The third loaf of bread my sister every baked flattened the town we
had grown up in. I'd moved to Five Points when I was old enough and our
parents died a few months later; most of those I'd known growing up lost
houses or worse. When the library fell it killed twenty people,
something like that.
    I heard the noise and got into my car, Father's glasses on my
forehead and a bag of things I thought I might need beside me. On
arriving I went straight to the library, but the firemen were sure they
didn't need help, and the area was loud, far too loud for a town where
no buildings stood. So I looked for my parents' grave, by the outskirts.
    Either the sextant in my bag had warped or I'd forgotten how to use
it. I satisfied myself eventually that the grave was gone; my sister
must have thrown the loaf of bread into it and fled. I can't think of
any other way she could have razed the whole town at once. Still, I
would have liked to be sure, and to have paid my final respects. By
sliding Father's glasses onto my nose I found a single knife and fork in
the knothole of a tree and took them.

    The fourth loaf of bread that my sister, the monster that she is,
ever baked sat before my door when I returned home. She had charred it
black; the house smelled of more than burnt bread. Faintly I heard my
husband's voice through the window. To my delight he had survived, by
crawling into the spice cabinet and holding the door fast. I warned him
to stay inside the cabinet and explained why I could not enter our home.
    Emboldened, I prodded the bread experimentally with Mother's
cutlery. It had the density of lead. When touched, it buzzed, sending a
burst of heat through the knife and down my arm which I could feel just
as quickly diving through my feet into the sandy ground below. I turned
and ran lest I be fixed to that spot forever.

    My sister's fifth loaf of bread turned the sky black as the sun
reached its peak the next day. I took 99 other people with me to the
river and told them just how to stand, how to hold their arms, to call
up a model sun in order that we might not all freeze. The sun we got
hardly filled a wheelbarrow; I dumped it into the fountain in Five
Points' town square, while townspeople lined the edges of the square to
soak up its rays. Luckily, food cooked by the heat of this infant sun
turned out to be unusually flavorful and sustaining. My neighbors all
emptied their larders and, hesitantly festive, began to see what new
treasures they could prepare. I left them to it.

    I needed things from my backyard, so I dug up the barrel buried
there, shouting words of encouragement to my husband and listening for
his muted calls in return. I hurried to the vicinity of my parents'
former grave and spread a tablecloth--borrowed, not one of my family's
keepsakes, but it would have to do. I set out a meal. I waited.
    When my sister came, she bent low on each knee as she walked, in a
parody of grace. She had no eyes, presumably traded to some sewer god
for a boon, but I knew she could see me. "Sit with me," I said. She
stood.
    Without fanfare, then, I uncovered two loaves of bread, baked ten
years earlier when we were just children. "I thought one day I might
regret stealing these from you," I said, "but now they have been mine
longer than they were yours."
    The bread devoured her. Stale as stone moments before, it became
fresh and soft in the heartbeat it took for my sister to be dissolved.
Had I not, for once, kept my mother in mind when faced with temptation,
I might even have eaten it. Instead, I let the river have it. The sun
rose wrong for a week after that, but only a week.

written for glenn mcdonald while standing up 4/26/04

The long time since I last wrote made me take this less seriously, not more... the idea's better than the execution (I changed tone after the second paragraph, and there are wording mistakes of a type I thought I had stopped making; the sentence beginning "Luckily" in the 6th paragraph is an atrocity), but so what? I'll rewrite it or reuse it.

Unlike with some of the other shortcuts I take, I was directly conscious of avoiding having to name the characters.

The parts with the narrator's husband are awkward and unnecessary. I was heading toward having dead bodies inside the house and changed my mind at the last minute because I didn't think I could swing it. The result, actually, was that I also put other positive elements in, like the townspeople's excellent food (also very poorly written, that part) which may have changed the whole tone. Hm.

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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