Death by Chocolate, by Tiffany Trent
The typical life of a cupcake is five to seven days. Mary Ellen had said this to me at the very beginning with that stern expression that forbade any questions. After five days, I was meant to dispose of them by placing them outside the alley door. She had been very explicit about this. Not the dumpster. Just outside the door. I stooped over the tray of five-day old Tutti-Frutti cupcakes, inspecting the salmon-pink whorls of frosting, the little marzipan pineapples and cherries I’d sprinkled between them. The shop was empty. Winter wind rattled the windows; icicles clawed at the glass.
“No one’s in the mood for a tropical fruit sensation anyway,” I said, testing the silence to see if it would answer me. As usual, it only nodded as I slid the tray of doomed cupcakes out of the display case and onto the counter.
I went down the row, checking Banana Split Sundae, Vanilla Caramel Swirl, Toffee Rockin’ Java. All of them nestled quietly like children fast asleep under their blankets, like children waiting for their true parents to find them.
I eyed the Tutti-Fruttis. Only they were recalcitrant enough to have lasted this long unsold and untasted. I considered giving them one more day. Surely, someone needed some sunshine. Surely someone longed for the nearly- saccharin sweetness of pineapple-cherry frosting melting over a fruity white cake.
My hands curled around the tray edges, ready to consign the Tutti-Fruttis to their doom when I realized a boy stood on the other side of the counter. The door chime hadn’t mentioned him and I glared at it, even as I felt embarrassed that no holiday music was playing, that I didn’t have a new batch of cupcakes already in the oven, wafting sweet temptation through the shop.
But no one ever came in this early. Ever. The shop is open mostly for appearance’s sake at this hour. I’d told Mary Ellen long ago that I thought we ought to offer muffins and gourmet coffee in the morning. Muffins? She’d stared over the edges of her horn-rimmed glasses. The cupcakes would not approve. She’d said it so sternly then that I hadn’t dared question her, even if it sounded insane. But now I knew the truth of it. Cupcakes couldn’t rest comfortably side by side with anything but their own kin.
The boy cleared his throat. He had beautiful gingerbread skin and teeth white as sugared daisies. His eyes were focused not on me, but on the toasted coconut swirls of Banana Split Sundae.
“May I help you?” I supposed we should observe the formal rite if he was really here on business.
He cleared his throat again, not so much for attention as out of nervousness. His gaze swept the cases, then lifted to me helplessly.
“I don’t know what to get,” he said.
“What do you need?” I asked.
Most times when people come here, they know exactly what they need. Or they’re willing to experiment. Seldom do they flounder for long.
I watched him, tilting my head as a bird will to get a better view. His expressions shifted and twitched across his face like masks. The true self was revealed only in flashes.
Then he said the magic words.
“I’ve never had a cupcake before,” the boy said.
At that point, I knew he couldn’t possibly be human.
“Do you crave Madagascan vanilla laced with caramel?” I asked. “Do you want an explosion of toffee and java to bring your tastebuds to life? Do you long for the sweet parity of mint mixed with milk chocolate?”
He glanced at me as if I mouthed profanities.
Then his eyes lit on the Tutti-Fruttis.
“What are these?” he asked.
“These?” I said. I was embarrassed that he’d noticed them. Destined for the back alley, it was as if they were naked and already homeless. I wanted to whisk them away so as not to offend. I wished that I could throw them in the dumpster to further hide their failure to charm, but the one time I had done so, Mary Ellen had been livid. She had barely stopped short of forcing me to dig them out one by one myself.
“They’re past their prime, unfortunately,” I admitted.
“Those little candy pineapples and cherries,” he said with a bemused expression. “Are they…what flavor?”
“Tutti-Frutti,” I said, gritting my teeth.
“Oh Rudy,” he said, smiling.
Clearly not human at all.
“I’ll take them,” he said.
“I really shouldn’t…I mean, that is to say…”
He looked me in the eyes. “All of them.”
If I hadn’t known better, I’d almost believe the Tutti-Fruttis had engineered this to rescue themselves.
The rest of the day was quiet. I sent Mint Chocolate Bliss, Midnight Madness, and a dozen Vanilla Caramels off to new homes, and there were more than a few consumed around lunch time - my patrons guiltily stuffing down a cupcake rather than the thermos of lukewarm soup they or their significant others had packed before dawn.
At the usual slump between three and four, I felt it would be safe to repair to the kitchen and seek out the next recipe. I thumbed through the ancient book - a veritable cupcake grimoire - Mary Ellen’s most cherished possession and the thing she passed on to me last, even after the key to the shop.
