Carl, the Biscuit
Day 22/100
There was only one biscuit left in the case. All morning, he’d watched his brothers and sisters be chosen before him. Carl was so small, so crispy at the edges, that even if the customer hadn’t explicitly asked for another, the baker was hesitant to offer him. She’d hover over him with the tongs. Carl would squeeze his eyes shut, ready to finally feel their embrace, but it never came.
“Goodbye, Carl!” his fellow biscuits cried, “We’ll see you again soon!”
But over time, the squeals Carl heard from his brethren started to sound less like delight and more like fear.
They were being sliced in half, slathered in butter, stuffed with scrambled eggs, and then smothered with foil and shoved into paper bags.
All that time in the pastry case, being looked over and dismissed, made Carl realize that maybe, just maybe, it was somehow a blessing to be unwanted.
A man walked in, peeked into the case, and pointed at Carl.
“Are you sure?” the baker asked.
The customer shrugged, “I like ‘em crunchy.”
Carl started to sweat. He had to think of a way out, to keep living. He deserved more in life than to be consumed, to be taken in, devoured, to nourish when he knew damn well he wasn’t nourishing. He was mostly made of butter and cheese. He was an absolute carb bomb. In fact, he told himself, I’d be doing this man a favor by refusing him the luxury of eating me.
The tongs came toward Carl, but he wiggled himself over the parchment paper to the other side of the tray. The baker tried again, but Carl moved back over to the other side before she could snag him.
“What in the world?” the baker groaned, forcing a smile at the customer. “I’m so sorry. It’s been such a long day.”
The customer’s stomach grumbled.
The baker bent over to look into the case while she maneuvered her steely claws in Carl’s direction. This was his last chance.
Carl hopped from the tray. The delight of flight filled him with glee as he coasted from the top shelf of the glass case, through the sweet puffs of powdered sugar and cocoa that filled the air, and finally bounced onto the crumb-ridden floor of the cafe.
Carl let out a sigh of relief. There was no way he’d be eaten now. There was no way he’d be toasted, slathered, suffocated, tortured into submission. He was a floor pastry now, and floor pastries weren’t eaten.
Floor pastries were…
The attendant groaned, throwing her arms to her sides and her chin up to the ceiling. “You have GOT to be kidding me.”
She bent over, grabbed Carl with her gloved hand, squeezing his crumbly sides. Carl hadn’t thought this through.
She squeezed harder, as if he were a stress ball.
“Stop,” he tried to get out. “Please.”
She pushed through his crumbling sides, packing him into a tiny ball of moist dough, and tossed him into the trash.
This was a prompt from Nina’s sesh at Flash Club tonight :) Thanks, Nina!
If you’re new here, this is my personal 100-day writing challenge, in which I roll three 100-sided dice to determine:
an object
a writing style
a rule to write by.
Today, I rolled: Nada. Flash club! Thanks, Nina!
