DECADENT

Nana, an elegant 72-year-old, with beautician flocked grey hair, enters the den wearing her signature apron of red and yellow roses with old smudge stains of chocolate icing and strawberry filling, waving around a whisk as if it were a magic wand.

“Edgar?!” in her shrill flighty voice, which Edgar loves, “Honey, where are you?”

The door to the bathroom in the hallway opens all the way exposing Edgar Rouge sitting on the throne, cigarette in his mouth, holding a graphic comic.

“Here Nana!”

Ash falls off onto the opened page; Edgar flicks it off, smoke exhaling out of his nostrils. Edgar is shirtless, his upper body molded from a torso in Michelangelo’s sketch book. His shirt hangs outside the door, for he never likes to retain the odor of bodily functions.

Nana stays in the den, and converses with him, “Well don’t waste all day in there, we have some baking to do. Aunt Zella is due here any moment and we promised her a chocolate cake.”

“You already made a chocolate cake.” Edgar says flushing and exits the bathroom, pulling on his shirt as he walks past Nana without as much as a glance.

“I did?” Nana questions her memory.

“Sure, you’re holding it.”, Edgar informs her.

Suddenly a chocolate cake on an intricate pressed glass cake stand appears in Nana’s hand.

“Well!”, Nana exclaims. “This is the best cake I have ever made. My Lordie!”

Edgar leans on his desk and signs onto his webpage. The headliner of the screen reads DECADENT – SIGNATURE RED VELVET CAKES.

He scrolls down to find two new orders. “Nana! I need to go get ingredients for these orders.”

At that moment, Aunt Zella appears at the interior of the back doorway, in a laser etched blue mist, “Whoa child! Do I smell that sinful deliciousness!”

Nana is all smiles, “Zella! Why, I made this for you dear.”

Zella reaches for the cake which statically disappears from Nana’s grasp, then reappears in Zella’s hands. “You have out-done yourself with this one.”

While Nana and Aunt Zella converse, Edgar walks straight through the ladies, a minor reaction from them as if he merely bumped their arms on the way past.

Edgar slips on his loafers by the back door. “Nana, Zella I’ll be back soon.”

Zella looks over Nana’s shoulder at him, “You stay away from those nasty women, son. OK?”

Edgar nods and closes the door.

At the Green Pocket, a pool hall and lounge nearby, Edgar walks up to the bar where a couple sits quietly. The bartender, Ted, is at the far end wiping down glassware when he notices Edgar.

Ted walks down to him, “Same?” Ted asks.

Edgar nods and lights up a smoke. A middle-aged woman is around the corner of the bar top, rattling on about something with a pensive looking young man, who fidgets in his windbreaker pockets.

Ted delivers Edgar his Bloody Mary, “Everything going well Edgar?” bringing up a green ashtray from below the bar.

Edgar takes a long drag and exhales upward, toward the smoke eater fans, “As well as it could be, I suppose”.

“Well,” Ted wipes off the bar, a nervous habit, “Mary and I, we’re keeping you in our thoughts.”

Edgar takes a long drink, “Yeah, I guess it is coming to that day. Thanks Ted.” Edgar shoves the butt of his cigarette out, “Hard to believe it’s been seven years since Zeb was…”

Edgar stops, shivers, and guzzles his Bloody Mary.

“Another?” Ted asks, sorry to have brought up a sore subject.

Edgar nods.

The young man rushes away from the middle-aged woman, who watches him go.

The lady then turns to the man, two seats down from her, “Hi I’m Janice,” the man, buried in his cell phone, barely acknowledges her.

Janice starts into an endless recanting of her daily social media knowledge. “I was telling that other nice young man, I had read on Fab Life today that there was young couple who live in Great Briton, they just adopted a new…”

Edgar stares at her, blankly almost sadly as she rambles on about one story or fun fact or trivia or data B.S. tripe after another.

Edgar’s mind goes back to a dusk three years ago. His younger brother Zeb was walking back home, dribbling his basketball. A car zoomed around the curve ahead of him, the driver was texting, and ran right over Zeb without ever slowing down.

This solemn reminiscence is halted by Roger the Drunk, who has stumbled up next to Edgar, burping cheap whiskey and cigars.

“Yeah it’s a lot worse out, out there my buddy, than most would know.” Roger’s fat hand lays on Edgar’s arm.

Edgar looks down at Roger’s disgusting fingernails. Edgar’s phone rings, he gladly answers it.

“Sure, I still bake.”, walking to the door and outside to a quieter environment, “Yeah I can do Chocolate, when do you need it?” As the glass door shuts, Edgar watches Janice at the bar.

Back at Edgar’s home, the Ancestor system, which had been projecting Nana and Aunt Zella, is now in standby mode. There is a quiet hum in the darkened home. A key turns the dead bolt, a slight beep sounds, activating the blue laser scanner.

Edgar enters, holding a thermal cooler, Gramps appears, wearing a gold smoking jacket with black piping, drinking a glass of Scotch,

“What ya got there my boy?” His faint Eastern European accent causing Edgar to smile. “Going to make another Red Velvet I see.”

Edgar sets the cooler on the counter, “Gramps! Hey! It has been awhile.”

