The Wolfwater Confession

Do you know what hell doesn’t have? Strawberry cake. Twenty-five years alive, and all I’ve ever dreamed of is having my own slice of strawberry cake.

Something the likes of this stinkhole, filled to the brim with degenerates and lunatics alike, has never seen.

Before the Fall, anything was possible. They could have had bright green bushes and mile-high apple trees sprouting up around here. But today we don’t even have food, just this putrid slop they call calories.

So when she appeared, strutting down alleyways in her delicate, pink gown, I’d decided. No matter what she called herself — foreigner, ambassador, confidant — we all saw her for what she truly represented: a ticket out of this abyss.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. We all descended on her like a pack of mutated hornets. But the truth is, I wasn’t even worried about competition. Maniac Mary still asked me every morning if I’d seen the rat that stole her hairpin.

Even if anyone else had enough sanity around here to spot this shiny opportunity, I doubt they understood that there was a way out of this dump. They’d never sneaked onto the transport pad.

Crouching down behind skull-branded barrels a few days ago, I formed a plan. Those hazmat suits hardly qualified as a security checkpoint. No papers, and none of those magic bars they waved over us that beeped for dangerous objects. All those fancy-feast patrons just swung their glowing necklaces through the tiny metal arch and stepped aboard.

So I sneaked back to my hovel. Then I sneaked over to our calorie happy kitchen and swiped a knife from the storage room. But I didn’t stop there. I did more sneaking than I’d done in my entire life.

Pink gown never saw me coming.

Attempting to bond with the locals, her black suits had placed her in a decrepit building near the edge of Swarm Circle. Must’ve bribed the right kings, to be given her own building. Solid structures, even eroded ones, were a rare sight. Unfortunately for her, I climbed right through the holes and passages I mapped out as a child.

Figures, that they would give her the pink room. The rest of the rooms had their wallpaper peeled off. I didn’t even need to turn a doorknob, squeezing through the crack hidden by the dust-coated drapery on the east wall.

She sat at the gilded bronze desk, perched over a bundle of papers with a feather bleeding black at the tip. The scratches it made across the papers weren’t loud enough to mask my footsteps. We wrestled like baby cubs, the chair turned over, papers littering the floorboards. Thankfully my hand kept a solid grip over her mouth, muffling any screams that might have been. — Did I mention she wore another pink gown? The darker, delightful shade that sat in the middle of my future strawberry cake.

I whipped my kitchen knife out in a hurry.

Even when the blood poured from her neck, coating my stolen knife, all I could see was strawberry juice. But I did my best to keep the dress clean, hanging her head off the edge of the bed as I stripped it off. Wriggling into the outfit, my hair bundled tightly with audacious colored pins, I tried to picture myself as her. As someone who had already tasted a strawberry cake.

Fingering her necklace I now wore, standing in line at the transport pad, I couldn’t help but stare at my ticket to freedom. The glimmering metal had been melted down and poured into the smooth, curved shape of our ancestor’s hearts before the Fall. Its pulsing blue light emitted a wave of calm, mimicking the rest of the patrons in line.

I struggled to embody the poise I recalled when I first set eyes on her. Some pinhead glued strong sticks to the bottom of her shoes, testing my balance with each step.

Thankfully no one bothered to give me more than a passing glance. Not the patron behind me — an aged, glutinous official that most definitely didn’t eat slop — or any of the hazmat suits stationed at the pad.

I stepped forward as the woman in front approached the metal arch. She leaned forward and gracefully swung her pendant, the ancient heart passing underneath the metal arch. The metal glistened, its blue shimmer welcoming and bright. Despite the alluring display, no one made a sound. She simply stepped forward onto the ramp.

I made a note: no smiling. No facial expressions at all, it would seem.

So close to freedom, to the cold ramp that didn’t care about stowaways. Approaching the arch, I leaned in and tapped her pendant.

The metal passed through the arch with a perfect swing, light glistening off its metal exterior. I made no noise, no facial expressions. But the suit next to the machine did not follow the unspoken rule. He let out an audible gasp.

We both watched in horror as a deep crimson glow ate through the blue shimmer, oozing out. Such a small difference, I wanted to plea. How could they look down on the color of strawberries? But I didn’t try to convince them, I just rocked back on my stick shoes as two overbearing suits headed my way. They grasped my arms and locked them together with metal. I wouldn’t have minded the metal, as long as I got to walk towards the ramp. But the suits pushed me away from freedom, walking instead across a black ramp not too far away.

The left suit stripped me of her pendant — my lying, sinister ticket. The right suit pushed me into a dark cavern, dragging bars into place at the entrance. I wasn’t offended. They even brought me a bowl of slop, later on, gingerly dropping it through the bars. I picked the bowl up and did what I had always done...

I pretended it was a slice of strawberry cake.

***

“Ms. Navera, do you know why you are here?”

