Cake in the Road

I saw it within a passage of pines, half buried in the dusty soil. It was grey with pinks and blues running through porous, sodden skins. As I got closer, I saw hundreds of ants slogging through its suffocating frosting, banging into each other in sugar shock. I knew I should step around it, not touch it, but a voice commanded me to eat, echoing in every direction. The voice consumed the road ahead like a hungry spider, and the path behind me vanished like a cadaver’s skin. There was no escape, but to eat the crawling cake. “Just a sliver,” I said. I survived the moldering toxin, but I’ll never eat cake again.

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