She had looked down her nose at me in that way she had as she pulled the book from her valise. “I wasn’t sure about you at first, Martha,” she said. “You’re a bit young for this sort of thing. But the cupcakes like you, and that’s a good thing. I think you’ll do just fine.”
I’d been baffled but pleased. Nothing else was going on in my life. Nothing really had in eighteen years. To be suddenly given the only thing that had ever mattered - it was a dream I hadn’t even known I’d had until it came true.
Mary Ellen had removed the book from its slipcover and lifted her glasses from where they rested quivering on her voluminous bosom. Her fingers had hesitated, tracing the cover’s intricacies for long moments. I sensed that it would be imprudent to pry.
“This is hard for me,” she finally owned. She flipped through a few of the pages before shutting the book again and looking at me. “My sisters and I - we never had any girl children. No one to pass the family secrets along to. Jean and Blackie have passed and now I’m simply too old to handle all the mischief and bother.”
She’d shoved the book across the counter to me. “See that you use it well.” It seemed like she wanted to say more, but she’d turned and left, the shop bells singing out sadly behind her.
I never saw her again.
Back then, I hadn’t understood what Mary Ellen meant by the cupcakes liking me. I’d thought throughout my apprenticeship that she was a bit unhinged, but I knew I was no gem of normalcy myself. Cupcakes were all she talked of, all she cared about. By and by, they were all I cared about, too. I came to understand that she hadn’t been too much into the tipple or simply undone by loneliness and hard work.
She was right. The cupcakes knew.
I pulled the book down from where it hid behind the flour canisters in the store room. I opened the book on the baking table and barely caught the rolling pin as it skittered to one side. I muttered at it crossly, didn’t see why I needed a rolling pin anyway. But I had this feeling that it would be very bad luck to get rid of anything Mary Ellen had left, no matter how useless it might seem.
I considered which recipe might be best, leafing through the ragged pages. Something different, something new. I knew there was no way I’d made everything in this book already. Mostly I had kept to what Mary Ellen and I had made together during my apprenticeship. The old standards - milk chocolate, vanilla, and so on. Maybe Strawberry Cheesecake, on occasion, if the weather called for something particularly decadent.
My index finger stung. I lifted it away, sucking at it, and looked to where the page had fallen, heavy and stuck to another page. I worried at the pages, which seemed glued shut. Warnings emerged as my fingers worked.
Do not open.
Desist.
Biohazard.
Biohazard?
At last I pulled the pages apart and flattened them out. The book sighed under my stinging hands, and the recipe title wrote itself elegantly under my fingers.
Death By Chocolate.
They would be difficult - thick, chocolate cakes made with almost pure cacao, layered with chocolate meringue and ganache, and dripping with a mocha rum sauce. But they were new to me.
“I wouldn’t do that,” a boy’s voice said.
I startled so hard the rolling pin leapt straight to the floor and protested by spinning in lazy circles.
“What?” I said.
I turned. He wasn’t exactly the same as before. His face had a different shape, his skin a slightly different color as though someone had tinted it green. But the sugar-daisy teeth were still there, glistening as he smiled at me.
“That recipe,” he said. “It’s…” He waved a hand. The mannerisms of his gestures were at least the same.
“What?” I said again.
“Dangerous,” he said lamely.
“How would you know? You’d never eaten a cupcake before yesterday, or so you claimed.”
“Even so, I know that those”—he pointed—“are absolutely deadly. “
I stared at him, wondering if he thought I was absolutely daft. Everyone knows that cupcakes are dangerous. That was at the heart of the guilty smiles, the shifty eyes, the worried, drawn mouths at nearly every purchase. I had only seen one woman who came in and quietly ate her half dozen with only rapture and none of the anxiety. A cupcake could kill you with rapture. I hadn’t seen it yet, but I instinctively somehow knew it to be true.
“You think I didn’t know that?” I asked.
“I…well…” He spread his hands.
“What I want to know,” I said, stooping and loosely grasping the handle of the rolling pin, “is why you feel you have leave to come here and tell me so.”
He looked at me aghast, as if I’d just said something incredibly dense and rude at the same time.
“You don’t know?” he asked. “Mary Ellen didn’t tell you?”
I shook my head, cradling the stout roller with my free hand.
“Oh dear,” he said.
“You aren’t exactly human, are you?” I asked. I don’t know why I said it aloud. It shouldn’t have made sense. But I had learned in the bakery that many impossible things were possible. Why shouldn’t this be?
