HONORABLE MENTION, WINTER 2022
The Screw Turn Flash Fiction Competition
BY HALEY KENNEDY
She walked in barefoot. Her tiny toes and fingers caked in mud. Before I could say anything, before I could ask “Where’s your mother?” or “My god, are you ok?” she held out her hands toward me and said “soap?”
I’d been making a cake. Victoria sponge, blackberry-basil compote, and almond meringue. Too clever a cake for my customers, but it made the shop smell amazing. My ex-husband, in all his high-end affectation, would have loved to serve such a cake.
The muddy girl arrived as I was piping the lilies. Sugar flowers for the anniversary of my separation. I think it’s brutally unfair that we can’t eat away our mourning, but I choose to coat my despair in frosting.
I led the girl to the dish sink. We washed our hands together, her on my step stool. She couldn’t have been more than five, wearing an adult’s Unity t-shirt and running shorts as if dressed from a lost and found.
“You make cakes,” she said.
“I do. Are you here to order a cake?”
She shook her head. “I’m leaving Belmin.”
“Do you live in Belmin?”
“I don’t like Belmin.”
I asked her name, but she just looked at her feet and said, “muddy.”
The town of Belmin, renamed for the company that jump-started its economy, is 13 miles from my bakery doorstep. The Belmin Company made a name for itself designing animatronics for theme parks. They famously unveiled their line of dolphins by allowing visitors to feed them. Not one person recognized they were tossing trout to a machine. I’m still not sure where the trout went.
After acquiring ComfortPet, a purveyor of online emotional support “animals,” Belmin took over 700 acres of our local forest to build its campus. The compound fence is so high, you might think it a prison. But the front gates suggest a theme park with a 20-foot scene of the evolution of man, culminating in a cubic, winking robot.
I deliver to them most weekends. I am the only baker who works every day. Cakes with Gundams, with videogame consoles, with pulpy sci-fi scenes. Palatable nerd eccentricities erected in delicate fondant. They are always celebrating themselves.
We finished cleaning up. Muddy was unscratched, but her pupils were unusually dilated. Huge saucers, like a Disney princess, despite the harsh fluorescent lights. She watched me without fear.
“What kind of cakes?” she asked.
“Any kind you can imagine.”
“Birthday cakes?”
I phoned the police. We waited for 30 minutes before an officer arrived.
“Sorry for the delay,” she said. “Bit of a mess down on Belmin campus. Had to send a search party into the woods.”
“Search party?”
“Do you not play the news in here?” The officer looked around for a TV I knew she wouldn’t find. “An employee ran off with sensitive materials,” she explained. I imagined a man in a labcoat herding robotic sheep through the woods. “Anyway, I’m going to need your name and the name of this establishment.”
“Nadine Nostrat. The bakery.”
“Just the bakery?”
“Just The Bakery.”
At first, it had been called Caroline’s. Sam and I had found the name in a baby book. We were supposed to be buying a stand mixer, but couldn’t resist glimpsing our future in the Gerber aisle.
Sam stenciled the name above the door. He had completed “Carol” when I started bleeding on the floor in front of the oven. For a few days, the bakery was named “Carol.” Until he found a free moment away from me, his bedridden wife, to repaint.
The Bakery’s second name was Ariana’s, after Caroline’s would-be sister. This time, the name came from my grandmother. Somehow, a name with roots felt safer. I made it three months further along, but in the end, I could not carry her. I bled in the same spot, in front of the oven, as I pulled out the pink sheets for a cake reveal. So now, for five years, the bakery has remained “The Bakery.”
The officer’s radio sounded. “Suspect in the Belmin theft has been reported six blocks north of 94th headed toward the underpass.”
“Shit,” she said.
“That’s right near here,” I said.
She looked at me as if I were condescending. “This is a really big deal.”
“I can look after her,” I gestured toward Muddy.
The officer looked between us. I doubt she was supposed to leave, but she dropped the forms and was out the door. “I’ll be back as soon as this is handled.”
My fridge was full in preparation for a wedding. I pulled out some oranges, mint, and cream. As I removed each item, Muddy called out its name as though it were a test. I pulled out an unlabeled jar and held it up to her. She became completely still, observing the container.
“Smell it,” I said. She stuck her nose near the top.
“Chocolate!”
“Well, that’s an excellent nose you have there.”
I melted the chocolate on low until it was thick like clay, the beginnings of our mud cake.
She sat on the edge of the steel island, her bare feet hanging above the ground. “Do you remember who brought you here?” I asked.
“Doctor C. said you were nice. He said you can make birthday cake.”
“Is it your birthday?”
Muddy nodded.
“How old are you?”
Muddy lifted her hand, pointing a single finger toward the ceiling.
“Only one? Well, that can’t be right. Do you remember your last birthday?”
Muddy shook her head. “I’ve never had a birthday cake.”
She watched me, blinking at slow precise intervals, her dangling feet too still for a child. We sat in silence for a long while, and then I realized that she was waiting for my response. If I had not spoken, she might have waited forever.
“Would you like to help me bake?”
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Haley Kennedy lives in northern California. In 2020, she completed an MSc in Linguistics. In 2021 MAYDAY Magazine published her first short story, “Shapeless.”
