Third place short story: Piece of cake

“Jack, are you ready?”

“I think so,” replied the thirty-something year old, eyes focused on the road ahead.

“Be cool. You’ve got this. Everything’s gonna go as planned.”

“Mhmm.”

“Jack? Are you listening? Are you nervous, buddy?”

“No, no, I’m fine.”

“You’re not doubting yourself, right? You remember why you’re doing this?”

“Yes, of course, I’ll get it done, don’t worry.” The truth was, Jack had forgotten why he did any of what he did anymore, but he trusted that his orders came from a good place.

He heard the crunch of gravel beneath his car tires and slowed to a halt. He grabbed the cake from the backseat, took his key out of the ignition, and stepped out onto the unfinished driveway. “I’ll be back soon.” He shut the car door behind him.

With every step he took towards the door, he grew nervous, agitated; his neck twitched, and his forehead sweat, but his hands, his hands were very steady, gripping the cake firmly.

Knock. Knock.

The door flung open haphazardly. Before him stood a woman roughly his age, with defined crow’s feet, stains covering her top, and a dishcloth slung over her shoulder. She smelled of feces and cheap perfume but had the audacity to smile at him. He welcomed himself in, ignoring the gibberish she spoke at him. Jack spotted a slender woman seated at the dining table, glaring at him while licking her teeth in his direction. She was a canopy of black clothing, with a thick matching coat of eye shadow covering her lids. Her arms were crossed; signalling that was unapproachable, perhaps dangerous.

He had been warned against paying too much attention to anyone, as it might throw him off. He was to simply walk in and serve the cake. He focused his attention elsewhere, as he sluggishly dragged himself over to the dining table. The home was hardly one at all; vile, filthy, a mountain of unwashed dishes, with mismatched decorations hanging from the walls. Jack reached the dining table, with little notice toward the woman charging at him from the hallway to his left. She was screaming loudly, high-pitched and uncontrolled. He looked forward again but saw from his side eye that she had stopped, and was now engaged in a conversation with the woman who opened the door. They both looked concernedly at Jack.

All the plates were laid out with forks to the right of each. He placed the cake down and uncovered it. All three women sat down, joined by a younger man than Jack. He was small, incredibly small for a man, and sat in a thinner, higher chair than the rest. The small man sat at the head of the table. Jack assumed he was important, and looked ahead again at the cake, refusing to initiate eye contact.

The woman with the crow’s feet penetrated the icing of the cake with a large steel knife and served the small man first, whose eyes Jack felt piercing into his side. Jack sat across from the woman in black who took small bites of the slice she was served, and next to the shorter woman who stuffed large chunks into her mouth.

He turned his attention away from her when he heard a slab of cake land on the plate before him. He picked up his fork and began to play with the icing, piercing in and out of it. He watched the women and the small man devour their cake. And he waited.

---

“Alright Walken what do we have here?” Stanford asked.

“Well, homicide, from the looks of it. Four victims,” his partner responded.

Both officers walked toward three of the victims, each slouched over a dining table. There was a flurry of activity from the forensics team around them, gathering evidence and sweeping the crime scene for any clues. Their assistant director was busy interviewing the neighbour who found them.

“Isn’t there someone missing from this picture?”

“Hell yeah, our main suspect, this, er, what’s his name again…?” Walken flipped through the file he held. “Ahh, Jack Diemer, thirty-eight, father of three, married to none other than Laura Diemer,” he said, pointing to the woman whose face was side planted in some cake.

“No, no, I mean, you said four victims, I see three,”

“Oh yeah, uh there was a small infant boy too, they already covered his body. It was gruesome, let me tell ya that much.”

“Jesus Christ, what kind of sick fuck kills his family like this? His children? His wife?” Stanford replied, in awe.

“I couldn’t tell ya.”

The assistant director walked toward the two officers and wiped his brow.

“This sure is something, boys.”

“What did you get from the neighbour?” asked Walken.

“Well, she said her and Mrs. Diemer were close, and that she’d been worried about her husband these past few months. Said he’d been hearing voices.”

“Voices, huh?” Stanford repeated.

“Yeah, voices.”

The three men stared at the gruesome scene before them. In all their years of facing blood and gore, the aftermath of rage and fear, and the multiple downfalls of seemingly normal individuals, there was something far more chilling about this scene than any of their previous cases.

“Well,” Stanford spoke, breaking the silence, “I suppose when you’re that far gone, something like this has got to be a piece of cake.”