Martyred bread: A tribute to all fallen cakes

The cake quivered on the table, cherries cascading off its sides.

"By golly, that is a nervous cake" the baker remarked.

"Why shouldn't I be?" a voice spoke out. "Isn't this my first appearance on a stage".

Once the old baker had looked around the room, and cleaned icing sugar off his spectacles (to make sure he wasn't making mountains out of sugar hills!), he looked at the cake.

"I am sorry, but did you speak, kind sire" the baker asked, taken aback.

"Hmmm. I did. Now, you'd better put those strawberries on me. I don't want to look shabby at the the wedding now, do I?" the cake said, mustering its best master-o'-the-house voice.

"I suppose you don't." the baker got to slicing the strawberries.

"In the meanwhile, you'd better ask your boy to get a slab of chocolate ready. After all, I AM a chocolate cake, no?".

"Very right. Very right" the baker muttered, calling out for his boy to do the needful.

"Anywhichways, I never understood what you did with all the pies you made in the morning. You took them out, but they never came back in?" the cake tried to make small talk.

The baker, the poor man, was going very red in the face. He had just realised that he was talking to a cake. Also, he didn't have the courage to reveal the sad truth to the innocent cake.

"I think I understand-" the cake started, voice thunderous. The farmer gulped. "You forced all thise pies to go to school!".

The baker almost breathed a sigh of relief. "Well, you know how it is. Education is a must" said the baker.

"I must say I agree. I am, myself, well qualified in-" the cake stopped, voice aghast.

"Was that what I saw it was?" it said in a trembling voice. Your boy is putting up cakes-for-sale posters all over the town!".

The baker finally broke his quiet.

"I am sorry, my friend. I have brought you into this world of woes so that you can be cut for the pleasure of selfish humans. But I must surrender you to your fate, alas. Forgive me!" the baker pleaded.

"Nay. I understand" the cake started, great tears of chocolate smearing the beautiful icing that was the fairness of its facade. it seemed the cake would be delivering a soliloquy.

"I understand. I thought myself the cream of the crop, if I may say so, smears with cream that isn't my own. Am I not made of wheat threshed and broken. Am I not made of melted chocolate and whipped cream. Is it, therefore, anyone's fault that my emotions are but the sum of my components. Why do I feel so sad, when I came unto this world to live a day warm in a cosy bakery?".

The cake paused for a wheezy breath (it was a sponge cake, after all). "If I am angry, I be so at the ignominy of this world. I was raised to be beautiful, to stand tall and proud, when I am meant to be cut down into pieces of brown bread layered with cream! 'Tell it not of its fate. Of its ultimate demise' the people said for me. Codswallop! Know this, I walk into my execution, head held high. After all, my life will have meaning, as I give it to a greater cause, one of cheer and rejoice. I do-" the cake was abruptly cut off.

The baker, who was until now mesmerized with the cake's rousing speech, shook off the daze.

He looked for why the cake had stopped, and there it was. His younger son, digging away at the cake with a fork and spoon.

To be truthful, the baker had been moved. For just a few moments.

Now, looking at his younger son, a warm radiance within him made him smile. He may as well have had imagining it all, but the sight of his young son relishing the cake was heavenly.

He didn't know whether it had been a daydream, or one of those things that can not be thought to have happened when one was wake. Whatever be the case, the baker was sure of one thing. A cake that a young boy snurfed down so fast was definitely a good cake.

The happy look in the young boy's eyes was the best eulogy a nice cake deserved. The thought made the baker smile, whistling as he rolled out a sheet of dough.

Then the baker remembered he was supposed to be angry...