He frowned, as if, of all the questions I could have asked, that I had chosen that one exceptionally poorly.
He gave me confirmation by saying, “I thought better of you, Martha.”
“I suppose then I’d better not ask how you know my name,” I said.
He pursed his lips and shook his head. “Best not.”
“Hmmm.” I patted the rolling pin against my palm. The air smelled of flying flour. “Well…what can you tell me?” I finally said.
“Better,” he acknowledged. “Ever wonder why you’re not to throw cupcakes into the dumpster? Ever wonder how your flour and other special ingredients always seem to appear when you need them? Ever wonder why your customers seem so ecstatically happy when they leave? And why all other cupcakes are lifeless and pathetic—mere zombies compared to yours?”
I had wondered about the first two, but not the latter two. Of course everyone left here happy. How could they not? But no one in her right mind would expect a decent cupcake from the grocery store bakery. I’d once gone in and seen cupcakes forced together on a plastic-covered tray, horrendously decorated to look like a giant hot dog, complete with relish-green and ketchup-red stripes across their backs. I had thought then how lucky they were to have no semblance of life about them. How else could they avoid humiliation? The whole thing had been obscene. My cupcakes wouldn’t have stood for it.
“The first two questions had crossed my mind,” I said.
I didn’t ask him his name. Only a fool would have done that.
“I’m the Delivery Boy,” he volunteered.
I cocked my head. “But I take no deliveries,” I said. “As you noted, there is always flour, always…special ingredients.” I couldn’t pretend that I hadn’t noticed this or thought it odd. But there are some things in life you learn not to question. An eternal supply of flour was one of those.
“Perhaps you should. Learn to take deliveries.” He almost blushed. “But I didn’t say I was your Delivery Boy,” he said. “I was puzzled the other day that you didn’t seem to recognize me. I thought surely Mary Ellen would have told you. Or that you would have noticed that the cupcakes in the alley always disappear.”
I had noticed that the cupcakes were always gone, but I’d assumed that that was just the homeless or dogs or…something that was at least approximately human or involved with humanity.
“Mary Ellen didn’t tell me anything about you,” I said. I was hoping he wouldn’t force me to ask whose Delivery Boy he was.
“Maybe she thought that as long as you did what she said, all would be well.”
I shrugged and relaxed my grip on the rolling pin.
“But,” he sighed, “people never seem to heed the advice of others, do they?”
“How do you mean?” I said. I felt myself bristling at his insinuation.
“That page was folded and glued shut with warnings,” he said. “Yet still you opened it. And now, you cannot get the idea of making this recipe out of your head.”
“So?” I asked. I was tempted to look at it over my shoulder, but didn’t want to take my eyes off of him.
His gaze was much older than he looked. “I must ask you not to make that recipe. It…isn’t what you think.”
“I know,” I said. I half-turned and set the rolling pin down on the scarred table. “It’s dangerous.”
“Very,” he said.
Before I could ask how, he held up a hand.
“Just don’t do it,” he said.
And then he left.
#
For weeks, I heeded the Delivery Boy’s warning. I made Gingerbread cupcakes, Red Velvet cupcakes, even Lavender cupcakes with candied violet frosting. I avoided the recipe pages, even when they fell open temptingly, revealing Death by Chocolate in all its dark splendor. New ingredients appeared on time and the old cupcakes disappeared regularly from the alley, and I knew now who took them. Though I didn’t know why.
I tried. I tried so hard. But the recipe taunted me and the cupcakes in their cases huddled silent and unhappy. They seemed to long for Death by Chocolate as surely as I did. Not having them would be like having winter without any sort of holiday.
So, one night, I waited in the alley beside an assortment of doomed cupcakes. The winter chill settled into my bones. I waited a long time, while lights went off and on in other buildings. I didn’t once question my safety, even when kids whizzed by on skateboards in the darkness, eyeing me and snickering. I had been safe since the day I apprenticed myself to Mary Ellen. Too safe, I realized.
It might have been midnight when he came, but I’m no judge of time. The silence spoke him and he was there, entirely other than I’d ever seen, except for the sugar-daisy teeth, which didn’t smile when he saw me.
“Martha, I must ask you to leave. You mustn’t ever try to meet me,” the Delivery Boy said. I couldn’t help but notice his curly dark hair, his ice-rimed eyelashes, like fine strokes of chocolate cream dusted with sugar.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Mary Ellen should have told you,” he said.
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Well, she didn’t.”
“I know,” he said. “But surely you already understand?”
I shook my head. He sighed.
