Cake Smugglers
We could offload the boats very quickly. So quickly that people’s heads spun. It was a dangerous place to be, many would walk backwards off the pier. The cakes were exquisite. The government wouldn’t allow us to keep them at home, nor would the rest of the free world if they knew what we had. It was difficult enough for us to defer satisfaction and wait until we were each served our pieces, hunched on the docks each man eating two 11×9 panloads of sweet yellow heaven. The captain would watch over us and laugh quietly to himself.
I was living this life for at least 2 and a half years when we were challenged by a fellow group of cake smugglers. The events were simple tests of dexterity and willpower; hold on to a merry go round as one team member pushed it faster and faster, who could destroy a stranger’s ship the fastest and which group could lose the most weight in 2 weeks. My dog thought the last one was a trick, the other team were scrawny bastards with metabolisms comparable to the sun’s power to waste away hydrogen atoms on things like light and heat.
The day came to start the competition. I thought I would gain an edge by drinking sugar but I arrived at the piers parched and sweaty. My teammates looked at me with disgust. I had enough. I sat down on a field overlooking the piers and watched the teams duke it out for supremacy. They planned on staying overnight at the area so no one could cheat by cutting off a teammate’s leg or torso.
Observing from the hill for the first week, I realized how stupid it was. By the second week I was aching to become a part of something more than the dumb club I had started with the grasses around me. We were called “The Things That Like To Be In This Particular Spot” and I painted every member’s head a delicate red to indicate our collective passion. As I watched the other team declare themselves victors and throw our cakes into the lake I shouted from my perch. I shouted sounds I never knew I could make and I shouted math formulas that felt right. I sat back down and mumbled to my club members “The oranges for organs for the sickly. For me, for you. It’s what I gotta do. Gotta do.”
