Mystery of the Ugly Baker

*Title created by Reedsy Title Generator*

There are three things everyone in the town of Piecrust knows:

1. Don't ask Madge about her third husband. (It's a long story)
2. The cat at the post office is a reincarnated mailman named Greg.
3. Lester Crumb is the ugliest baker who ever lived—and possibly, the most cursed.

Now, it's not polite to call a person ugly, which is why everyone in Piecrust just called him "That Poor Man," or when they were feeling generous, "Lester." But he was ugly. The kind of ugly that made onions cry. His face looked like it lost a bar fight with a sack of doorknobs and then sued the sack of doorknobs for emotional distress.

But Lester could bake. Sweet merciful pastry gods, could he bake. His eclairs were borderline erotic. His danishes could broker peace treaties. And his sourdough? If you left it alone in a room with a nun, there was a chance she'd marry it.

Still, no one visited Lester's bakery. Not anymore. Not since the... incidents.

The first incident happened during the Piecrust Pumpkin Festival two years ago. Lester entered the pie contest with his now-infamous Spiced Pumpkin Persuasion Pie, a recipe so deliciously aromatic that it triggered a small riot among the judging panel. Three of them are still in therapy. One became a monk.

The pie won. Obviously. But the very next morning, Judge Millicent Burble's eyes melted. Just... melted. Right out of her face as though she'd watched too much reality TV and her soul gave up.

Doctors couldn't explain it. Millicent herself said she had no regrets. "Best damn pie I ever ate," she whispered before relocating to a cave in Wyoming.

After that came the scone incident, the cream puff collapse, and the very unfortunate Death by Sticky Bun, which was ruled both accidental and erotically charged.

Lester stopped baking for others.

He now lived alone with his parrot, a foul-mouthed macaw named Señor Buttwings who may have been possessed by the spirit of a 17th-century Spanish libertine.

“You smell of failure and nutmeg!" Señor Buttwings screeched, pausing his elaborate courtship dance around the stand mixer. "Disappointment wrapped in a Christmas sweater knitted by an alcoholic grandmother.”

Lester sighed and adjusted his flour-covered apron. "You're a parrot. You don't know what failure or disappointment smells like."

"I've known brothels more successful than you!" the bird squawked.

That is probably true.

***

It was Tuesday when things got weird. Which is to say, weirder than usual.

A stranger came into Lester's shop. This was rare, as Lester's bakery had become the Piecrust equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle—people talked about it, vaguely remembered its location, and avoided it like gluten at a yoga retreat.

The man towered in the doorway. A black trench coat writhed around his frame. He didn't so much walk in as slither upright through the door. His eyes seemed to see through Lester, as though he knew about every cursed pastry, every disastrous dessert that had ever left this kitchen.

"You bake," the man said.

Lester nodded slowly. "Yes?"

The man placed a single silver coin on the counter. It had an eye engraved on one side and a screaming face on the other. Classic limited-edition nightmare currency.

"I want the Cake of Remembrance."

Lester blinked. "The what now?"

"The Cake of Remembrance. As described in the Grimoire de Patisserie Noire. You do have it, don't you?"

Lester stared. Then blinked again, hoping maybe that would reset the universe.

Señor Buttwings flew in from the pantry and landed on Lester's shoulder. "This guy's got necromancer breath," he muttered.

"I—listen, sir," Lester said, "I mostly do bread. Sometimes tarts."

The stranger leaned in. His breath reeked of black licorice.

"You are Lester Crumb. The One Who Bakes but Must Not Be Observed. The Ugly Oracle of the Oven. Don't lie to me."

Now, Lester had inherited a few weird cookbooks from his great-aunt Agatha, who was either a pastry chef or a minor demon. One of them was bound in what looked like human skin and smelled like burnt cinnamon rolls.

But he'd never opened it. Mostly because it screamed whenever he got near it.

"I'll give you until the full moon," the man hissed. "Bake the Cake of Remembrance. Or the town pays the price.” The air crackled as he spoke, and outside the window, Lester saw several birds drop from the sky, their wings turned to stone.

Then he was gone. Just evaporated with the efficiency of an unpaid intern dodging tasks.

***

Lester didn't sleep much that night. Great. Just great. Not only am I cursed to make pastries that cause bodily harm, now I've got to bake some mystical remembrance cake for Creepy McTrenchcoat or the whole town gets stoned like those birds. Perfect career trajectory, Lester. Baker to apocalypse catalyst in one easy step.

He went down to the basement, past the sacks of flour, the backup sourdough starter ("Bubba Yeast"), and the heavily padlocked fridge labeled DO NOT OPEN, EVEN IF IT BEGS, until he reached the old trunk.

