literature

The Cookie Orphan

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There once lived a man of middle age who wished, more than anything, to be a doctor. However, his true talent lied in baking sweets, so his dream was forever crushed, like the brittle pieces of his overdone tarts. Reluctantly, he opened a sweets shop downtown and in spite of himself became very engrossed in his work. Baking was now his passion. Nothing pleasured him more than the smiling faces of satisfied clientele as they purchased their cakes and cookies. Soon, confection placed number one in his list of priorities, and he rarely thought back to his old dream of medicine. It was never to be...

But underneath the pleasant guise of baking and distributing goodies, the baker was very, very lonely. He wasn’t very old, but certainly felt all the older living all by himself. His domestic work made it difficult for women to approach him, and his docile personality made him uncomfortable around the opposite sex. No, what he really wanted, he believed, was someone to look after, and care for. It was a nagging part of his old ambition, to aid the needy...

The lonely baker decided to buy a pet. He carefully chose himself a beautiful, elegant dog, with rusty red hair that silkily gleamed in the light. The shelter had warned the baker that the creature was still a little bit wild, and it enjoyed gobbling anything edible in its way, so to take caution. The baker acknowledged this and often fed his new dog, Gwen, several little tidbits from his leftover provisions  at the end of the baking day.

However, even life with Gwen, while definitely not solitary anymore, was lacking something crucial. The poor old baker thought to himself for many a fortnight until he finally realized: he wanted a son to look after.

Now many sharp-eyed readers must have noticed my mentioning the baker’s inability to converse with woman to strike up a friendship. Therefore, he knew his only option was to adopt. But the baker didn’t want just any sort of son they breed at the orphanage. He wanted a son who felt distinctly like himself, who was as much a part of him as his mustache and stubble. But there was no way he would ever take a wife, either. He had no choice but to adopt whatever sappy, weepy, moody sort of boys sprawled across the poorhouses for the orphaned. With a sigh, he wrapped himself in a wooly plaid scarf and set out.

Hour after hour after impossibly long hour passed. Gwen, who was left home, was famished unlike anything she’d ever experienced before. Her little slim tummy was shriveled up inside her, desperately awaiting her master to return and bestow some scraps from the sweetbreads and the wedding cakes upon her. She scratched at the door, futilely attempting to call back her owner and sole companion.

Meanwhile, the poor baker wasn’t having any luck. Most orphanages were closed due to a sudden snowstorm, and the ones that remained stubbornly open had poor prospects. Nothing but a long line of ruddy, scrawny little whiners stretched as far as the baker’s tired old eyes would see. He sighed time after time, noting the impossibility of finding a son he could truly love in such slums.

However, upon the chiming of the eleventh hour, the baker, trudging on his way home through the thick layers of dense snow, noticed a dilapidated old building he hadn’t seen before. Now I couldn’t tell you precisely why he went inside, as I’m sure that not even he himself entirely knew. But the building must have had some exceptional character, inside or out, because the baker willingly entered, with slightly higher prospects for such an unnoticeable cottage.

Inside, the place was drafty and leaky and awful in nearly every way a human could think of designing the country’s most terrible orphanage, but despite the leaks and little piles of snow in the corners of the rustic room, the children within glowed with a beaming, healthy glow, unlike anything the baker had seen within the children he’d paid visits to preceding these particular ones. Each were engaged in play, which, to the bemused, but startled, baker’s aged eyes, seemed wildly imaginative and intellectually constructive. No playthings had they, but their cunning little minds had put their crutches and walking sticks to excellent use. There certainly were a good deal of cripples in this orphanage, but they seemed the healthiest of all.

At last, from the back door, a tall figure appeared and caught sight of the motionless baker in the doorway. It was a woman, responsible, experienced, young, and very pretty. Many twice her age knew less of the world than she’d discovered in her observant years. In a swift, businesslike manner, she tucked her long chestnut hair behind her ears, running down her back, and heavily scrutinized the baker, before asking politely,

“Are you here to adopt or to drop off?”

The baker became even more awestruck, is that seemed possible. “D-drop off? Who would do such a thing to their own blood?”

“You’d be astonished to hear. But then again, this establishment humbly considers itself the finest. You must have taken note...?” She gestured to the youths romping about as she spoke. The baker could only nod in agreement.

“Ah...yes...I-I’m here to peruse what children you’ve got to offer. I’ve been to many institutions this evening and was beginning to lose hope when I came across this place...”

“Ah, indeed. We get that sort of comment a lot. People only seem to notice us once every other option is exhausted. We don’t view it as such a bad thing, quite the opposite, in fact. We find the most particular customers will then find our doors, and the more particular a patron is, the better parent they shall be.”