The man sat on a metal chair outside the bars, his legs crossed. He asked such silly questions. As if I couldn’t dream about strawberry cake while locked in a cave.

“Yes,” I answered. My voice cracked a bit, the sound funny on my tongue.

He nodded. “I have some papers here that tell me you found a pendant and tried to leave Wolfwater. Is that true?”

“Yes.” I laughed, mumbling the word found in between chuckles. He must think me a dimwit, scribbling down more notes with another black-bloody feather.

“Can you tell me where you found the pendant, Ms. Navera?” he asked.

I shuffled forward until I sat, cross-legged, on the ground in front of him. Staring deep into his eyes, I gave that white suit the nicest smile I could muster.

“If you can bring me a fresh slice of strawberry cake, sir, then I’d be delighted to tell you the whole story.” I offered.

My smile must have been slightly off. I could see a small glimmer of fear mixed with confusion in his eyes. He frowned at me.

“Strawberry… cake?”

I closed my eyes and bobbed my head. “Yes sir. A pretty slice of strawberry cake, with jam in the middle, and light pink frosting coating the outside. They always have a glistening strawberry or two on the top, too.” I added.

He flipped through his papers. “Ms. Navera, where are you from?”

“Wolfwater.”

The man pinched his glasses, shifting them around as he took another look at me.

“That’s not possible.”

Now it was my turn to frown. I picked up my half-eaten bowl of sludge and thrust it at him.

“Do you honestly think I could eat this every day if I’d been outside of Wolfwater?” I countered.

He shook his head. “That’s exactly my point,” he said, “Wolfwater hasn’t had even a painting of strawberries, much less a strawberry cake, in hundreds of years,” he said, waving his feather furiously across the papers. “Have you had any contact with visitors here in the last twenty-five years?”

I shook my head. “Other than pink gown? No.”

His eyebrows furrowed, deepening the lines on his forehead.

“And how did you know Ambassador Emittan?” he said.

I set my bowl down with a hard clang.

“Listen white suit, I’ve spent my entire life in this madhouse of a town. Any method you could drum up to try and wring the answers out of me won’t hold a candle to the horrors I consider daily life. I could ask for my freedom, for a final resting place that doesn’t smell like a mineral deposit, or even three non-slop meals a day in trade for my story” I ranted, “but all I’m asking for is a slice of cake.”

A moment of silence followed as the man stared blankly at me.

“Ms. Navera, do you realize that what you say makes no sense?” he asked, setting down the feather.

I laughed. “I thought you weren’t supposed to tell people that they’re insane?”

“I’m not sure that I am.” he countered, his tone bewildered.

“White cake, strawberry jam, with pink frosting. Strawberries, coated in honey on top. Soon as that settles in my stomach, white suit, I’ll give you your answers. I’ll even write it down with that feather of yours.” I said.

“You need to be able to write in common for a confession, Ms. Navera.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Not everyone in Wolfwater is illiterate,” I said, before waving a hand in dismissal. “Cake first, Common second.”

He spluttered as I moved back into the darker area of my cave. After a few rounds of silence, the white suit eventually retreated.

Judging by the scratches on my wall, it took him over a year to complete my request. But then the day came when lighter, quicker footsteps than those friendly hazmats echoed down the hall. I saw my cake before I saw him, sitting on a soft plate cradled in his hands. As he knelt to the ground I lept over to the pressed metal and stuck out my hands. He dropped the masterpiece — my cake — into them.

Sparkling red strawberries sat in between puffs of baby pink frosting, silver glitter dusting the entire cake. I sat in awe, easily calling it the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Almost too pretty to eat.

Almost.

I looked up at the white suit, stunned. “You brought me an entire cake?”

He didn’t look up from his notes. “They didn’t sell it by the slice,” he replied.

I felt tears run down my cheeks.

“I’ll answer one question before I eat,” I said, giddy from excitement.

He looked up, surprised, before nodding in appreciation.

“Did you kill Ambassador Emittan?” he asked.

I nodded, my eyes fixated on my cake.

“Yes.”

“Why?” he demanded, his voice strained.

I sighed, setting down my precious cake. I felt too satisfied to deny his second question. Moving over to the dark spot of the cave, I pulled my paper — yes I too have papers — from my secret place. I unfolded it and handed it to the white suit. I didn’t need it now, not when I had the real thing before me.

“A Wilton magazine page?” he murmured out loud, inspecting the beautiful strawberry cake sitting on the stand.

I sat back down and plucked a strawberry from my cake.

He looked up at me in utter disbelief.

“You really murdered a National Ambassador and tried to sneak aboard a Class R Battleship… to get a strawberry cake?”

As I bit into the first of my honeyed strawberries, he must have known my answer. I licked that soft plate clean. I’d decided from the first moment I saw that pink gown, and I didn’t regret it.

Not one bit.