✔Cupcakes to Kill For

1. Mad Batter🧁

Those with the biggest hearts often feel so empty because they leave pieces of themselves in everything they used to love.

Casey slipped on his bomber jacket, bracing against the bitter wind. It nipped his cheeks and ears after he propped open the back door of his family's bakery. The dumpster lay at the bottom of the alleyway, with a veil of snow covering the top.

Snowflakes alighted on the young baker's face as he hefted a heavy trash bag up over his shoulder and into the bin. With the weather in the low twenties, daytime seemed to wick away quicker than a candle in the cold. Casey longed for warmer days again.

Graffiti covered the brick walls around him, and the miasma from the dumpster made him wrinkle his nose. Trash duties were the worst at nighttime. He swore a shadow slithered across the wall at the end of the alley and hoped it was just a hungry animal searching for food. Casey's imagination ran wild with creatures lurking in the dark, preying upon him for their next feast. He kept his eyes peeled as he closed the dumpster lid, carefully stepping back.

A loud ruckus came from the bottom of the alley, startling Casey. He let out a tiny yelp, staggering back against the building. It sounded like broken glass. A part of him wanted to investigate the source, but logic pulled him back to the bakery's door.

Tugging it open, he waited for just a moment. Almost as if he expected someone, or perhaps something, to emerge from the perpetual darkness. As if a demon would pop out from the shadows and drag him into hell. At least it would be warm there.

However, nothing emerged from the alleyway, and Casey chalked it up to his nerves. With a sigh, he stepped back inside the bakery and locked the door behind him. Just to be safe.

"Chilly out there, isn't it?" His sister, Lani, swept the floor, sparing him a glance. "You hear about old Harold down the road? They ruled his death an accident. Slipped on a patch of ice in his backyard and banged his head on the concrete."

"Jesus, that's horrible. I kinda feel bad for him. I mean, not to speak ill of the dead, but he wasn't very kind to people." Casey rubbed his shivering hands together. "Remember the crap he pulled with us?"

Lani nodded. "Yeah, I can't say I'm torn up about it."

Old Harold was a nasty man who hated children. When Casey and Lani were kids, he threatened to unleash his rabid-looking dog on them for getting too close to his precious property. He never dropped by the bakery anymore, thankfully, but that's only because he lied about finding a dead beetle in his coffee. Lani caught him planting it. Crazy man thought he'd earn himself free coffee for a year by doing so. He received no such thing.

"Took them forever to find his body," Lani said.

"Probably because he doesn't have much family left in town," Casey replied. "Nobody was around to check on him."

"Yeah, and he bitched at anyone who got near his house. Luckily some of his neighbors finally did."

Casey sighed. "It's sad how he went unnoticed for so long. Maybe being lonely made him into such a grouch."

"Maybe." Lani shrugged. "His kids moved away when they got older. No surprise that they didn't keep in touch with how he acted. They're too busy living their own lives."

"Yeah, I guess you're right."

Harold's kids were lucky to get out of this town. Winters in New Syracuse wore folks down. There was always a new drug overdose on the news or a gang murder somewhere in the rougher neighborhoods.

Nobody wanted to be outside, not unless they had to be. Even the kids didn't care to play in the snow that often. But his two-year-old son, Wyatt, loved sledding out on the hill near their house. Casey planned to take him out again tomorrow when he had the day off.