By Denise Chick
Her cake died.
She could see that as she opened the oven. It deserved its fate. She had slammed her oven door on a screaming, seething mess, begging her not to be baked.
The cake was conceived as butter, sugar, flour, and eggs lying dormant in a bowl. She’d dipped her hands into the batter, melded, moulded, breathed into it the air every cake needs. She hadn’t intended to give it life. A hideous seething, uncompromising life. Rare but possible.
She baked it anyway. It swore vengeance on its maker and vengeance it achieved. She wouldn’t eat it. Now or ever.
Ha! Ha! This was great!
interesting, but cause and effect here are a bit confusing.
“She’d dipped her hands into the batter, melded, moulded, . . .”
No wonder the cake died. You don’t use hands to mix a cake; that’s for mixing bread dough. A cake has to be light and needs beating, not moulding, to give it air. With all that handling the cake was dead before it went into the oven.
Quite!
Molding. Adelaide’s right. Interesting premise, but execution didn’t work for me either.
Personification! Wonderful! What do our creations really think about us?
The cake worked for me as a great reflection of the character. I liked that though the focus was on the cake, it tells us a great deal about the cake-maker. I particularly liked the sense of contest (and vengeance) in the final paragraph. It made me think of Frankenstein.