by William J. Jackson

          Ilsa Waters found her future waiting, pink and fragrant, atop the marble island in her remodeled kitchen. Surrounded by wood paneled walls and white countertops, a stainless steel sink with elephantine faucet, it greeted her quietly. Softer than love in sugary whorls over placid fondant.

          “I can’t believe you got me a cake, Nelson, you tricky devil, you.” She dropped a hefty ring: keys, LED light, multitool, stuffed pocket monster onto the island along with a prodigious Louis Vuitton bag. She looked up at the corner of the kitchen, where night lights were coming on at sunset, illuminating glass walls, an interior garden, boxed in short grass plus a healthy olive tree. The sole windows in this new walled in home, modern ingenuity for a small lot. Lights shone, revealing the camera and its omnipresent green bulb.

          “You’re watching me from work right now, aren’t you?” she flashed whitened teeth at the lens before blowing a kiss and hunching over. Ilsa walked around the island, slow pace, eyes on the sweet treat exposed to the air. A simple setup. Cake. Fancy wavy green glass plate. Serrated knife. Folded notecard. “What is…no! Raspberry rose layer.” She noted its pleasing scent, the small hill of plump raspberries atop mesmerizing swirls in rose patterns all around its circumference. Red and whitish pink perfection, the kind too pretty to slice. 

          “I said it was my favorite but you didn’t have to…” Ilsa said to the cyclopean eye above. “Oh, God. It’s only been three months. I was with Reese five years. He never even got me a bag of M&Ms. Maybe I hit the jackpot for once.”

          Ilsa picked up the knife. “You know this is for slicing bread, right?” The knife was serrated, its tip rounded and inconsequential. She moved around the island, opened a drawer and replaced wrong with right. A triangular, sharp chef’s knife ordered years back during a late night online shopping spree at a time when she convinced herself she would master the art of cooking. She set it next to the beautiful Art Nouveau plated cake then jumped out of her skin.

          The Louis Vuitton vibrated.

          A hand scurried frantic through the bag’s cluttered hold. “Oh my God hold on hold on–hello? Deb? It was down in the trenches again, you know how it is. She did? Oh, that’s wonderful, a good school. Mike was gonna go there if he didn’t get into U of D. Mm-hmm. Oh. Let me tell you what Nelson got for me today…”

          Ilsa remained on the phone, wandering, smiling up at the camera every now and again. She made it towards the sink, its backsplash a bright display of alternating forest green and sea green glass tiles.

          “I know! I’ve only been seeing him for a little while but the cake is divine. I don’t wanna cut it. And the plate, it matches the splash in my kitchen! You’re right, guy pays attention. Might be a keeper. There’s a card, too, but I think I might actually make this guy dinner. Yeah. Invite him over, then I’ll read the card in front of him, maybe then give him a little something. One romantic gesture deserves another, right?”

          A sound like glass hitting floor shocked Ilsa just after the lights went out.

          She whipped around. Deep blood red sky remained to shadow the kitchen, casting long shadows across the island and white cabinets. Ilsa remembered to breathe.

          “I’m here,” she whispered into the phone. “Power’s out and– Nelson?” she asked out loud, but on getting no response, she returned to a hushed tone. “It’s gone. The cake. The cake and the knife are–”

          Something primal encouraged her to squat down and slink over close to the island as a slight rapping went across the edge of the kitchen, in the darkness where it met the hallway.

          “I have to call you back!” Ilsa smashed the big red insignia and dialed 911. The phone rang as she slid around to the island’s edge, back against it, staring wide at the olive tree, the red black sky and dead lights. The camera bulb remained brilliant green.

          “9-1-1 do you need an ambulance or police?”

          “P–” a hot throb penetrated Ilsa’s right ankle, forcing her to roll left, drop the phone. Scream.

          The phone smacked the tiles screen down with that familiar crisp sound of doom and slid across the floor. Ilsa saw the outside world vanish in a single drop, slow motion, while turning to assess the pain.

          The floor behind her made swishing sounds. Once. twice. Three times.

          Jabs punctured the bottom of her left foot in the space between it and her expensive gold sandal. The toes curled. Another dove into the right tendon, splitting it, the calf frothing red. Thigh tightened, leg pulled close to the body. White tiles were evolving pink rose swirls as Ilsa screamed and flipped on her back, grabbing one leg, then the other. Her hands were bloody. Panicked, she rolled over to motivate on hand power, sobbing, crying, legs burning.

          The phone was an utter garble of vibrations grinding across its own glass bits as a muffled voice perhaps attempted to assess the situation.

          “Help me!” Ilsa cried on repeat, crawling. Finally she reached the phone, only to turn it over, cutting her fingertips to see the screen a mishmash of technicolor nonsense. The voice an incessant ad haunting the corner.

          Behind her came the scraping resonance. She shutup. Closed eyes full of tears. 

          “Please take whatever you want. Money’s in the purse just take it please please just don’t hurt me.”

A third scrape. Halt. Ilsa panted. Teeth bit bottom lip to bleeding from the many severe lacerations. But, slowly, her eyes opened. No sound. No assault. No ruffling through the moneyed bag for its riches. No boots nor shoes or pair of sneakers greeted Ilsa. 

          Just her, on the ground, and the raspberry rose cake, plated, bloodied chef knife pressed aginst the swirls. Blood droplets on pink sugar. Green plate flooded. Not one iota of its artisanal form had been misaligned, not a raspberry out of place nor swirl disturbed, save for the sweet new red decor.

