Eat It Too
First published in PASTEL Magazine, Issue One, 2017
She can’t help herself. Months and months have been leading up to this, endless days spent sighing and yawning through every boutique bakery in town. She’s done her waiting. And here it is: pink, white, well-decorated with tiny roses and tantalisingly triple-tiered. Her aching belly draws her closer to it.
She reaches out with both hands.
Her fingers slide over the icing like figure skaters, tracing the perfect layers of pink and white. She draws her hands to her lips, licking and chewing sticky remnants from beneath her fingernails. Cake has never tasted so delicious. It tastes better stolen.
Her hands return to the spoiled cake, digging beneath the surface now, down into the spongy, creamy innards. The cake crumbles and squirms between her fingers, brown-yellow pulp knotted with decadent white veins.
This is gonna get me in big trouble.
But she hasn’t noticed yet.
The cake is slowly tipping back and forth like an old oak just before felling. But with nobody else around to yell timber, she continues to carve the base of the cake down, fistful by fistful, bite by bite.
A familiar hand clenches her shoulder in a tight grip, but it’s too late. The cake comes plummeting down in an avalanche. Great chunks of it cover the girl’s dress and face. Even more cake is splattered over the man standing behind her. She peers up at a face masked in rich frosting. She can still see the scowl.
“What on bloody earth are you doing, Lilian?”
“Nothin’, Poppy. It fell on me.”
“I saw what you were doing. Why would you want to ruin your mumma’s cake?”
“I didn’t. I swear.”
“Don’t you dare lie to me, Lilian White.”
“I’m not. Promise.”
“Your mumma has been planning this for months. That cake was very expensive. Do you understand that? It was very wrong of you to eat it before anyone else. It was very wrong indeed of you, girl.”
Lily looks around and sees the cake fiasco has earned her the attention of everyone in the room. The fancy dresses and expensive suits glare down at her. The longer she gazes back, the guiltier she feels. She does not make direct eye contact with any of them, especially not her mumma. It’s hard enough meeting the eyes of her poppy. She tries to hold back tears, but she can feel they’re about to erupt.
She dodges Poppy, skirting the cascading mess of cake and runs from the crowd, down the long aisle, past the altar and out through the church doors. She doesn’t stop running until she’s outside the bounds of the gravel parking lot, down where the grassy fields turn to bushland. A low barbed-wire fence stands between her and the scattered lines of gum trees. She ducks under the serrated silver tangles, glittering in the noon sun.
A tooth of wire snags at her sleeve, taking with it a morsel of fabric and skin. Not enough for anyone to notice if they came looking. But it hurts.
She flinches at the biting metal, before gunning it through the trees, down the sloping shoulder of bush to who-knows-where. A place to hide is all she thinks about, a quiet escape.
She runs her hands over the thick tree trunks as she goes. Her fingers make a dull slapping noise on the wood as she cups them together, swinging her arms. The little grooves carved into the bark by insects tickle her fingertips in the rush of movement. Her momentum clips dead leaves from branches, crunching beneath her stomping feet.
She notices a river start to rise as she runs further downhill, snaking her way through tangled vines, hurdling over fallen branches. The water widens out as she gets closer. It is brown and murky, still as polished stone. It looks cold.
She smells it before she sees it.
Blood mixed with something. Mould maybe, or rot, something unpleasant shooting up into her nostrils. Lily scans the brush at her feet, searching for the source of the smell. There are splotches of red scattered over the brown and grey carpet of leaves. Tiny, insignificant marks she wouldn’t notice if it weren’t for that stench. She edges closer to the water.
It’s not the river that smells. She stands on its bank, breathing in the wet odours of mud, drowned leaves, driftwood and a tinge of distant sea salt. That’s not it.
Moving further down the bank, the red marks over the dead leaves and mud seem to clump closer together, growing wider and thicker. She comes across a gnarled, uprooted tree, arching into the mouth of the river.
Half-crawling, half-peaking over it, she sees a face.
It is blue. Not Cookie Monster blue, but blue enough. Although its mouth is gaping wide and black as if it does belong to Cookie Monster. It’s definitely not smiling. The man.
How could it be smiling?
She circles around the huge fallen tree to get a better look, staring down at the body lying on the riverbank. It’s arms and limbs and torso are tangled all over in a strange silver wire. Kind of like the barbed wire from the fence, but not at the same time. It looks like it fought a giant slinky and came off second best.
The worst part is it’s not complete. There are bits and pieces of the body scattered all over the riverbank. Chunks. Clumps. Hunks of person. It looks like when Lily sometimes leaves red play-dough in torn-up pieces on the dining room table. Lily isn’t as grossed out about the mangled body as she thought she might be. She thinks she should be.
She bends down to the body, kneeling on the muddy bank.
Holds a finger out.
Touches.
The flesh is cold and wet like a forgotten bowl of spaghetti-Os. Lily’s tongue flicks between her lips before she can think twice about it. The fresh memory of the stolen cake hovers over her taste buds, slides to the back of her throat, swallowed, digested in a hurry and is heard from no more. She’s surprised how hungry she still is.
Her finger hasn’t left the body. It slides down the curve of his chest, tracing over the silver wire and blood. She is careful not to cut herself.
She pulls her finger away from it. A dirty red. She brings the pointer closer to her face. Studies it closely. Smells the cool syrupy gore covering her finger. Holds it to her mouth. Letting it sit there, nestled between her upper and bottom lips. Grazing her teeth.
Her tongue slithers from her mouth.
***
It’s late afternoon by the time the little girl returns to the churchyard. The crowd of frantic wedding-goers sway and sigh with relief when they notice her approach.
Her grandfather hurries up to her, goes to hug her but thinks better of it. He kneels down, so their eye-lines are in sync.
“Where did you run off to? We were all worried sick about you.”
She smiles at him.
“What were you doing, Lilian?”
“I was exploring the bush.”
“The bush? That’s very dangerous. You should never run off alone like that.”
“I know.”
He considers her for a moment, then leans in and whispers in her ear, “Well, did you find anything interesting?”
She shakes her head, her arms crossed behind her back.
“Don’t you dare lie to me, Lilian White.”
“I’m not. Promise.”
