Lady cake was coming slowly, with tiny tiny steps, scared of pebbles and dust, holding her crown with one hand and a small fan in the other. Lady cake understood she was delicate, round and heavy. Lady cake walked a beaten pathway. She did not dare to look at her own feet but felt the flip flops bending to the gravel and the soil finding home in between her toes.
Her dark brown eyes scanned the lake, while she was restricted by layers of fabric irritating her delicate skin, she watched two free dumb souls swimming in the cold water, flipping and rounding each other. Lady cake almost envied them, but the woman in the water seemed kind of heavy and the man perhaps too light. They would never understand the pressure of being good looking and being gifted with the eyes of many lenses like she did.
Under a small metal gazebo, she stood still, and the three women holding her cake layers fluffed them, and Lady cake had her dirty feet and legs covered again by the pink fabric. Her makeup was retouched by the women, her lips plumped by the pink gloss, and setting powder and click, click again. Lady cake smiled for the camera, click, click, the white light was hurting her eyes, the heat created by the box lights made sweat drip from her temples, but the hairspray, in many layers, held the hair hostage, and Lady cake smiled as the sweat drops fell from her scalp to her temples. Halt! Lady cake needed a fan and retouch makeup.
Lady cake had the talent of looking small inside a big, pink layer cake dress. In between shots, children gravitated towards Lady cake, she smiled, benevolent, knowing they did not know better, before the crew shooed them away. She wished the two humans swimming to feel cold and uncomfortable. She loathed the fact she was the only one suffering. Hand up, down, on the waist, near to the face, hold the gazebo, smile, not too much. Lady cake felt trapped.
Another place, another set of poses, Lady cake had to cross the park with the same three women on her tail, holding the cake layers, from the gazebo to the balcony, feeling the gravel under her soles and the curious eyes from people in bikinis seeing a fully clothed individual. Lady cake smiled, balancing the plastic crown on her head.
The balcony in stone was taken by mallards, the brown females judging the males in the water bantering and calling them to play and eat. They knew better. Lady cake asked the female mallards to please let her take her pictures. The three mallards looked at each other and laughed.
“Ma’am, with all due respect, this is our balcony, our park, piss off!”
“My makeup is melting, please, I need only few good pictures. If the staff comes, they will kick you, I am asking nicely!” Lady cake whined.
“Humans are entitled. I hope the seagulls shit on you.” The mallards left to meet their mates in the water.
Lady cake could understand animals. It was not a great gift, animals only spoke of food, shelter and mating, almost like the males of her own species. Mallards were difficult creatures, but not as difficult as the swans or geese. Lady cake leaned on the balcony and took pictures, it was late afternoon and the sun was hiding behind the mountains, she heard the female mallards screaming, while the other humans couldn’t comprehend, Lady cake knew they were telling her to drop dead.
Another talent Lady cake possessed, besides posing and understanding animals’ little minds, was that she could make them drop dead, and she did. The male mallards found their forever mates floating in the water, they cried seeing their necks soft, hanging down. Lady cake smiled. The lake was not a place for only small fish, and soon fishes from the bottom of the lake swam up seeing three fat mallards floating lifeless. Such was life.
Lady cake had blood thirst. The sun disappeared, but the humidity clouded the full moon peeking out of the mountains, the stars also feared the pink menace Lady cake was, and refused to show up to decorate the still gray sky. It was finished, Lady cake was free, the crew surrounded her and they removed the layers of fabric restraining her. Lady cake was no more.
She removed all the layers and appeared in a much smaller dress, revealing her real figure, slender and tan, white dress, still bigger and round in the bottom, Lady small cake went to her hotel room, small and poorly ventilated, beauty hadn’t paid its dividends yet. In the mirror, with only one light on top, Ex-Lady cake washed her face twice to remove the plaster of her face. And then hopped into the shower and shampooed her hair twice, it melted the hairspray away and the hair rested on her face.
Ex-Lady cake was clean and hungry. This time, dressed casually, she left her room in a hoodie and large pants, a baseball cap on her just blow-dried hair. Walking alongside the lake, it was not difficult to find drunk people playing with pebbles, she noticed a man and a woman, down the stairs from street level to the small pebble beach. The couple helped each other sitting down, laughing, trying to find the flattest pebbles, drinking directly from the white wine bottle.
She squeezed the straw inside her hoodie, her stomach was complaining. Ex-Lady cake approached, did not need much to wish them to drop dead, but she knew they were so drunk, they would not even realize they were being consumed. She walked behind them, carelessly, the pebbles dancing under her delicate feet.
Touching them was not necessary, Ex-Lady cake pointed her pink transparent straw and sucked the lives out of their body, they did not fall dramatically, instead felt cold and dread, and their bodies, sitting on the pebbles, lowered slowly and slept holding each other. Just like the mallards, humans were also prey.
Ex-Lady cake flew, hoovered, floating in the sky, with a full stomach, it was colder than she remembered, the straw still in her mouth, the last drops of life still being sucked. Ex-Lady cake went back to her small room and examined her face, still young, still fresh, still pretty and desirable. Just to be sure, she smeared skincare on her face. Her favorite stuffed toy waited for her in bed; she held the orange koala missing one eye and slept. Tomorrow it would be another day, another Lady cake day.
And it was, the pink straw had saved her. Before she counted calories, weighed her food, exercised, and held herself together with caffeine pills. In the world of Lady cake, however, being plump was a crime, the order of the day was to feel cold even on a hot day and having her hair falling out of her head. She held herself together long enough to get into the select club of the pink straw. Sucking souls was easier than eating, and calory free!
Lady cake thought about the time when the pink straw was bestowed on her. At first, the cravings were difficult, especially for sweets and beef, but Lady cake persevered, eating life force gave her energy and maintained her body unchanged, frozen in time. The two drunks would suffice for another week. She still had to sit down during meals, people praised Lady cake for her restraint of drinking just water with lemon, food was weakness and she was strong.
The shooting finished, and she returned home to her tiny apartment in the big metropolis. Hunting was easier, walking on the streets, watching people with huge hot dogs and large cups of sugary drinks made her sick, her walks would end up in hidden parts, tiny green areas in the middle of the urban noise. On an old bench, she sat down and noticed a lady with flat stomach, just like her.
Lady cake assessed her, top to bottom, and she did the same to Lady cake. Not to have any doubt, Lady cake walked to her, this remote park was her spot. “You look great…like you haven’t had a meal in ten years!”
“You look like I haven’t been nourished your whole life as well.”
“No offense, girl… but this is where I eat.” Lady cake showed her the pink straw out of her hoodie, and the woman also showed the pink straw, inside her expensive purse.
“It’s not like there isn’t crackheads for both of us, tell me, you like their taste, don’t you?” She smiled and shook her straw.
“I like drunks too.” Lady cake confessed, and the other woman invited her with a gesture to sit together. “We can wait for them together, there are always more than one, right?” It would be a good evening, she thought, the weather was clear and it hadn’t rained in two days, they would appear at any time, have their thing and be ready for extraction. “Girl, food arrived!”
“I know.” The other woman consumed Lady cake on the bench of an obscure park in a crowded metropolis. Nobody ever told Lady cake that pink straw girls tasted the best. She looked at the other of her kind, in her last moments, confused, betrayed. But as the soul left her body, she dropped a tear of happiness, she had never felt so thin in her whole life.
As for the other woman, it was time to find another girl to pass the pink straw.
