Strangers in Baketown

“This tastes like… I can’t quite describe it,” said Margot, the competition head judge.

“Paradise perhaps?”

“No.”

“Apotheosis?”

“Not quite.”

“Perfection?”

“I would say a combination of cement and rotten eggs.”

The other contestants burst into manic laughter. No other participant had gotten that kind of feedback. Naturally, I ranked dead last, just like every year. Every. Single. Year. Next year was bound to be different, however. I would have the last laugh, whether they liked it or not.

Baketown earned its fame from one reason, and one reason only: pies. Some towns are famous for noteworthy historical events, like Salem and the witch trials. Others have interesting touristic attractions, like Niagara Falls. Not us. We bake pies. That’s all we do. Year after year, we get our fifteen minutes of fame from a compulsory pie baking contest. Compulsory, that’s right: every family must provide one volunteer to bake a pie. As the single father of a ten-year-old girl, I unfortunately have no choice but to volunteer myself.

Thankfully, it’s a small town. Our population barely reaches five hundred, making up roughly one hundred families. I moved to Baketown with my daughter when I was thirty-one years old for a new position as an engineer for the local windmill plant. Every year, I am made to step forward during the opening ceremonies and bake the foulest, most disgusting pie in history with ninety-nine other people in the room. Every year, I’m the laughingstock. Every year, my daughter cries on the way home.

“Why are they always making fun of you, dad?”

“Because they’re mean, sweetie.”

“But couldn’t you be good at it, for once? Maybe if you practiced really hard?”

As we walked along a narrow street of cobblestone through the quaint village, I knelt to her height and hugged her as tightly as I could. Her glistening eyes reminded me of her mother, and her arms had the comforting touch of an angel descended from the skies. I tossed her auburn curls to the side to dry her tears.

“Sally, it’s not because I’m not trying. The competition is rigged. This is a small town, they all know each other. The judges like roasting the new stranger in town.”

“We’ve been here for three years daddy! We’re not strangers.”

“To them, we always will be. That’s okay though, because we have each other. We’re a team, aren’t we?”

I held my hand forward, and she high-fived it back with little conviction.

“I wish something was rigged in our favour for once.”

“Trust me Sally. I wish it was that way too.”

As silly as the suggestion was, it planted an idea into my mind. For the following year, I worked on a new prototype of pie mold, one that had a radio-responsive spring built into the base. The competition always looked for the cheapest mold possible to maximize their revenue. I volunteered to offer a sponsorship of one hundred molds to the organizing committee, and they gladly accepted. On the day of the event, as we stood in line for the judging, I would action off the springs with my phone, except for mine, and watch the pies bounce off the table into their baker’s face.

For once, I had the upper hand. Everybody would be ridiculed, but me, and my daughter would laugh heartily by my side.

***

As my daughter and I entered the large warehouse where the competition took place, Margot bumped into me. Whether it was intentional or not, I could not tell, but she jumped on the opportunity to be her usual self.

“Arthur!” she said gleefully, malice in her eyes. “Ready to fail miserably for the fourth year in a row?”

Her dark blazer gave her a false look of power. She clearly took herself very seriously in her role, and I was frankly quite disappointed she could not bake herself, as it safeguarded her from the pie bounce.

“Of course, my dearest judge. I was born ready.”

“Is one ever born ready for failure?”

“Sometimes, people rise from failure in spectacular fashion.”

“How unfortunate it is that you’re not one of those people.”

A cackle escaped from her diabolical mouth, coated in red lipstick. An evil, terrifying, blood-freezing cackle worthy of the most stereotypical witch one could imagine. As she ran away, I went straight to my baking station, more ready than I ever was to see faces covered in coconut cream.

The competition was again very fierce. I barely managed to pull my pie out of the oven in time, and granted, the pie looked terrible. Non-participating family members sat in a set of bleachers at the far end of the warehouse, along with journalists from various baking publications. I glanced at Sally, and she winked at me, slightly warming my cold heart in the process.

The judges circulated. As they walked around, I entered the serial number of my mold into my phone application, excluding it from the list of springs to action off. As usual, Margot mocked my creation, but this time, I had been careful enough to select a workstation far away from the bleachers, so Sally wouldn’t hear it.

The judges finally stepped on the stage, and Margot approached the microphone.

“Another challenging competition it was this year,” she said. “You all produced wonderful pies. All, except for one.”

Laughter erupted left and right. Of course, this laughter was meant for me. That’s it. I had enough. It was time for me to unleash my fury. I swiped up the application on my phone and pressed the red button.

At first, I thought nothing happened. It took me five seconds to realize the only spring that had gone off was mine. My face was now completely coated in cream. There must have been a flaw in my code. The laughter died off. People seemed genuinely concerned for me. Only one hearty laugh could be heard, resonating through the warehouse: it was Sally’s.

“You’re so funny, daddy!” she yelled.

For once, she was laughing, not crying, and that’s all I needed. Somewhere, up above, her mother must have been laughing too.