I watched an episode of Great British Bake Off for the first time and this is what I saw
Samantha Holsby, 38, from Twechar, approached the dais, offering out in front of her one of the twelve Platters of Supplication.
Paul the Angel sniffed the proffered foodstuffs, his nostrils flaring like a flame lit cave mouth offering possibilities to the hunted. Samantha kept her head low, her eyes down. Viewers at home clutched blankets, wept, and turned away. They could not bear the tension. They could not tell if Samantha was crying or if was just nerve-induced sweat dripping from her face.
The Angel rolled the flapjack between thumb and forefinger, his face maintaining its customary hostility, before throwing a piece to his companion. It landed in her eye socket, and fell backwards into the pitch black void beyond.
‘Oh no,’ she trilled, ‘Lost to infinity. The Old Ones will eat well tonight.’
Samantha was definitely crying now. She knew as well as anyone that anyone who looked into Mother Currant’s eyes saw glimpses of things that forever burdened the soul. Even though she did not have eyeballs in there - that where her skin and skull ended the abyss began - Mother Currant functioned as if she had perfect vision. Perfect. The slightest visual imperfection on the offerings was chastised in a way that seeped into your being as if under prised fingernails.
Apart from that, though, she was lovely.
‘The Old Ones will eat well,’ agreed Paul the Angel, ‘They will taste part of your essence, Middle Aged Woman, and soon you will feel pangs for a part of yourself that is irretrievably lost forever.’
‘Also,’ he added, ‘Your flapjack was nice. None of the oats came loose, and the odour reminded me of <INEFFABLE CONCEPT COMPREHENSIBLE ONLY TO THE DIVINE>.’
Once Samantha’s ears had stopped bleeding, she was led away by the Fool, who said kind words and hid sad eyes.
‘The Scottish hostages will not be purged tonight,’ said Mother Currant. ‘Fool, bring forth the haughty boy from Hampshire.’
The haughty boy from Hampshire had performed well in an earlier offering, causing Paul the Angel to boom his pleasure quite Heaven-ward. Since then, he had let overconfidence get the better of him, and was thus loudly chastised for his pasties.
His legs shook as he gangled forward, aft agley, before he offered his flapjacks to the hosts.
The silver platter was visibly unsteady in his hands. A crumb fell away from the corner, an oaty maw opening up in the previously perfect traybake. That maw symbolised the new and widening gap between the haughty boy from Hampshire’s hopes, and his chances.
Paul the Angel did not sniff the flapjack. Instead, he gazed upon its imperfection and exhaled continually through his nose for approximately thirty seconds. All the while he looked upon the haughty boy from Hampshire with scorn, and this gaze was felt. Although no liquid appeared on the floor, or escaped in a torrent, the haughty boy from Hampshire suffered from a minor soiling at this point, but gritted his teeth and held the seepage at bay.
It was at this point that Paul the Angel decided to breathe in.
‘Oh dear,’ he said. ‘I smell you boy. KAPLAH.’
The haughty boy from Hampshire bit his tongue til it bled, but he did not wet himself.
Mother Currant extended her jaw to reveal her rows of whale-like teeth, soft rounded tendrils like anemones invited the flapjack in. Such was her suction that it disappeared from the platter in the blink of an eye, caressed and absorbed by her tendril-teeth like so much sloppy love.
It was at this point that the tributes could tell their fate from the sung Mother Currant sang while she ingested their bakes. The ensuing visions were subjective, but the whole country knew if Mother Currant hated the cakes. The whole country knew it for days.
The haughty boy from Hampshire pictured his first love. A world where they had grown old together. A world without fire. The joy it gave him felt unconfined, so he didn’t notice the images beginning to blur, to white out, until all that was left of him was a bed-ridden creature whose only memory was of fire. He couldn’t remember anything other than the flames. Sometimes he enjoyed this memory though, because somehow he knew it was all he had left of something.
‘This flapjake tastes bitter in my mouths,’ said Mother Currant, not unkindly. ‘I have tasted darkness unending and the hate of countless suns, but this...this is a subpar flapjack.’
Paul the Angel nodded, unkindly.
‘We have no choice left to us,’ said Mother Currant.
Paul the Angel leaned down to the haughty boy from Hampshire’s ear, and whispered into it.
The boy looked up into Paul’s eyes. ‘But…’ he said, and then immediately turned to bread.
Paul the Angel turned into a dove and called out to his brethren. Within minutes the haughty boy from Hampshire had been pecked to a thousand pieces by a swarm of peace. Paul the Angel transformed back into his bipedal form, and picked some crumbs from his teeth with a nail. ‘As further punishment his family will be baked into a pie and presented to the Queen,’ he said.
The other tributes kept their heads down, all bar one.
Samantha was staring at them.
She’d had enough. The Fool raised a warning hand but she brushed it off.
‘What did you say to that boy?’ she said. ‘He was a good kid, he loved baking, he-’
Paul the Angel waved a hand, and though her mouth moved Samantha said nothing more.
‘I told him the truth,’ he said. He walked over to Samantha, grinned, and whispered something in her ear.
She began screaming almost instantly. The Fool raised her hands over her face, and saw no evil.
‘Next week we’ll be making scones,’ said Mother Currant.
And she smiled like a nightmare who once meant well.
