Soul Beneficiary

A girl and her award winning recipe gain some unsolicited attention.

Marianne added the topper to the cake. It was perfect. The graveyard scene was meticulously laid out in beautiful graham cracker with delicately placed icing grass and a sweeping path in chocolate frosting. The table had a couple of plastic skulls, some spooky candles, and a really fantastically carved pumpkin atop a lace tablecloth with cats and moons woven into it. She had gone all out this year and was very excited for the first of the guests to arrive. A beep from the microwave went off, shrill and attention-getting. They were finally finished.

She put on her black and orange striped oven mitts and opened the oven to retrieve them. Her pride and joy: thirty prize-winning pumpkin turnovers, perfected over several dozen trial and error sessions. The recipe was a complete secret, and though she had been asked for it several times, she retained her secrecy. Marianne’s best friend, Ethan, had even tried to bribe her with a large bottle of her favorite whiskey. She was proud to know that even her drunk self could keep quiet about it.

Every year for the last four or five she had always thrown spectacular Halloween parties and baked a special batch of her pumpkin turnovers for her very lucky guests. It was one of the only times to get one and she suspected that some of her guests showed up for them more than her. It didn’t bother her though. She knew how good they were.

Sir Francis Bacon, Frank for short, rubbed up against her leg and got red cat hairs all over her black and purple stockings. She cocked an eyebrow at him.

“These aren’t for you, silly boy. They’re for guests. Besides! You don’t even have thumbs to sign the contract with!”

It was a wonderful joke, one she had been sitting on since the year before. That year she hadn’t made as many and they were gone before everyone had been able to get one for themselves. Christie, in particular, had been heart broken over it.

“I swear to god you need to start selling these! I would have sold my soul to get one this time!”

This year she was prepared with a stack of thirty soul-binding contracts promising one pumpkin turnover in exchange for a soul. It was only a joke of course, but she was still excited to use them.

Marianne used a pair of silicone coated tongs to move the precious pies over to the cooling rack and then put her still mittened hands on her hips, proud of all her work. The doorbell rang just then, the first of many guests.

“One minute!” She rushed to pull off the mitts and then stopped briefly to straighten her purple wig before opening the door to her apartment. “Hey, Joel! Come on in!”

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All in all it was a total success. Scary movies had been watched, candy handed out, and drinks drunk. Ethan had been the last to leave, helping her with cleaning up some like the sweetheart he was. Even so, Marianne hated to leave a mess behind for her to deal with in the morning, so while her buzzed self could still convince her it would be no big deal, she washed some of the dishes involved in creating such a huge spread of food and started cleaning off the table. The stack of spooky contracts was there and she smiled. They had gone over with much laughter and ink. Joel had jokingly given her a handwritten addendum of things she wouldn’t be able to do with his soul. She agreed to every term of course. They would ultimately go in the trash, but it was well worth the paper and effort of writing them up. Only Andrea had opted not to sign one, saying that it wasn’t right to joke about such things. She was Joel’s girlfriend, and a little too serious for Marianne’s taste, but she had given Andrea a turnover anyway as a gesture of goodwill. She had enjoyed it, of course, so at least she had taste.

A small pool of black candle wax had accidentally dripped onto her new lace tablecloth, but such was the price of a good time. She blew out the candles which had burned down to nubs over the course of the night. Beautiful streams of wax now lumped themselves about the edges of the red plastic candelabra. She was loathe to put all these things back in the boxes they lived in for the rest of the year; October was her favorite month, and Halloween, of course, her favorite holiday.

As she studied the wax drippings there came a sudden knock on her front door, firm, but polite. Frank looked up from his place on the couch, hackles raising and a low growl starting. Marianne shooshed him, but  her brows furrowed. Everyone that was invited had attended and everyone that had attended had already departed. It was now almost three in the morning and so even the oldest trick or treaters had hopefully gone to bed hours before. Bed was honestly where she should have been at that early hour.

So who was at the door?

She crossed the living room to the front door and took care to look through the peep hole. A man in a black suit with a crimson shirt stood outside, completely unfamiliar to her. The chain was on the door and so she felt secure opening it the allowed crack to see what he wanted.

He was a tall man, taller than she had first thought on a look through the viewer. He had light smooth skin and a well-kept beard that matched the well groomed black hair on his head.

“Ah, there you are. Ms. Marianne Petersen?,” his voice carried smokey honeyed tones and was deep, but friendly.

“Yes, that’s me.” She was confused. She didn’t know this man, but he was clearly familiar with her.

“Wonderful. I work for a client. It’s come to our attention that you have a pastry recipe capable of making certain persons willing to part with their soul. We would like to make you a very generous offer…”

It was only then that she deigned to look down at his feet. They were cloven.