The baker froze upon hearing the word “parent”. Soon, he knew, very soon, the title would apply to him. The thought unsettled him. Was he ready for such responsibility, and to be regarded as one of the best by this particular orphanage? The chilling, heavy  atmosphere nearly caused him to lose his balance. When the woman offered him a hand to help him up and tour him about the premises, he very nearly fainted. Suddenly everything seemed so imposing.You are now to be a guardian of the lad of your choosing. Do not bungle it up.

“But I will!” He cried aloud. “I will and I...”

The woman stared at him in confusion, and maybe even pity, but said nothing. She motioned for him to follow and he very nearly did. But, oh, the sight that met his eyes!

It was a boy, the smallest of the lot, glowing with an inner light, just like the rest of the children. He wasn’t particularly remarkable in any way excepting his obvious frailty, coupled with the large walking stick propped under his arm. He was blond and green-eyed, utterly adorable, and infinitely innocent.

It couldn’t be...

The child resembled the baker himself at that age, exactly.

Without a second though, the poor terrified baker was out the door into the snow. He never looked back once. Not even when the proprietor called out to him in a highly concerned manner. He ran and ran and didn’t cease until he was back inside his bakery and his house, Gwen running up to his side, starving and unaware of the horror he’d experienced.

That night, the sleepless baker had only one thought in his head for the entire night.
The woman...she was so lovely...how could she be tied to such an obviously accursed place? And how, oh, how am I to find a son now?

When the baker woke up in the morning from a troubled sleep, he knew exactly what to do. Reaching deep inside himself, into the dream he buried when he became a baker, he strained to remember every aspect of the human anatomy, and then...he carefully rolled it out into dough.

All day he worked, Gwen eagerly awaiting the scraps as the old baker pounded dough into replicas of bones, kneading flesh over these structures after they’d baked, creating limbs, fingers, and toes...

Now all that was left was the face. The baker contemplated for the longest time before deciding on the face of the memorable little boy at the frightening orphanage. With extreme care, the baker strived to recreate that alluring, almost angelic face. When he was done, he coated the hair with a hardening icing tinted a flaming orange, and dripped some blue onto the eyes. Even before he had assembled the entire doll out of gingerbread, the hardworking old baker could have sworn he saw the eyes gleam at him.

His suspicions were unfounded, however. For hours, the gingerbread boy baked slowly in the oven with no result. The baker was afraid that the cookie would crumble in on itself at any time now if the cookie didn’t finish baking soon enough. When Gwen ran up to the baker and licked his hand assuredly, the baker decided enough was enough and sat in his favorite chair to relax.

He was just dozing off when he heard a knock at what he though had been the door, but no one was on the other side when he answered it. Curious, certainly. Just when he;d settled down again, the knock sounded across the room again. Again the doorstep had no visitor. The baker was becoming very cautious about late night visits that had no visitor, and his mind began to turn back to the orphanage, imagining the most horridly terrifying things...

The knocking came again, this time one knock after another, and so on. It seemed very desperate and frantic. The baker slumped in his chair, wary of the door and the orphanage...

Then...he heard it.

A little boy’s voice, crying out:

“Let me out of here! I’m baking! I’m burning up! Where’s the temperature control on this thing???”

What’s more...that voice...had came from THE OVEN.

In a flash, the baker was out of his chair and in his kitchen, thrusting open the oven door. Almost immediately, a little dark-skinned boy with blazing ginger hair and glistening blue eyes leaped out, fanning his overheated bottom.

“Whew! Thanks, Daddy! That oven was HOT! How do all your tarts and pies stand laying in there for so long? Yow!”

The baker simply stood in total shock, staring at this...this...SON.

It was astounding. With a remarkably suppressed ambition, this man, with absolutely nary a chance in medical industry, but all the skills of a boulanger, had created life out of confection...

This...this was too good to be true.

But no, the animated little boy bouncing in front of him was all too real. “Hello? Daddy? You awake? I wanna play, let’s go play, I wanna play outside, outside in the snow!”

How had he done it?

Whatever the reason, over the months that followed, the baker was no longer lonely in any sort of way. His oven-made son became known as Dylis-Aled, or “genuine offspring”, if I may translate the Welsh. They referred to him as Aled for short. Perhaps it was the boy’s name, but that tired old baker must have desperately grasped onto the belief that his son was his own by blood. In any case, Aled and he played endlessly in the sun day in and day out, laughing and frolicking in a most reckless abandon. It was plain to see that the two loved each other very much and were indescribably pleased to be a family together. The old baker, reaching the end of his years, yet still harboring energy thanks to his youthful companion, wished for this peaceful sort of life until his time came.

He was about to realize how cold and terrifying humanity can be.

