Mr. Cake is a miserable creature. Beaten, devalued, worked to death and given only the sustaining motivation of hate and derision by his harridan of a wife and men he doesn't know, or knows too well. He spends his nights alone, when he is lucky, and looks long into the empty blackness.

One of those long nights, the blackness swells. It swirls. It speaks.

(My Halloween-type story, made under the auspices of this, the most dour and dreary time of the year. We are allowed to let the depression and fear out to play. And this story was the result, because it is special to me.

I have always said in how low and hated a regard I hold the fandom-standard Cakeold/Cakedultery/Cakevorce stories. I also hate that Mr. Cake is usually seen as a good person because it makes his abuse and devaluation all the more terrible. He doesn't deserve it.

As with so many of my stories, I dedicate this to the inimitable, broad, grand and wonderful man of letters Bronystories. I hasten to add, should anyone look unfavorably on this, he did not have anything to do with this but impetus. He tried to convince me to write what I could not, a story where a beaten and utterly devalued Mr. Cake slapped a goofy and good-natured smile on his face and acted okay during his spousal abuse at the hooves of his wife and her lovers. It shouldn't be done, but it is, with the same dull and pointless regularity as making Braeburn ultra-gay.

Have a good Halloween season, all.)