The Ladies of Horror
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It’s All About Taste 
by Linda Lee Rice

My passion is creating delicious, delectable melt-in-your-mouth pastries. It’s what drives me, wakes me up at the crack of dawn with new recipes unrolling in my mind. My passion is my whole world and now it’s being threatened.

I own my own shop called Dreams and have been in my little spot for most of my baking career. Of course, the site has changed through the centuries, but I’ve grown along with it.

I have a list of steady customers who love my pastries and another select list. For those customers, I made specialized baked goods with unique ingredients. Do you need a raise? Give your boss this cupcake. Is your husband cheating? Here, this donut will give him only eyes for you. I don’t advertise these “special” treats. This business is by word of mouth.

But now, my second line of business has been found out by an unscrupulous person. Blackmail threats have fallen from his lips with the insinuations of calling the health inspector to check out my back room where the unusual ingredients are kept. I figured out that while I was busy with my clientele, he picked the lock and slipped inside the room. I know he was pasty white and shaking when he barreled back out.

He pulled me aside after my customers left. He was a slimy little man with slicked-back hair, frog-like eyes, and a pointy tongue that kept licking his lips. It wasn’t my creations he wanted, but the money from them.

And the things he accused me of, my heart nearly gave out! I have no idea why he would misconstrue my helping my “exclusive” customers as something harmful! I have to fan myself just thinking about the things he said, hurtful things, harmful things! I have never been spoken to like that in all my centuries. I was appalled!

So, I told him to come back today after closing. I told him that we would talk about it over tea and pastries. You see the cupcake with the bit of brown spot? That is my particularly rare cupcake, one whiff, and you can’t help but want to eat it. I could say the feeling is almost as if you are being compelled to eat it.

After our tea, I’m sure things will go back to normal. With the likes of him, he won’t be missed, and besides, I’m getting low on my “unique” ingredients anyway.

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Fiction © Copyright Linda Lee Rice
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com

More about Linda Lee Rice:

Linda Lee Rice aka Ruzicka has poetry published in Twilight Times, Dark Krypt, Fables, Descending Darkness, Writing Village, Spine, and Page, Muses Gallery, Bloodbond, Lycan Valley Press Publishers, Alban Lake, Highland Park Poetry, Rosette Maleficarum, The Siren’s Call, Edify Fiction and the June Cotner anthology, “House Blessings” and “Garden Blessings

She has short stories published in The Grit, and Reminisce, Haunted Encounters: Friends and Family, FrostFire Worlds. Plus, a personal essay at Mamalode. She also has various articles and blogs published online as a freelance writer.