Cupcakes
By Ken McCarty

I stole a plate of cupcakes from my Grandma's kitchen table and hid out in the backyard, behind a room that contained a pool table and a bar with nice soft padding on the edges and stools you could spin around on. There was a mirror in that room that said "Michelob" and a lamp in the shape of a Coke bottle and coasters with the Raider's logo on them. Outside, between this room and the ivy-laden fence there were gnarly roots bulging from the ground and the perfume of fallen and rotting plums.

They were yellow cupcakes with chocolate frosting and multicolored sprinkles to dazzle the eyes. I squat down on one of the larger roots and placed the plate on my lap. Inside the house, the women were frantically trying to contain the bleeding on my cousin's right little toe. My grandmother had a garbage can that opened by stepping on a little lever. My cousin had discovered with his pink little bare feet that the medal on the sides of this lever was extremely sharp, at least for tiny fleshy baby toes.

The mania upstairs and the blood smeared across the kitchen floor was of little concern to me, though. A much more pressing issue was deciding which cupcake to eat first. As usual, the one superior to the others and worthy of my attention was the one in the middle of the plate. My grandmother always applied a more generous amount of frosting on the first cupcakes she frosted, and they would always end up in the middle of the plate. The secret in a roomful of people was to get the timing just right in order to get these uber-cakes. Not only were they frosted more, but the frosting from the surrounding cupcakes would also cling to them.

This was not something I needed to worry about then, free to reach into the middle of the plate to extract my choice. Since my normal process of deliberate enjoyment of each morsel was not necessary, I found myself in the unique position of being free to take the most delicious bite possible. Mouth wide, I closed in on a huge, chocolatey mass, my nose dipping into the frosting. The first cupcake was gone before I really had time to think about it. On the second I took my time more, though it didn't have the saliva generating rush that the first had given me. By the time I'd gotten to the third my stomach had caught up with me, so I only ate the top half and tossed aside the rest for the ants and the crows. I sat and tried to catch my breath while crush rogue sprinkles between my front teeth.

Inside, a door slammed and I heard the frantic, muffled voices of my mother, aunt, and grandmother. I ran to the house, tentatively hovered at the sliding glass door that led to the kitchen, and went inside once I saw that the coast was clear. Setting the plate on the table, I went to investigate the voices, ready to act as nonchalantly as possible should I be questioned. Once in the living room I could hear my aunt's loud panic filling the front lawn. Peeking through the curtains I watched as they led my wounded, hobbling cousin to the car. He had what looked like an entire roll of toilet paper wrapped around his foot and the way it hung like a loose, bloody bandage made him look like he just came out of the Civil War. It seemed likely that at some point soon my mother would be coming back to get me, but suddenly they were all piled into the car, doors crashing shut, and driving down the street.

I stood in wonderment of this for a moment and then returned to the kitchen. Positioning the plate exactly where I'd found it, I rearranged the cupcakes in such a way that I figured it wouldn't be noticed that any were missing. I toyed with the idea of offering the plate to my cousin, the returning hero, so he could get his paws into them before anything could be detected. Or maybe I would just slouch on the floor and watch "UnderDog", hoping nobody would notice, probably forgetting entirely myself in the process.

I made an attempt to sop up the blood with some paper towels, careful not to cut off any of my toes while throwing them away. Some of the blood got on my foot so I had to clean again after I left track marks where I'd stepped. The chocolate residue lingered in my mouth, so as soon as I was done I hauled out the milk from the refrigerator, spilling some on the counter while pouring myself a glass.