Chapter 8: Spy
The fluorescent glow from the “Sugar & Spice” sign bled across the wet asphalt, painting the street in a sickly pink. From the darkened interior of Holloway Antiques, Bea watched. She’d been watching for weeks.
It started with the smiles. Not the normal, satisfied kind after a good brownie. These were fixed, glassy things. Then came the stains. Women—always women—leaving the bakery with smears of frosting on their chins, their blouses, sometimes in their hair, as if they’d started eating before they’d even left the counter. They’d wander out, moving with a slow, dreamy gait, giggling to themselves. Last Tuesday, she’d seen Margie Fletcher stop in the middle of the crosswalk to lick her own palm clean, traffic be damned.
But tonight was different. At precisely 9:03 PM, the pink neon ‘OPEN’ sign flicked off. The massive Pepper emerged, locking the door with a theatrical flourish. She didn’t head toward the employee parking lot. She walked, her towering figure casting a long, distorted shadow, toward the residential streets behind the strip mall.
Bea didn’t hesitate. She grabbed her keys and a heavy flashlight from under the counter, told her wife she was running an errand, and slipped out the back.
She followed at a distance, her sneakers silent on the pavement. Pepper’s house wasn’t far—a sprawling, renovated Victorian that should have been charming. Instead, it was drowned in layers of lurid, candy-colored paint: peppermint stripes, gumdrop accent tiles, a front door the color of lurid bubblegum. Every window glowed with a warm, yellowish light. The air here was thicker, the sugary smell so potent it made Bea’s teeth ache. Under it, that copper-penny smell was stronger, like old blood.
Bea crept around the side, through a neatly trimmed hedge of all things, and peered into a large bay window.
The living room was a parody of domesticity. Plush, cream-colored carpets. Frilly pillows. And everywhere, women. Dozens of them. They lounged on sofas, knelt on the floor, leaned against the walls. All shared the same glazed expression. All had traces of white or pink frosting on their faces, their hands, their necks. And all of them… all of them were changed.
Their bodies were grotesque exaggerations, cartoonish and awful. Sweater stretchers, her own grandmother would have whispered. Blouses strained across busts that were implausibly vast, hips and backsides swollen to almost monumental proportions. It was as if someone had taken the idea of a pin-up and pumped it full of air and sickening desire. They moved with a heavy, languid sensuality, but their eyes were empty.
Pepper stood in the center of the room, having shed her spotless apron. She still wore her smile, a slit in a mask.
“My lovelies,” she cooed, her voice carrying through the glass. “Did you miss me?”
A collective, murmuring sigh went up. The women swayed. One in a torn silk robe crawled forward on her knees and pressed her face against Pepper’s thigh.
“I brought a treat for my best girls,” Pepper sang. She produced a stainless steel bowl from a side table. It was full of a substance that glistened under the lights, thicker than frosting, shimmering with a faint, internal iridescence. “Who’s my good, hungry girl?”
They clamored then, a soft, mewling rush. Not fighting, but pressing close, mouths open like baby birds. Pepper dipped her fingers into the bowl and smeared the substance across the offered lips of the woman at her feet. The woman shuddered, a full-body convulsion of pleasure, and began to lick Pepper’s fingers clean with frantic, worshipful attention.
Bea’s stomach turned. She fumbled for her phone, her hands trembling. She needed a picture, a video, anything.
The camera app flashed as it opened.
A reflection, minute and bright, flared in the dark window pane.
From inside, Pepper’s head snapped up. Her cold, calculating eyes locked not on Bea, but on the spot of light in the window. The perpetual smile never faltered. “Oops,” she said, her sing-song voice suddenly crystalline and clear. “We have a little mouse in the garden.”
Bea froze.
Pepper patted the head of the woman at her knees. “My darlings. Someone is being very naughty. Someone is peeking.” She pointed a long, elegant finger directly at the window. “Fetch.”
The effect was instant. The languid, heavy sensuality evaporated. The women’s heads turned as one. Their empty eyes fixed on the window. A low, unified growl rumbled through the glass.
Bea ran.
She barreled back through the hedge, thorns snagging her jacket. She heard the front door of the house fly open with a crash. Giggles erupted into the night, but they were wrong—sharp, hungry, punctuated by barks and yips.
“Little mouse!” Pepper’s voice trilled from the porch. “Stay for a taste!”
Bea didn’t look back. She hit the sidewalk and sprinted for her car, parked two blocks away. The slap of bare feet and the thud of unnaturally heavy bodies gained on her. She risked a glance over her shoulder.
They were pouring from the house, a stream of them, a horde in nightgowns and stained leisurewear, their forms monstrous in the streetlight, their faces smeared and eager. They moved fast, too fast for their size, with a terrifying, loping grace.
Bea’s lungs burned. She skidded around a corner, fumbled her keys, and hit the unlock button. The car chirped. She yanked the door open and threw herself inside, slamming the lock down just as the first of them reached the vehicle.
A woman with frosting matted in her hair and a chest that strained a polka-dot nightdress slammed into the driver’s side window. Her smile was a wide, insane gash. She yipped, slapping the glass. Another thudded against the passenger door. Another draped herself over the hood, licking the windshield with a long, slow drag of her tongue.
Bea turned the key. The engine roared to life. She stomped on the gas.
The car lurched forward. The body on the hood tumbled off with a shriek. Bea didn’t stop. She sped down the empty street, her heart hammering against her ribs. In the rearview mirror, she saw the crowd recede, milling in the red glow of her taillights. Standing on the sidewalk, tall and immaculate, was Pepper. She waved, a slow, mocking wiggle of her fingers.
Bea didn’t breathe until she turned onto the main road.
Back in the candy-colored Victorian, the mood had shifted again. The frantic energy was gone, replaced by a warm, buzzing adoration. The women clustered around Pepper as she ascended the stairs to her bedroom, a pale pink sanctuary filled with velvet and satin.
She lay back on the bed, a queen on a confectionary bier. They surrounded her, their hands gentle now, reverent. They nuzzled against her, kissed her arms, her neck, her cheeks with sticky, sugar-crusted mouths. They murmured words that weren’t quite words—sounds of devotion, of pure, subsumed need.
One, with tears of joy cutting clean tracks through the frosting on her face, carefully, lovingly, began to unbutton Pepper’s blouse.
Pepper sighed, running her fingers through the woman’s hair. Her gaze was fixed on the ceiling, on some distant, private triumph. “Yes,” she whispered, her voice a contented hum. “My good, sweet things. My perfect, hungry pets. Everything is just… as it should be.”
The room filled with the sound of contented sighs, wet kisses, and the low, resonant purr of Pepper’s satisfaction. Outside, the night swallowed the street, but the house glowed, a lighthouse calling its ships to a ruinous, sweet shore.