“What you are making…the cupcakes are just metaphors, really. Disguises, if you will.”
I waited.
“You’re making spells, Martha. Spells that I deliver to those that need them. When I said I’d never eaten a cupcake before, it was true. I hadn’t ever been allowed. They allowed it that one time—the Tutti-Fruttis are fairly harmless—light, fluffy magic that only enhances one’s gifts. They saw no harm in that.”
“They who?” I asked.
“It doesn’t matter. You’d never know it was Them even if They stared you in the face.”
“I knew you,” I said.
He bowed his head. “Touché. But They are far more powerful and craftier than me; you’d go mad trying to find Them.”
I waved away his words. “So, why can I not make those cupcakes? What kind of spell is in them?”
“I should think the name would give it away,” he said.
“I see,” I nodded. “So these are poison to…whoever They are.”
“Poison?” he said. “Oh no. No, indeed. They are purest ecstasy. Surely I do not need to explain.”
“You mean drugs?” I asked.
He just stared at me, his eyes running over my face, my throat, all the way to my toes. I felt warmth wherever his gaze touched.
I blushed. Though I had never experienced this—not once in my life—it needed no further explanation. “Then…why—” I began.
He stooped and hefted the tray. “Can you imagine powerful magical beings in endless ecstasy? Their world and your world rest comfortably side by side now. But this spell, in its very making, could unhinge all that.”
He stood before me one final time and his smile wasn’t nearly as pleasant as it had been before. “I’ll warn you one last time. Do not make those cupcakes.”
I was alone with the stars twittering over my head like swallows.
I went back inside the shop. I made sure all the doors were locked and I admonished the bells to warn me if the Delivery Boy or anyone else tried to come in. The cupcakes watched me as I went to the kitchen, but they kept their thoughts to themselves.
Though it was indeed past midnight, I pulled down the book and rolled up my sleeves.
He had forbidden me to make cupcakes. Very well. But no one had said anything about a cake—a full-on, luscious symphony of chocolate. I scanned the recipe again and saw in the footnotes that someone else recommended this as a cake. “More full-bodied, more self-assured,” the handwriting proclaimed. “If you do this, be prepared to suffer the consequences.” I sensed laughter between the lines.
I mixed, stirred, melted, and reduced. I whipped up layers of ganache and cocoa meringue with the purest dark chocolate my magical shelf-stockers had left me. And when it was finished, when it sat dark and heavy before me in all its devilish glory, I christened it with the mocha rum sauce.
I took it out and sat it on the counter. The cupcakes in their cases shivered and sighed.
In the morning, I couldn’t get the doors open quickly enough. The stampede was full of glassy-eyed men and women—and who knew how many not-humans wandered among them? I cut slices of cake and laid them on the plate, dressing them with the most delicate trill of sauce. No matter how much I sliced, there was always more. The room buzzed; the walls shimmered. Snow fell soft and sparkling. Fingers twined across tables, chocolate-stained lips pressed to cheeks. I heard there was dancing out in the streets, though I hadn’t a moment’s grace to see. Once, just once, I saw wings unfurl behind a woman’s back as her lover embraced her.
#
As evening fell, the madness at last slowed. I locked the door, my feet aching. One lone slice of cake sang to me from the counter. If I hadn’t been so tired, I’d almost have sworn the cupcakes hummed in harmony. I shook my head. Crazy.
I considered setting the slice of cake out in the alley, but there had been enough mayhem for the day. I also realized that I had never once eaten one of my own creations. The Delivery Boy was not the only one who had never before tasted a cupcake. I’d never had one, either.
And here was this beautiful, deadly slice of cake waiting all alone for me like a secret, special lover.
I found a fork and went behind the counter. I put my back to the shop door and I dug into the soft resilience of chocolate laced with rum and mocha, laced with a fatal beauty I’d never before experienced. Ecstasy indeed.
And then he was there. “I warned you,” he said.
I turned, gasping, the fork halfway to my mouth. I glowered at the bells who had refused again to announce his presence.
“Yes, you did,” I said. “Though I fail to see why.”
“Because I didn’t think you could handle that spell. Because so few people can.” There was a tightness about his lips, a fear I hadn’t seen before.
I smiled. “I can handle it, Delivery Boy. Can you?”
I extended a forkful of Death by Chocolate to him. He swallowed slowly, the tension easing from around his mouth. He sighed a soft, sweet sigh and leaned toward me, his sugar-daisy smile filling all my sight.
His kiss was just as sweet as I’d never imagined.
-End-
With thanks to Sia Furler