All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl #1: Brenda’s Gone Missing

All Night Breakfast at the Midnight Owl is an investigative solo TTRPG in the style of X-Files where your player character finds themselves in a cryptid-ridden town, following leads and “solving” mysteries, all with the express purpose of turning clues into a podcast. The setting and atmosphere of this game inspires so much creative, wacky thinking. I love it.

I arrive at Gossamer Bay because, well, I may have a bit of an arson streak to overcome. You see, my novels—I’m talking piles and piles of books that were close but not quite—went nowhere and I decided to set them on fire. In the process of turning failed dreams to kindling, I may have also set my rental apartment on fire and as you can imagine being that I’ve never sold a book, I didn’t have nearly enough money to deal with the fallout with my landlord.

So, I ran.

Well, less running and more bribery, travel, and arriving in Gossamer Bay by morning. There’s also a bag of money I found in the woods, but let’s not worry about that for now.

People talk a lot about Gossamer Bay. They say strange things happen here, and as someone with one semester of journalism school and dreams of entertaining coursing through me, I had to see this weird little town for myself. Gossamer Bay is also perfect because no one will notice me snooping around or wonder how I got here, or wonder where on earth I came from.

I befriend—maybe “friend” is a little strong—one of the workers at their only diner, The Midnight Owl. They let me sit in my booth for hours every few weeks organizing my investigation notes, eating pancakes, and agonizing over how to write any of this down.

My booth is all the way in the back, next to the high school conspiracy theory club’s booth. Yes, it’s a real club and yes they do have good attendance. They talk about all sorts of inane things I half-listen to, but a few days ago, they brought up Brenda Stern. She’s gone missing.

I play it cool and keep listening to one of the boys, who says, “I bet she melted through the floor. She’s always seemed a bit Gloopy.”

Gloopy is the premier Gossamer Bay cryptid. People travel up the interstate to try and “discover it,” but it seems everyone who makes their home in Gossamer Bay actually believes Gloopy is real, even if no one call firmly say what it looks like or does…

I’ve seen Brenda around before; she’s one of the few townie’s who’s talked to me on purpose. She has a trailer not too far from the Owl, and she’s got cats who are probably starving. I settle my tab and head to her trailer.

Outside of Brenda’s door, there’s a puddle of mud though we’ve not had rain for a while and worse yet, the trailers are all set on concrete instead of grass. All of her windows are open and a chorus of meows filter out through them, but I don’t have to do much quick thinking for a cosmic fish storm lands right on cue. This happens here, a lot. Sometimes it just rains fish. Lucky for the cats—I grab a few fish off the ground and my shoulders, and throw them in through the windows so they have something to eat.

I duck for cover at a nearby churchyard, but I’m not alone. There’s a shifty-looking man smoking a cigarette who catches my eye.

“Oy! What’re ya doin’ in the storm?” He demands.

“I’m… I’ve been sent to find Brenda Stern. Do you know her? Have you seen her?”

The man exhales smoke in my face before offering to give me an interview about Brenda and her whereabouts. He proceeds to ramble about all the “Gloopy business” Brenda’s been up to in the last few months, puffing smoke in my face between sentences. Eventually, the smoke starts to sting my eyes, so I shut them as he says, “Is Gloopy real? He’s real to her.”

I open my eyes in a liminal space. I’m nowhere near Gossamer Bay, but instead, find myself on a patch of grass ringed by trees with the sound of water in the distance. The smoking man continues his endless cigarette just a few steps from me. I demand his name and to know where I am.

“Marlin Harris. I’m a retired waiter. Retired yesterday. Good time for it, too.” He smirks and begins to walk away, leaving clouds of smoke behind him. I give him chase, but my every step sinks into globs of primordial mud. This is the same-looking mud as outside Brenda’s! I scoop some up and put it in my backpack.

“Oy!” Marlin shouts. “You leave that here, yeah? Not yours to take.” He exhales a huge ring of smoke in my face and my eyes shut again.

Next thing I know, I’m face-to-face with some derelict building on the edge of town. Everything about it is decrepit and peely. I worry it’ll collapse on me if I stay outside. The smart thing to do would be to go inside. I shove open the rotten wood door and find myself in some crumbling banquet hall, with all the walls caked in mud. Gloopy mud! The mud pulses purple and red, and so too does the mud I scooped from wherever Marlin took me.

I find stairs leading to a basement and though I know it’s stupid to go into a basement that could be teeming with cultists, I smell a good story at the end of my investigation and have to—have to—follow the clues. The basement is adorned with a shabby shrine and at the far end, a light flashes in sync with a bashing sound. I gulp; I’m brave.

My phone flashlight reveals a single set of primordial mud footprints. They lead right up into the flashing light. I take deliberate steps, matching my feet to the mud, and stand face-to-face with the flashing light. I try and reach into the light, just a few fingers, but something pulls me through the sliver of light and into a cave.

These must be the Gloopy Caverns! Tourists are always talking about finding these caves where Gloopy followers do Gloopy rituals. The cave glows purple and red, all mud and Gloopy-gloop. I’m not alone this time. A band of six followers stand in the center of the cave, performing some sort of ritual. They’re so focused, I’m able to record a quick clip on my phone of them standing there with their hands in the air and mud dripping from their hands and arms.

There’s a woman at the center of the ritual. I try and get closer—is it Brenda? No, but… The woman and the rest of the followers start to chant Brenda’s name! Brenda is the ritual. I take a few more cautious steps and lose my footing on a slick of oil. The ritual halts; all eyes are on me. The followers don’t look ready for a fight, but the general energy in their Gloopy cave is, “Scram!”

A pool of oil grows beneath my feet until my each and every sense is oil and I’m deposited outside The Midnight Owl. I collect myself, trying not to feel like a failure for not having found Brenda. In my booth at the diner, I start to piece things together. Brenda and Gloopy… Brenda and mud. Gloopy and mud. Brenda’s name at the ritual. And where did Marlin go? Four mugs of coffee later, it comes to me: Brenda is Gloopy. I couldn’t find her because she isn’t coming back.