The wind carried a sickly sweet scent through the narrow streets of Ostružnica, a scent not of blooming flowers or fresh rain, but of artificial vanilla and something… else. Something cloying and rotten, hiding beneath. Fourteen-year-old Miloš held his breath as he hurried home, a loaf of bread clutched tight in his arms.
His grandmother, Baba Stana, would be waiting. She'd been more agitated than usual lately. More fearful. "There's a sickness in the air, Miloš," she'd rasped that morning, her wrinkled hand trembling as she poured him tea. "A wrongness."
He hadn't understood then. Now, with the twilight deepening and that awful saccharine stench pressing in around him, he began to. The shadows seemed to deepen unnaturally, and he noticed details missed earlier in the day. The streets seem extra narrow, and a sense of being watched has become almost unavoidable.
He passed the old bakery, boarded up now for years after Old Man Jovan died. Tonight, though, a light flickered within. Not the warm glow of an oven, but something colder, whiter. Something… hungry.
Miloš picked up his pace, his heart thumping a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He heard a soft, wet sound behind him, like batter being slopped onto a counter. He didn't dare look.
The bread felt heavy in his arms, almost as if it, too, was afraid. He could taste the fear on his tongue, a metallic tang that blended unsettlingly with the lingering artificial sweetness.
"Baba!" he called out as he reached his small, stone house, pushing the heavy wooden door open with more force than necessary.
The house was dark. Usually, Baba Stana had a fire blazing and the scent of her savory stew filling the air. Tonight, there was only that awful, pervasive sweetness and a chilling silence.
"Baba?" Miloš's voice was a strained whisper. He dropped the bread onto the wooden table; it landed with a dull thud.
A faint light seeped from under the bedroom door. He pushed it open slowly, his hand shaking.
Baba Stana was on the bed, propped up on pillows. Her eyes were wide open, staring at the ceiling, but they didn't seem to see. Her skin was waxy, pale. And… frosted.
Not with ice, but with a thick layer of white, sugary icing. It covered her like a shroud, smooth and pristine except for the cracks around her open, silent mouth.
Miloš choked back a scream, the air catching in his throat. He backed away slowly, his eyes fixed on the grotesque spectacle of his grandmother, transformed into a horrific human cake.
He wanted to run, to scream, to shatter the suffocating stillness of the room, but his body refused to cooperate.
Then, he saw it. Standing at the foot of the bed, almost obscured by shadows.
It was a cake. A tall, multi-tiered wedding cake, frosted in that same, impossibly smooth white icing. Decorations, looking suspiciously like marzipan fruits and flowers, dotted its surface.
But the "flowers" had eyes. Small, black, beady eyes that swiveled, following Miloš's every move.
The cake… moved. Not in the way something living would. It shuddered, layers grinding together with a soft, moist sound. Then, a crack appeared in the smooth frosting.
From within the crack, a hand reached out. A human hand, covered in sticky frosting.
Miloš finally found his voice. He screamed, a high-pitched, desperate sound that was swallowed by the growing darkness.
The hand beckoned, its fingers flexing and unflexing. A voice, soft and syrupy, filled the room, seemingly coming from the cake itself.
"Come, Miloš," it whispered. "Join us. It's so sweet…"
The cake shuddered again, and another crack appeared. More hands emerged, pale and sticky, reaching for him.
Miloš stumbled back, knocking against the table. He grabbed the forgotten loaf of bread, his only weapon.
He threw it, a pathetic defense, and it bounced harmlessly off the monstrous cake.
The hands closed in. Miloš squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the inevitable.
He felt them then. Cold, sticky, pulling him. He tried to resist, but he was weak, exhausted. He didn't have a way to resist what came after, so, he just waited.
The sweetness enveloped him, choking, suffocating. He could feel the frosting spreading, encasing him.
It was cold, like death. But, there was also that sickly, pervasive flavor that tasted how being consumed must feel like. It had a sickly hint of marzipan.
He opened his mouth to scream one last time, and the frosting poured in, filling his lungs, his throat, his mind.