He opened it.

Inside was the Grimoire de Patisserie Noire, bound in flesh and smelling faintly of cardamom. Lester opened it slowly, using tongs. The pages fluttered in protest, and one tried to papercut his thumb. Even the book wants blood, Lester thought.

The recipe sprawled across the pages. Written in blood, jam, and what might've been raspberry fondant.

The Cake of Remembrance

  Ingredients:

• One egg from a chicken that's seen the void
• Two cups of weeping flour
• A dash of bitter tears
• And one memory worth reliving

   Instructions:

• Bake at 375°F until your regrets rise.
• Do not frost. Frosting invites the dead.
• Serve with tea and quiet despair.

"Seems doable," Lester muttered.

"Wanna use the memory of when you clogged the toilet at the mayor's gala?" Señor Buttwings offered helpfully.

"That was not a fond memory," Lester said.

"Was for me!"

The chicken was the hardest part. After three failed attempts, Lester found Gloria behind Old Man Jenkins' barn—a one-eyed fighting chicken with PTSD who'd survived the infamous Rooster Rumble of 2020. She'd seen things. Terrible things. She laid the egg while staring unblinkingly at the void. It gleamed with the intensity of a glow stick.

The weeping flour? Simple. Just take regular flour, whisper all your childhood disappointments to it, and wait.

The bitter tears were plentiful.

But the memory? That was the tricky bit.

"What do I have that's worth reliving?" Lester asked aloud.

Señor Buttwings stared at him for a long time, then gently pooped on his shoulder.

Lester took that as support.

Eventually, he chose the moment when his mother first taught him to bake—her flour-dusted hands guiding his clumsy ones, her laughter echoing through the tiny kitchen. Before the world got cruel. Before he learned what it meant to be different.

He folded it into the batter.

The oven devoured the pan with a groan of anticipation. The vents hissed secrets in a language only sourdough could understand. Butter wept from the walls like the tears of dairy gods, and the kitchen light dimmed to the murky glow of a fortune teller's parlor. This is either going very right or catastrophically wrong, Lester thought. With my luck, probably both.

***

The cake emerged from the oven, wafting scents of childhood, heartbreak, and something eternal.

At five minutes to midnight, Lester stood alone in his bakery. The cake sat on the counter, occasionally whimpering. Señor Buttwings had locked himself in the pantry, refusing to be in the same room as 'that culinary abomination against nature.' Can't blame him, Lester thought. The damn thing's been humming funeral dirges for the past hour.

The man in the trench coat returned at midnight.

Lester handed him the cake. It trembled slightly in the box.

"Eat it here," Lester said. "That was the deal."

The man nodded, unhinged his jaw slightly, and took a bite.

He stopped chewing. Tears rolled down his face.

"My mother," he said softly. "She sang to me. I had forgotten."

The coat slid off him. His face changed. Softer. Kinder.

He vanished in a shimmer of warm light.

Behind him, a note floated down: Thank you. The town is spared.

That night, everyone in Piecrust had the same dream—of fresh bread, of childhood kitchens, of a moment when everything felt right. They woke with a hunger that couldn't be explained by breakfast cereal.

***

The next morning, people lined up outside Lester's bakery.

They didn't know why. Only that something smelled like home. Like something they hadn't known they missed.

For the first time in years, Lester felt different as he kneaded dough. His hands moved with certainty, without that tingle of disaster that had plagued him since the incidents began. Whatever magic had cursed his baking seemed to have been satisfied by the Cake of Remembrance.

Lester opened the door. His face hadn't changed—but maybe the world had.

"You're open?" said Madge, holding a coffee and a wary look.

"Just trying something new," Lester said.

Behind him, Señor Buttwings flapped around in a chef's hat.

“We're back, baby! I'll bring the sex appeal, he brings the gluten!” The bird flew to the shoulder of the first customer, whispering something that made her laugh for the first time since her divorce. Turns out, a possessed parrot was exactly what the town therapist ordered.

And so Piecrust was saved—not by heroes or swords, but by a very ugly baker, a possibly possessed parrot, and the healing power of carbs.

The Grimoire was returned to its trunk, though sometimes at night, it hummed recipes to itself. The dead stayed mostly dead, though Greg the postal cat occasionally sorted mail in his sleep. And Lester? His face still resembled the aftermath of a barroom brawl between gravity and a meat tenderizer—gravity won, and the meat tenderizer got drunk and returned for round two, but no one in Piecrust seemed to notice anymore. They were too busy remembering what mattered—that beauty comes in many forms, most of them involving carbohydrates.

Lester was happy, for once.

Ugly as sin. But happy.