Baking Bad

The timer – a pink plastic pig you had to twist around until its eyes faced the same direction as its butt – went off.

Beverley Reade jumped. The sound was rare in her tiny kitchen – a shrill, metallic, mechanical noise. The smell of something baking was also rare. But if she hoped to be Whitney’s well-remembered grandmother once she passed, Bev had better get used to it. And she better get better, too. Grandmothers are good at baking. It was a universal law. ‘Energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Oh, and once a woman has a grandchild, she gets good at making tasty snacks.’ She pulled on her pristine oven gloves. Through the thick material, Beverley grasped the oven door handle. ‘Right then,’ she muttered, with an air of apprehension.

The golden glow from the oven light illuminated her face like a second sun. The warmth from the open door warmed her skin. But the rank odour pluming out into her kitchen was anything but homey.

She gagged. God, what had she gotten wrong now? The first time, Bev tried to bake a cake. She knew she’d failed when the recipe said, ‘Now, pour the batter…’ and she had something that looked like dough. The second time, Bev tried baking cookies. The watery substance gushed over the edges of her kitchen counter when she tried to roll it with her wooden pin. Bev had decided to stick with cookies for her third attempt, and it had seemed that she’d cracked the code. But cookies should smell good when they are ready, right? Didn’t realtors use that smell to entice potential homebuyers? God, and that wasn’t even their job. They sold homes, not baked goods. Bev had retired, and being a grandmother was now her only occupation. And she still couldn’t get the damn hang of baking. Bev pulled the tray out – ruined, despite the baking sheet – and rattled it into her sink. ‘For God’s sake!’

The encrusted grey blobs clung onto the tray. The cookies, if one could call these monstrosities such, had lost their shape. These terrestrial barnacles appeared to have hardened shells, like crustaceans. Yet, the critical difference was that crustaceans were edible.

Bev sobbed. She was too old to be learning how to bake. Beverley should have learned before Lena was born, let alone before the birth of Lena’s daughter. She should have learned from her mother, an excellent baker. Oh well. They did say that talent skipped a generation, didn’t they? Bev should learn the lesson that she was beyond learning. She slammed her fist down onto the counter. ‘Damn it!’

She should have checked for her cookie cutter.

And she should have checked which way up the cookie cutter was.

Alas, she did not, and she did not.

The cutter’s edge was not razor sharp, but Beverley brought her hand down hard. It broke through the skin and sliced into the meat of her palm.

Beverley yelped. She whipped her hand away.

The cutter flew across the kitchen, along with several droplets of blood. The cookie cutter clattered to the corner of the room, where it slid beneath a cupboard, lost forever. The droplets of claret soaked into the traces of flour that had drifted to the floor, staining them red.

Holding her wounded paw in her other hand, Bev tilted her head to one side.

The flour appeared to have fallen across her kitchen tiles and formed a pentagram. Crazy, but true. A pentagram to which she’d added her lifeblood.

Bev had time to utter her curiosity: ‘Huh.’

Hellfires roared up before her, hotter than any of Earth’s ovens. A screech split the air like a demonic kitchen timer.

She flinched, raising her hands. Jesus Christ. Was she that bad of a baker that her attempts ended with the summoning of Beelzebub? Did she resign herself to not being the gran with the best snacks but rather a different gran altogether? She could be the funny one, or the cool one, or—

‘WHO SUMMONS ME?’

She yipped and cringed away, back to the floured kitchen counter. Bev had a hard time hanging up on friends whom she’d misdialled. How would she get out of this? How could you tell the prince of darkness that you’d summoned him by accident? He wouldn’t take kindly to that. She scrambled through the discarded dough, searching for a weapon. She found her rolling pin. ‘I, ah—’

The fires retreated to a small circle, like a hellish stovetop’s gas ring. In the middle stood the beast himself. He towered over her at eight feet. His feet, as promised, were two cloven hooves that stomped at the ground. He became more humanoid from the knees, except for the blister-red skin. He wore a disgruntled grimace on his countenance. Above his top lip, a black moustache curled away. From his chin, his Van Dyke beard pointed. Oversized teeth protruded over his lips, and two ram horns jutted from his forehead. A slender tail dangled between his legs. In his one claw, he clutched an enormous trident, which looked, in this context, like a giant spatula. The devil thudded the trident into the floor, creating a subsonic boom. It reverberated in Beverley’s bones. ‘WHO SUMMONS ME?’

She whimpered. Her sweaty grip tightened on the rolling pin. ‘I-I do, um, sir. B-B-Beverley. Beverley Reade. And, you see, I was trying to bake. F-For my granddaughter! Every grandchild should have a loving grandparent and I-I—’

The devil cut her off. ‘FOR WHAT PURPOSE HAVE YOU SUMMONED ME? SPEAK!’

A low whine emanated from somewhere in her throat. She was debating rejecting the devil or attacking him with a kitchen utensil. Insanity. ‘I summoned you on purpose because… because…’

‘ANSWER ME, HUMAN FEMALE!’

No, she didn’t want to bow out like this. There had to be a better way. Besides, wasn’t Satan the chap you turned to when you needed a bargain? She wouldn’t sell her soul. But could they find some arrangement? Beverley thought it through. She was sixty-seven and had one daughter. If you can’t beat them, join them. ‘I-If I promise to give you the soul of my firstborn son…’

The devil’s posture changed. ‘Ah!’

‘…will you teach me how to bake?’

The devil seemed to ponder this, one Machiavellian eyebrow raised.

Was he about to kill her? Had Beverley sealed her fate by asking the ridiculous?

The devil surprised her by smiling. There were too many pointy teeth in that smile. His voice rumbled out, the texture of a whirring electric cake mixer. ‘All right.’

Beverley relaxed.

He clicked his fingers, and a pink, flowery apron appeared around his waist. A chef’s hat – tilted at a jaunty angle – poofed into existence atop his horns. ‘The first things we need are flour, sugar, and salt.’

‘Salt!’

‘Yes, salt,’ said the devil. ‘It enhances sweet things.’

‘Well, I never.’

The devil clicked his fingers again, and mixing bowls appeared on the counter.

‘Now, follow as I do…’