The next morning, the village of Ostružnica was silent. Not the peaceful silence of a summer dawn, but the heavy, oppressive silence of the grave.
The scent of artificial vanilla and something rotten was gone, replaced by the usual, bland scent of an empty morning.
Every house stood dark and empty. Every window was coated with a layer of what appeared to be perfectly formed, perfectly hardened white frosting, inside and out.
At the center of the village square, there was a new addition.
It was a massive cake, far taller than any building in Ostružnica. Its surface was covered with layers of sugary and creamy delight. Intricate designs, looking like miniature houses and people.
Some had black eyes, others appeared to be screaming.
There was even a miniature church that was identical to the small cathedral nearby, bell and cross, alike.
It took effort, but it was done in perfect, tiny scale. It almost looked… celebratory.
And on the very top, a single figure stood out, frozen mid-scream.
It was a small, frosted boy, clutching a loaf of bread. His eyes, too, appeared, and somehow looked aware.
The village of Ostružnica had become a confectioner's nightmare, a monument to a ritual gone horribly, sweetly wrong.
A permanent resident of the monument was one Miloš, now merely a decoration for all the other horrors.
No other person would know why the large wedding cake was sitting on the outskirts of the forgotten city.
It looked delicious, even.
As the years passed, a select few locals began to circulate odd rumors among themselves.
One such instance involves an anonymous explorer.
Rumors suggested that someone braved a return to that forsaken village and claimed to have experienced strange events during their trip, they claimed, and it does bear pointing out, that these are mere, unverified reports, of someone who witnessed a human child's cake topping that appeared aware.
But many, rightfully so, wrote this story off as local gossip that developed, like most of the tales around that location, over a campfire.
The idea that the marzipan topper seemed aware struck many listeners as implausible, prompting a thorough inquiry by the locals that ultimately labeled it as unfounded hearsay spread by unhinged simpletons, and this exploration did nothing but perpetuate rumors among the locals.
These local stories highlight the human need to attach explanations to extraordinary events.
The idea that a baked, marzipan likeness of a deceased human being being aware in some afterlife has a way of unnerving certain individuals.
It brings attention to some that believe, based on no other than uncorroborated eye-witness reports, that something other than death occurs after living.
Many question the believability of this theory of the human boy cake topper.
The main query of that line of thinking comes from an innocent query: Is Miloš simply baked goods, or something far more concerning?
The boy on top of that forsaken cake did not resemble traditional human figures of the era that would have known the boy.
Some, familiar with such cases, note a significant variation that's worth investigation, and so, some of these stories persisted among local townsfolk who did not necessarily dismiss or believe what happened.
Others, of course, fully dismissed and others, fully believed.
The reality is something unknown and unknowable.
The baker did not know why the spell worked as it did.
No one knew what ritual was performed.
Many attempts were taken to investigate what exactly happened, of course, but the sheer devastation and horrific happenings within that cake world left much unanswered, to be forgotten to history.
Not so for Milos, stuck forever in his aware state of baked goodness.
Forever trapped in what he had come to know as a hell made entirely of baked goodness and marzipan flowers.
Forever a topper on an impossibly sized and eerily grotesque celebratory food that never fully formed on him as alive in the world he left behind.
Forever alone.
Forever unblinking.
Forever the dessert.
And it's here we're faced with questions we may never find answers.
Is it true, as they claim in remote areas? Is Miloš truly alone, forever trapped in sugary confinement? Is the boy aware of anything at all, locked away for the end of days in such form, on a forgotten corner of this desolate Earth?
What is awareness in the eyes of marzipan figures and human cake toppings?
As they ask themselves these deep philosophical queries about existence in its various states, a lot remains uncertain about the child who became forever memorialized as a child who dared pick up baking products against whatever dark spell was made in the long-lost village of Ostružnica.
The question becomes how those near the cursed land deal with their views on the metaphysical realm of those whose state changed so tragically.
And lastly, it may not ever be able to fully grasp that which did occur in the forgotten, lonely village of Ostružnica.