          She burst into a laughing sob, a senseless loss of understanding. “No no no no no!”

          The cake rushed across the floor, plate ticking, scraping tile grooves as it moved. The whole thing rotated, bringing the knife to the fore, its tip thrust into Ilsa’s side between the lower ribs. A fast strike slowed as it pushed. In. One. Two. Three and four inches.

          Out. Cake rotated back. Forward. The knife sliced her shoulder. Back. Again. Ilsa’s chest, cutting a rib. She gurgled blood from her mouth and heaved, body spasmed. 

          This the cake did well, as the olive tree watched and the green bulb at last went out and the kitchen went to all shadows as the floor colored and Ilsa gargled, sputtered. Exhaled.

         The front door blew in from the force, creaking as police swarmed the windowless house at 133 Grainger Lane. Uniforms scoured every room at gunpoint until–

          “All clear!”

          Sergeant Louis Ackley entered the home. “No windows on the whole house? Outside’s wrapped in rusty metal. Doesn’t make any sense. You find anything?”

          An officer appeared in a hallway shining a flashlight. “Sarge! Kitchen. Got a body.”

          Ackley strode after the officer, stopping at the border where hall carpeting met white tiles. 

          “My God. We’re too late.”

          They found Ilsa Water on her stomach in a pool of her own sticky residue. It was then that the lights kicked in. The police caught a shiver.

          “No sign of break-in.”

          “What do you mean no sign? Killer had to get in somehow!”

          The officer rounded the corpse to study, check around, study the strange glass garden. “Purse is here…looks untouched, Sarge.”

          Ackley squatted after eyeing the green buz of a distant security camera. He whipped out latex gloves and put them on. “I want every second of footage in the next hour. Wait.” He sniffed hard just to be sure. “You smell that?”

          “Nope.”

          Ackley sighed hard. “Nelson Turner managed to get a call out after he was stabbed repeatedly in his office. A card left at the scene said the girlfriend would die tonight. I’m sorry, Miss Waters that we didn’t get to you in time. Holy hell, Jakes, you don’t smell that?”

          Officer Jakes now sniffed like a bloodhound, head up in the air. “Sugar?”

          “Yeah! Lots of it, like a bakery in here.” Ackley took a half dozen photos, repressing a wealth of feelings seeing this pretty young woman gone from the world. Then he went back to using his eyes. Close. Closer. “Wait a minute.” He found a cotton swab in his jacket and used it to grace the blood pool. It moved gelatinous, that he expected. Except it clumped together into defined granules. He squinted. “The hell?” He touched her neck. Ice cold but firm. Then he pulled back his hand, winced, eyes aflame, and shot up on his heels.

          “Get everybody out of here now!”

          “Sarge?”

          “Now, dammit!”

          The officer moved fast, grabbing the folded notecard as evidence, read the thing before giving it to Ackley on the way out, yelling at the others.

          Once the front door slammed shut, Ackley observed his hand. Fingertips were coated in flesh gel, or so he thought. He smelled it. “Saccharine.”

          On his knees he touched the hair, the face, even her padded shoulder Egyptian cotton blouse. The dangling, blood-drenched gold triangular earring. Everything. He worked his way down, professionally, testing wiping feeling. 

          He shook his head. Couldn’t be. This was an emergency call, the real deal. Nelson laid in a hospital bed at Christiana Hospital this very instant fighting for his life. The sergeant had been there, interrogated, took notes, ran out the door double time. 

          Ackley doubted everything, but he had to know more as the impossible shifted to improbable. He took out a folding knife, and against all training, cut the victim’s arm.

          Sergeant Ackley wandered out into the front yard, a stunted thing full of cars and flashing lights. The neighborhood outside of Valmar was out of sight as if only this cage of a house existed. He was unaware of this and all other concerns.

          “Sarge.”

          “Sarge!”

          “What? Oh. Ah, have the coroner go in with Forensics.” He laughed.

          The officer made fists. “Sarge, something wrong?”

          Ackley caught the passive aggressive stance. He coughed. Gazed down at browned grass turning red and blue. “There were layers.”

          “Sir?”

          “Nothing. It’s nothing. Jakes, I, think we’ve been played by a very vicious, brilliant mind.”

          “Agreed. He wrote it out.”

          Ackley appeared pale, bewildered. “What did you say?”

          The officer coughed now, nerves. “The notecard on the island. I read it before I gave it to you. It’s sick stuff.”

          Ackley looked as if he’d been struck. He reached into every pocket until, finally, it was in his hand. “Put it in a pocket. Must have forgot with all the– let’s see what we got.”

          He whipped it open. Read the words. A tear down the cheek. Giggle. Ackley laughed.

                                   SWEETNESS SENDS IT REGARDS

          Said the card.

          “Sarge,” another officer leaning on a police car door yelled. “Doc at the hospital. Said Turner didn’t make it.”

          “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

          “They confirmed. Also, coroner’s gonna be late. Said the Turner guy’s got something wrong. Says you need to see it. Stat.”

          Ackley fumbled for a response but came up empty. He wanted to offer his team some kind of assurance but, alas. He meandered through the cars to find his own, feeling too many emotions. Sickened. Helpless. Dissociated? 

          In need of something sweet.