One night, just as he had tucked little Aled into bed, the baker heard a firm knocking at the door. It was very persistent, and though he tried to ignore it, he rose from his seat and opened the door.

The late-night caller was that beautiful woman from that eerie orphanage. She was drenched from the rain, her hair splayed in soaked tendrils in all directions, her plain clothes muddy and soggy. She seemed not to mind, or even notice, and she did not enter the house.

“I have come to collect your son.” Is all she said, in a very businesslike manner.

The baker was appalled. “Now, wait just a minute, madam! My son is my son and he shall always ONLY be my son! Don’t I get a say in this?”

“You had a say in this upon your first visit to our orphanage.” The woman remarked, and let herself in, now that it was the last thing the baker wanted to happen. She turned to him and, seeing the confusion on his face, continued, “We would have taken such good care of you...”

“How? Why? WHAT IN HEAVEN’S NAME IS ALL THIS ABOUT?”

“You should know very well, Mister Trystan Drust.”

“No...how did you come across my--”

“Daddy...”

The tormented baker turned around suddenly to find his son, fully clothed instead of in his pajamas, standing right behind him. Aled looked only at the woman, not at his father, with a glassy, lidded stare.

“You know what you have to do, Mister Drust. Or should I say, Trystan?”

“I...I...” There was no possible way out of this for the poor old baker. He would have to lose his son one way or another. At the very least, if he gave up now without a fight, his son would live in a wonderful place, just like he did...

But...

“But it is raining out there! You cannot possibly leave now!”

“We have, to, I’m afraid. Your son is not rightfully yours, though you might have made him, his life coming into your hands was entirely inconsequential. And what the bloody rain have to do with anything, anyway?”

“Take a step outside with him, if you like, but be very careful.”

The head of the orphanage gave the baker a long, hard glare, before deciding she would attempt to do what he said. Slowly, she pulled Aled out into the doorway, then out onto the porch, and finally, though the poor boy was struggling to get free, muttering pitiful phrases such as “Help me, Father”, and “Please...don’t let her do this”...

The pair stepped right into the stormy outside world.

It happened slowly, and the baker, upset with himself for allowing, nay, causing this to happen, forced himself to watch. Little by little, the “flesh” upon his beloved son Aled’s body began to disintegrate, little by little, filling up and soaking itself with the rainwater falling from above. His “bones” protruded, only to shift and warp under the wetness themselves. But then, a very curious thing began to happen. Even I, the chronicler myself, cannot understand this occurrence wholly.

The glaze on his “hair” began to run from the sleet, but gradually, it took on a new shade. Within a few moments, Aled’s distinctive ginger hair had turned to blond. As if by instinct, Aled opened his teary eyes and looked to the stormy heavens. Just like his hair had, his eyes changed to a deep green.

It was the boy from the orphanage.

It had come to save both the baker and his confectionary son from grief.

It was the young Trystan.

One more look of redemption passed between the two, and Aled slowly began to crumble, despite the cruel orphanage director’s orders to stay intact.

“Stop this...this MELTING, this...this...CRUMBLING right this instant! Do you hear me??”

“Father...”

“I’m sorry, Son.”

And then, in a flash, sweet, pure Aled was no more, replaced by the image of his father’s haunted figure of yore...and then the two Trystans, past and present, crumbled, like a gigantic cookie made of gingerbread.

Afterward, the idyllic orphanage the cruel mistress had run was promptly shut down. The poor woman sent herself to the madhouse obsessing over the missing ghost of young Trystan Drust. I could not exactly explain just how he could have gotten there and stayed, while the present Mister Drust was such a prominent baker. That remains both a mystery, and a secret between the three parties involved, all of which are mad or dead, perhaps both by now.

The night Aled had lost himself to his father’s child form, and his father had lost his own son, their loyal dog Gwen, who had been patiently slumbering all this time, stole down to the den, saw the door ajar, and trotted outside to eat up the cookie carcasses.
I couldn't tell you what gave me this damn idea...and I know, the whole "ghost of the guy" thing is kinda vague and weird...if I feel like it, I'll fix it up a bit, I guess...but right now, I just wanna submit it.

Hope you enjoy! It's my grim (not to be confused with the Brothers Grimm) retelling of the classic fairytale "The Gingerbread Man." I think, unlike my "Scarlet"/Little Red Riding Hood story, this one has a definitive setting: Victorian Wales. Therefore, all the names are Welsh. I took special care in named all the characters specially, except the woman, whom I chose to keep a nameless identity to make things harder on me to type cause her to seem scarier and inhuman.

Story © me...now what am I supposed to write??
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SiyanieBraginski's avatar
That was awesome! But sad... You're REALLY good... Don't. Stop. Writing!

Btw, this is Merina. I forgot to tell you... Sorry. X3