Birthday Cake

The result of a demented dream.

   "Can you hear me, Jennifer?"
   The voice was oil, sliding painfully into the crevices of Jenny's skull, rattling harshly against her eardrum. She tried to brush the tickling sensation off her face, but her wrists wouldn't budge. She opened her eyes, staring at the haze before her. Blood red shade, bulging in her sight. Then came the small filtering of light, coming from a dozen or so tiny orange lights in front of her, dancing this way, twisting that. It took her a moment before she groggily realized they were candles. On top of a birthday cake. The words "Happy Birthday Jennifer" were scrawled in blue frosting was smeared across the top of the cake.
   "Can you hear me, Jennifer?"
   She looked down at herself. She was wearing a white dress with matching porcelain shoes but her wrists were tied to the arms of a chair by ugly black rags. She was seated at the head of a long table, cloaked in a plain tablecloth that looked like a chessboard, with red and black squares dueling each other. There were other people sitting at the table, too. A pair of identical men, but they had incomplete faces: the one on the left only had the leftmost features of the face, whereas the one on the right had the rightmost features. Each only had half a nose, an ugly lump of meat that looked distorted and twisted beyond recognition.  On the left side of the table was a rabbit headed man, with matted and dirty fur, and ugly gnawing teeth. He wore a tuxedo and gloves. To the right sat three men who had no faces. They, too, wore tuxedos and gloves that contrasted to their round, bald, white heads.
   "She's awake!" cried a tiny voice from down the table, past the large cake.
   "Ha ha!" a dwarf came over, stepping carelessly on plates and utensils. Some went crashing to the ground. He held a bowl in his large, ruddy fingers.
   The dwarf was grossly misshapen, with a lump head and a small body, and overlong arms. He wore a tuxedo as well, with large flapper-like shoes and a crooked top hat. He smiled with butter yellow teeth under a straggly mustache.
    "Hello, Jennifer!" he cried. "Happy birthday!"
    It wasn't her birthday! She tried to shout that. She tried to scream and beg and ask "Who are you?!" but she was mesmerized by fear. The rabbit headed man chattered his teeth and retrieved a pocket watch from his tuxedo pocket.
    "Can we hurry this up?" he asked. "I have s**t that needs to be done."
    "Fine!" cried the dwarf. He set the bowl down. "What do you say we do?"
   Jennifer's eyes shot down to the red bowl that was laid before her. She instantly wished she didn't look at it. Within the bowl sat a fat, writhing maggot with the face of an infant. Bristly little hairs stitched its green flesh. A multitude of tiny and defunct legs rippled down its underside.
   "Quick!" the little fiend croaked. "Get her mouth open!"
   Before she could look up, the little man's hand was on her, prying her mouth open. In the other hand was the bowl. She screamed as he lifted it up and spilled the little creature into her mouth, then clamped her mouth shut, grabbing her nose. She felt it squirm violently as it went down.