, you seek to appease the entities you offended. This could be the owner, a resident ghost, a resident not-human spooky Being, or the Pizza Gods themselves.

6. All sorts of folks may stick around a pizza place after death. This includes ghosts that were dangerous before they died, especially if the joint is, ah, a family business.

7. Lots of high school and college kids haunt pizza places too. They're generally harmless, if you can give them beer and a slice (which is usually what they want), it's good luck. Don't worry about whether the blue kid is 20 or 21 - if he died in '82 it's kind of irrelevant.

8. Related: you will see a lot of teens/college kids attempting spooky rituals in pizza places. Stay out of it.

9. Because of the high density of hang-around supranatural types, many pizzerias have, shall we say, alternate menus. You do not need or want this menu.
9a. You cannot unsee what you see on that menu.
9b. Holding the menu as a living human will imply to those who are not that you work at the pizzeria. Specifically, it implies you serve the more unusual customers their meals. You don't know what you'll be carrying or the requests made of you.
9c. You might end up on that menu.

10. Always double-check what you're actually putting on your pizza. Are you sure that's paprika?

11. It's common to have TVs in pizzerias. If it suddenly becomes old shows, this is a very bad sign.

12. Pizza does come in different shapes. Pentagram should not be one of them.

13. If the pizzeria staff insist that it's like pizza, but they can't actually call it pizza, something is very wrong.