Cake
by Katlyn Minard
On my 33rd birthday, I couldn’t ask my parents for what I really wanted, which was a poison cake.
Specifically, a molten lava cake—the kind of dessert wealthy women always order at upscale chain restaurants and black-tie banquets. A palm-sized disc of dark, dense cocoa, encircled in a glossy white ramekin, laced with lethality. Death by chocolate.
I wanted to sink my fork into it and watch the coffee-black crumbs break away like bits of cursed earth. I wanted the lava to seep from the center and flood the ramekin like a little black lagoon. I wanted to lift the fork to my lips and let the deep espresso smell waft into my nostrils. Perhaps my parents would’ve asked me if I liked it, and as I chewed, I would’ve said “Mmm” — the same way I did at my dad’s doomed second wedding, 20 years ago, when I was a scrawny, sunburnt 13-year-old in a floppy flower-girl hat, tasting that chocolate wedding cake I’d fantasized about for months and then gagging when I discovered it was thick with liquor. Potent with potion. Illicit elixir.
I was just a kid back then, unaccustomed to bitterness. I had not yet seen a man pawn a wedding ring. Or spied on a woman as she spiked her morning coffee. Pretended not to smell the brandy on her breath. I had not yet watched a rock-solid marriage disintegrate into sand. Now everything’s different. Now I’m grown, and I know the truth—that bitterness is all this banquet has to offer.
In the end I asked for a carrot cake. The first bite I took—dry orange fluff smothered in cloying cream cheese frosting—I could barely choke down. So, I pretended, instead, that I was eating my lava cake. Letting the cocoa cling to the roof of my mouth. Holding the molten center on my tongue like sugar. Savoring the syrupy-slow drip down my throat. How fine it would feel to let that poison go to work. To say “Mmm,” and really mean it. To smile slyly at my parents and see them smile back—all of us in on the secret, all of us pretending we don’t smell the illicit elixir inside.
Specifically, a molten lava cake—the kind of dessert wealthy women always order at upscale chain restaurants and black-tie banquets. A palm-sized disc of dark, dense cocoa, encircled in a glossy white ramekin, laced with lethality. Death by chocolate.
I wanted to sink my fork into it and watch the coffee-black crumbs break away like bits of cursed earth. I wanted the lava to seep from the center and flood the ramekin like a little black lagoon. I wanted to lift the fork to my lips and let the deep espresso smell waft into my nostrils. Perhaps my parents would’ve asked me if I liked it, and as I chewed, I would’ve said “Mmm” — the same way I did at my dad’s doomed second wedding, 20 years ago, when I was a scrawny, sunburnt 13-year-old in a floppy flower-girl hat, tasting that chocolate wedding cake I’d fantasized about for months and then gagging when I discovered it was thick with liquor. Potent with potion. Illicit elixir.
I was just a kid back then, unaccustomed to bitterness. I had not yet seen a man pawn a wedding ring. Or spied on a woman as she spiked her morning coffee. Pretended not to smell the brandy on her breath. I had not yet watched a rock-solid marriage disintegrate into sand. Now everything’s different. Now I’m grown, and I know the truth—that bitterness is all this banquet has to offer.
In the end I asked for a carrot cake. The first bite I took—dry orange fluff smothered in cloying cream cheese frosting—I could barely choke down. So, I pretended, instead, that I was eating my lava cake. Letting the cocoa cling to the roof of my mouth. Holding the molten center on my tongue like sugar. Savoring the syrupy-slow drip down my throat. How fine it would feel to let that poison go to work. To say “Mmm,” and really mean it. To smile slyly at my parents and see them smile back—all of us in on the secret, all of us pretending we don’t smell the illicit elixir inside.
Katlyn Minard is a Pushcart Prize nominee whose fiction has appeared in Necessary Fiction, Ligeia Magazine, Lunch Ticket, Moon City Review, and Capulet Magazine, among others. She lives in Los Angeles. Visit her online at katlyncarsonminard.com.