Short Stack

Unhealthy Coping Mechanism

It started with a red velvet cake.

Harriet whisked the batter as if it had been the one caught downing shots of tequila on a so-called business trip instead of her husband. The remains of eggs broken with more force than necessary lay in a blood-speckled heap in the trash. Oh well, she thought as she sent droplets of batter flying. It wasn't as if Walter would notice a little extra crimson in his cake.

The heat of her anger faded as that of the oven rose.

"I prefer vanilla," Walter said after a nearly silent dinner, sliding his slice to their son. Sam shoveled the rejected dessert into his mouth, icing dripping from his lips in thick globs.

"I know," Harriet said as she carved herself a crimson slice.

###

When Walter thought it was acceptable to work late on Sam's birthday, Harriet's thoughts festered like chocolate left congealing in nasty clumps at the bottom of a pot. Her mascara melted into the tempering chocolate until her sobs faded into sniffles.

"Sorry it's a bit messy," she said as she served the birthday boy. The lava cake's molten center leaked from a fissure in its side, and the sugar-dusted peak sagged into a crater.

Sam didn't care a lick if his dessert looked ready to implode. By the time he was done with it, not even a speck of sauce remained on his plate. "Thanks, Mom," he said after a burp so huge it made the birthday balloons tremble.

She nodded, barely listening as he debated which present to open first. As she stared at her husband's empty chair, her chocolate-stained fingers closed into a fist.

###

It became a habit for Harriet to bake whenever she got upset. Walter came home at 2 AM reeking of apathy and booze? Carrot cake. Sam threw up all over himself at school and again in the car? Lemon chiffon cake. She stopped fitting into her favorite dress, the hibiscus-print one she'd been wearing when she'd met Walter at a luau? Pineapple upside-down cake.

Whenever Walter quirked a questioning eyebrow at the flour dusting her chest or the scent of cake batter clinging to her, excuses flowed from her lips as smoothly as buttercream. "I had to use the carrots before they went bad." "Janet's kid caught whatever Sam had, so I thought she could use a pick me up." "It's Friday. Live a little!"

Those excuses may have satisfied Walter, but Sam was not so easily dismissed.

"Hey Mom, can we go to the park?"

"Not now, honey," Harriet said, eyes glued to the oven's timer.

"But I'm boreeeed," Sam whined.

Harriet extracted the cake from the oven and stabbed it with a toothpick that came out perfectly clean. "I need to wait for this to cool," she said, "which gives me just long enough to get the icing ready."

"Another cake?" Sam's stomach let out a low, rumbling gurgle. "Bleh!"

There once was a time when Harriet would have chuckled to see him repulsed by a dessert. Now, her lips barely curled into a smile. "I'll let you lick the bowl if you help."

He stood on his tiptoes to examine the ingredients she'd lined up. "What flavor?"

"Strawberry."

Sam narrowed his eyes. "Only if I get to decorate the cake too."

Sam's boredom faded into nothing as he mixed pureed strawberries with ingredients that were far less good for him. By the time he finished scattering an ungodly array of sprinkles over the cake, his hand was still twitching in a whisking motion.

###

Walter arrived home from his latest trip to half a dozen increasingly concerned calls on the answering machine and enough baked goods to make his teeth ache. "Mrs. Porter called me at work."

"That's nice, dear," Harriet said. Sugar dusted her cheeks like makeup as she robotically cracked eggs with whisk-marked hands. Sam stood beside her, measuring flour with silent concentration.

"She said he hasn't shown up to class all week," Walter said, flicking his thumb at Sam. "People were starting to wonder if something might've happened to you two."

"That would explain the calls," Harriet said with a huff. "They made me burn the angel food cake."

It was as if she'd told him she'd traded their house for a bag of flour. "Who cares? In case you've forgotten, there's more to life than this damn kitchen. It would do you good to leave it every once in a while."

Her eyes grew as dark as pure cacao. "No."

"I'm not paying for a single dollop of whipped cream from now on, you hear me? This has to stop."

But she and Sam heard nothing over the sound of their whisking.

###

As December wore on, Harriet's pantry became as sparse as Charlie Brown's Christmas tree.

Something familiar yet strange burned in her veins as she stared at the barren shelves. She didn't recognize it until she felt something warm trickling from her mouth. Blood. She hadn't even realized she'd been chewing her lip, desperate to release her pent up anger.

"What are we gonna bake today?" Sam asked.

Harriet finally located the lone sack of flour, only to find it almost as empty as her patience. "I don't know, honey," she said softly. Why were her eyes burning? She hadn't cried in months, yet here she was, damp cheeked and shaking.

"But," Sam said, his voice catching with a hiccup, "we have to bake."

"I know!" The words snapped out of her like a bar of dark chocolate splitting in half. "I know."

She had just enough ingredients for one last flourless chocolate cake, bitter and dark like the last shovelful of dirt tossed over a grave.

Unless she found a way to get more.

"I'm going to see if your father will help us," Harriet muttered. She grabbed the long, serrated knife she used to chop chocolate. "This will be our secret ingredient, okay?"

Word Count: 990

This was originally published in The Needle Drops... Volume 1 in October 2021. I did a super fun Q&A with them which I've left a link to in an in-line comment.

Believe it or not, this story started out as a submission to a cake-themed horror anthology. As many of you know, I absolutely love writing about food, so I figured indulging in that would be a great way to get out of the creative slump I'd been in since the start of the pandemic. Considering I loved this idea so much I turned it into a 50K word story (which you can read on my profile), it's safe to say that worked!

Many thanks to @TLBodine for the amazing guide to writing horror! Without those wonderful tips, this story would have been half-baked at best.