by Benjamin He
The gingerbread man jumped out of the oven and nearly gave me a heart attack. When my sister requested my assistance in baking cookies, this was very much not what I had in mind.
The cookie flopped face first onto the floor tiles, twitched, and then got up on its two stubby little feet. It glanced down at itself—the half-melted gumdrops sticking on its chest, the white frosting outlining its arms, and legs smoking slightly.
Then, it looked up at us: its messy red frosting eyes narrowing, its squiggly mouth wobbling, the face twisting into some sort of amalgamated, irritated expression. I glanced at my sister, who stood next to me wearing her striped oven mitts. We looked back at the gingerbread man.
Then, all three of us screamed loud enough to shatter glass.
I wasn’t so sure if the cookie’s scream counted as one, though. It was more of a distorted, hoarse rasp that went up and down in volume and pitch.
I turned to my sister. “YOU DIDN’T SAY THE COOKIE WOULD COME ALIVE!”
“IT WASN’T SUPPOSED TO COME ALIVE!”
“I’m still here, you know.”
“AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH-”
“It can talk!” I shouted, windmilling my arms and knocking a rainbow of gumdrops off the table behind me.
“Of course, I can talk!”
The gingerbread man took a step forward, smushing his mushy foot into the ground. He lifted his other foot and promptly face-planted into the ground again. He let out a muffled “Ow!”
He managed to lift himself back up again, reaching out a hand. A couple miniscule cracks ran along his “palm,” and tiny crumbs of gingerbread dropped to the floor. His hand came apart to form tiny fingers. He reached down, closed his hand around one of his gumdrop buttons that had stuck to the ground, pulled it up, and stuck it into his chest.
Clearing his throat, he looked back up at us again and said, “Hello there! I think we got off on the wrong foot-” His left foot suddenly let out a crack and dissolved into splinters. “Gah! Curse these cookie trotters!” He looked back up at us, now balancing unevenly on his one good foot.
“Anyway, hi. My name is—” the gingerbread man let out a gurgling noise that lasted about 30 seconds. “Cookie-Man-Ginger the Fourth. What about you?”
My sister blinked. “Uhhh…I’m…Mina? I guess?”
Man-Cookie-Frosting the 15th, or whatever his name was, nodded enthusiastically. “Great!” He pointed to me. “And you?”
I dropped the cookie cutters I was holding. They clattered to the floor with a CLANG.
Ginger-Man-Pastry the 829th rubbed his chin. “Clang? I can work with that.”
My voice finally decided to work again. “Uh…no, my name is—”
“SPLENDID!” Whatshisname screamed. He clapped his little hands. “Now we can begin!”
“Begin what?” Mina asked, dropping her mitts and tugging at her Happy Holidays, Y’all sweater.
“The story of course!” Bread-Cookie-Ginger the 4000th—you know what, I’ll just call him Ginger—hopped on his deteriorating feet. “Surely you’ve heard the classic. That gingerbread man story! Anyway—”
Ginger didn’t wait for an answer and continued, “Every century or so or whatever, the story has to repeat. A new gingerbread is created. We’ve gotta continue the story! Keep it modern!”
“Now,” Ginger continued gleefully. “Let’s begin!” He stared at us for a few seconds. Then, he ran away.
“Hey!” Inexplicably, Mina immediately ran after him. I followed and ran down the hall. Ginger was somehow outrunning two very human human beings with half a leg and a stubby nub.
“Run! Run! As fast as you can!” Ginger shouted over his shoulder, stumbling along the floor. “You can’t catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!”
“Oh, we’ll see about that…” Mina muttered. She turned away and ran for the front door of our house while I ran after Ginger. Soon enough, we veered back into the kitchen.
Ginger cackled as he leapt across chairs. I scrambled around, trying to grab him as he jumped behind raisin packs and rolling pins. I almost pinned him down behind a cooling rack, but then my mind interrupted me: Why was I trying to catch him anyway? Some sort of innate, primal instinct? A type of Gingerbread craze induced by the ancient actions of my ancestors?
Those thoughts went out the window when Mina charged back into the kitchen with the dog in tow.
“Deb!” Mina shouted, pointing at Ginger. “Fetch that guy!” Deb barked and leapt at Ginger who leapt off the table and onto the floor.
Deb easily outpaced both of us, tongue flying as he chased. Ginger somehow increased his speed and outran the dog as well, flying forward like Usain Bolt on his edible feet.
“Run! Run! As fast as you can! You can’t catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!” Ginger continued his chant, more crumbs falling off various parts of his body. Deb closed his jaws on empty air over and over again as Ginger jumped out of the way.
I hurled a gingerbread-shaped cookie cutter. Without even looking behind him, he jumped into the air, and spread his arms and legs, clearing the cookie-cutter like an acrobat leaping through one of those fire-circles.
I threw my arms up in defeat. The fairytale ended with nobody catching that guy, so why bother? Then, I paused. My overwhelming urge to catch Ginger pounded in my head. My mind went over the fairytale again.
He had been eaten by a fox near the end, right? I didn’t know any foxes, but there might’ve been something close enough.
I turned around and let Deb and Mina keep up the chase. There, sitting atop a windowsill, licking herself, was Jazz. The cat looked up. “Meow?”
I scooped her up—she let out a bamboozled “mrrww?”—and I turned around again. Ginger was just coming into the room, Deb an inch away from him.
I dropped Jazz onto the ground and backed away to let her do her thing.
Jazz freaked out upon Ginger running into the room. Ginger was laughing like a maniac, but upon spotting Jazz, he froze; some sort of fox-related trauma initiated inside of him. That was just the opening Deb needed. He leapt on Ginger and began dismantling him like an iPad. Jazz rushed in too. Even Mina froze, watching Jazz and Deb tear Ginger apart.
Ginger cackled. “I'm quarter gone...I'm half gone...I'm three-quarters gone...I'm all gone!” Then, it was quiet, save for the sound of a dog and a cat licking themselves and ridding the sugar and sticky gumdrop remains off themselves.