Edgar digs out his mixing bowls from the open shelves under the countertop.

“Fresh ingredients always make the best cakes.” Gramps says and then sips his Scotch.

Edgar brings out his bender and unpacks the cooler, laying its contents on the counter, a medium sized object wrapped in blood-soaked cheese cloth. “That they do. That they do.”

Gramps electronically saunters over, leans on the cabinet next to Edgar, who unwraps the human heart. “Ed my boy, what have you gotten yourself into?”

Edgar glances sideways at Gramps, “You know. Of all people, you know why I do this.”

“Look son, Zeb wouldn’t want you to. It’s not in his honor.”

Anger swells in Edgar as his fist clinch, this isn’t the first time he has had this bold discussion with the Ancestor image of Gramps. The system must have developed a glitch, the digital family is only to interact, not react, not judge. Edgar has walked across the kitchen to the sink when Gramps continues.

“How can you sell these?” Gramps askes, “Blood Red Velvet, what is wrong with you? Didn’t I tell you before how wrong this is.”

Edgar loses it, he grabs a carving knife from the sink, turns slinging it at Gramps. The knife flies through the man and into the oak cabinet, splitting the old wood. “Old man! If you ever come against me again, I’ll kill you!”

Gramps’ image is stoic, almost as if the file is frozen. Edgar stands there for several minutes, turning pale before walking to retrieve the blade. As he reaches through Gramps’ chest to the knife handle.

“Ancestor.” He looks into Gramps aged eyes, “Shut down and perform diagnostic repairs.”

There is a series of beeps, then the female voice “Ancestor shutting down.”

After a few hours of recuperating from the confrontation, Edgar is now focused on creating his cake ‘made with heart’, as the website advert reads, a sick play on words to be sure. His mind drifts to when he got the high-tech device, that began as a comfort to him on those long lonely days and nights following the death of Zeb, then Nana and Gramps two years later.

His psychosis started the year he lost his brother. Edgar would fixate on people blindly glued to their devices, unaware and uncaring about the real world or people around them. He became enraged at drivers he saw texting or looking at their phones as they drove past. On one such occasion, as he was about to accelerate after his traffic signal changed, a driver ran the red light in front of him. If he had not paused to check oncoming traffic, he would have been a casualty. He still can see the woman in slow motion, driving while looking down at her cell phone, not even looking up, completely unaware of the red light or her fate a few yards down the street when she crashed into a stopped trash truck.

Edgar pulled to the next street, got out and went to see the wreckage. The front of her small sedan was crushed to the firewall, blood dripped down the interior of her shattered windshield. Some people that had been leaning into the cabin of her car, stepped back, ashen faced. One man was bent over gagging. Edgar walked next to her door, internally gleeful at her demise. A payback for the horrid death of his beloved brother. He looked for a long time at the carnage, the only thing he could not get out of his mind, was the destroyed pink cake box, on the passenger floorboard, a red velvet cake smashed and macerated, blood dripping down onto it from the dash.

That is when his ultimate plan for revenge was hatched. He would make Red Velvet cakes out of the hearts of people like her, like the one who destroyed Zeb, marketing them to the same ilk of people via their social media profiles.

The new morning sun is tree top high; Edgar retrieves a pink cake box from the trunk of his rebuilt, electric converted Royal Red 1970 Karmann Ghia. All smiles and a skip in his step, Edgar Rouge walks up the sidewalk to a modest Ranch home delivering a fresh Red Velvet cake to Mrs. James. He rings the doorbell, and after several moments a greasy haired teenaged girl opens the door. She barely looks up from her phone long enough to see the cake box stamped ‘DECADENT’ before returning to her worthless diatribe of social interaction with other antisocial mindless sheep. The whelp didn’t even look up at Edgar.

“It’s your stupid cake!” she screeches at her mother as she walks away from the open door.

If he had planned better, Edgar could have made several cakes from this household.

The mother appears, ear buds in, talking to someone on the phone wirelessly, “…. well I told them about the time Gloria went to Kansas on her youth trip and came back with one. Hold on Dave.” She smiles at Edgar, “Oh, hi there!” Mrs. James lifts the cake box flap to inspect.

“You like?” Edgar says sweet as sugar.

“Oh yes, very much.” Mrs. James drops the flap, brings up her phone and swipes up.

With a ding, Edgar has been paid, and has gotten payback. He hands her the box, walks over the cobblestone walkway to the opening in the hedges at the James’ driveway, back to his car parked at the curb.

As Edgar steps onto the sidewalk, Roger the drunk, who is drunk of course, walks into him. Edgar is nimble enough to not have fallen over like Roger has. Edgar helps Roger up,

“Hey there buddy, hey there. Thanks for the help up buddy.” Roger emits a wet burp. “Hey Edgar, it’s you. Thank you, buddy. Well.” Burp. “Well are you still baking those cakes?”

“Red Velvets, yes sir, quite a business” Edgar backs away from the walking brewery.

“You only make one kind, huh?” Roger, oblivious that he is full view, or that it is even daytime, begins to urinate on the tree next to Edgars car.

“Just the one, but I might try a Rum cake pretty soon.” Edgar says as he gets into his car, rolls down the window and calls out, “See you soon Roger.”, before driving off to his next delivery.