FFM 2023 11: The Last Dessert

No prompts used.

Challenge: The story must take place during a real-life holiday that is not in July and there must be an important food, meal or dish included.

Since Midsummer was recently (and Midsummer Eve is likely to be my only holiday this summer), I picked it for this story.

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You pretend you’re watching the bonfire, keeping guard so that it doesn’t get out of control. The adults all around you call you responsible and “such a good son”. You ignore the bullshit about how you would make “a good husband for any girl” and “a good father for any son”. You only smile when you are called respectable “just like your father”.

All of that makes you want to kick at the base of the bonfire and let it turn everything around you into a statistic for this year’s Midsummer. However, you have something much better (and less hazardous for your health), and that’s what you’re actually watching: the cake that your self-important piece of shit of an aunt brought as a gift, insisting on your father taking the first bite because “it’s perfect for him and deserves the spotlight”.

Well, you have made sure that it is indeed perfect for your father and deserving of the spotlight. And with so many pompous people flocking around it, the chances of you being pinned as the culprit are getting smaller by the hour.

You can hardly wait, so you stare at the cake through the top of the bonfire and make sure that the gift will not be wasted.

Hours later, the sun still visible in the sky, you hardly remember to breathe as you watch through the top of the bonfire as your father cuts into the cake. Your aunt is flaunting her “baking skills” — she totally did not commission a professional baker — as you watch the first bite and the polite nod. Then the second bite.

The spoon and plate fall down before the third bite. People flock around your father as you rise slowly, making sure to feign confusion. You make your way to your father, pushing through the crowd, and watch as he takes his last breath, perhaps partly choking on the cake.

People start panicking. Someone starts CPR. You just stare in disbelief, unable to believe that this is actually happening. You raise your eyes to your aunt, widening your eyes and slowly turning your expression into that of horrified confusion.

“It wasn’t me!” your aunt squeaks. “It wasn’t me!”

You remain rooted and stare at her until CPR is ended as useless and someone moves you away because “your father would not want you to see him like this”. Your disbelief needs no act to be visible.

You are locked into your room, but you keep watch through your window. An ambulance comes. A body bag is carried to it. You look like an innocent child who has just lost his only living parent when you lean your face and hands against the glass as the paramedics take your now dead father away.

You shake your head as you look at your aunt leave the party almost as soon as the ambulance is gone. You hear people wail and voice their pity you for such a tragedy and disgust for your aunt. You let them. This is exactly what you need.

You close the curtains, throw yourself onto your bed and hide under the blanket. Curled up into a ball, you grin into the pillow you’re hugging before taking a deep breath and texting your only confidant.

Me: Hey, do you have a moment? I really need to talk

LipstickYaoi: Yeah, sure, not like I have much to do when my roomies are out celebrating with their families

LipstickYaoi: What’s up?

Me: Something happened at my family’s Midsummer party

Me: I think my Dad’s dead?

LipstickYaoi: OoO

LipstickYaoi: WTF happened there?!

Me: My aunt brought some special cake, insisted that Dad takes the first bite ’cause spotlight and all. He did and he suddenly collapsed while eating the cake…

Me: I think someone already pronounced him dead on the spot when they stopped CPR since it wasn’t doing anything?

LipstickYaoi: Holy

LipstickYaoi: shit

Me: I was taken back to the house before the ambulance came, but the paramedics took someone away in a body bag. My aunt left very soon after

Me: I’m scared. Can you come pick me up?

LipstickYaoi: Yeah of course I can come

LipstickYaoi: You think your aunt might be trying to kill both you and your Dad?

Me: I don’t know

Me: I’m just scared

Me: I was just pulled away and I don’t know what’s going on and why this is happening

Me: I feel like I’m suffocating in here or something I don’t know

LipstickYaoi: Yeah, of course. It’s the place you invited me to, right?

Me: Yeah

LipstickYaoi: I’ll be there in 15

LipstickYaoi: Hang on, brother

Me: Thanks, I owe you one

You wait until you have five minutes left. Only then you get up, pick the lock of your door and sneak outside. There is pandemonium by the lake, people crying and shouting. You head to the road and see the familiar red beat up truck approach. It pulls over and once you have confirmed that the person behind the wheel is your confidant, you hop in.

“How’re you doing?” the guy you only know as LipstickYaoi asks.

You shake your head while buckling up. “As well as someone who’s father was just… murdered? can be doing, I guess.”

“Right,” LipstickYaoi murmurs, his tenor almost drowned by the growl of the engine. “Well, let’s get outta this shithole. Did the cops come yet?”

“I didn’t see any, so I guess not yet.”

“They’ll definitely want your testimony too.”

“Yeah… That’s why we shouldn’t go far. I don’t want to look like my aunt…”

LipstickYaoi hums and tunes in a radio host’s report on the Midsummer traffic. “What a Midsummer, huh?”

You give a laugh. “Yeah…” Once you hit the highway, you dare to grin openly. LipstickYaoi grins back.

You still have some ways to go before you’re in the clear, but you feel so free already. And soon…

…Soon you might very well be even freer, depending on what happens with the imminent investigation.