Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Knee-Jerk Confection Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

KNEE-JERK CONFECTION

“I want my cake! Where’s my cake?” Jacob hooted as he emerged from the Pacifica Theatre two steps ahead of his mother. The place was old beyond its years, but they’d managed to keep it respectable, as if ensuring the promise: you will forget your problems, if only for ninety minutes.

“Okay, that’s enough,” Carla said, reaching out and tapping her son’s shoulder as they stepped down the moderately busy sidewalk.

He spun and shouted into her face, “Where’s my cake?”

Spittle freckled her cheeks and eyebrows.

“Dang it, I said enough.” Carla yanked him by the sleeve, taking in a big whiff of his breath. “Have you been drinking?” she said this with the flavor of indignant outrage only a disappointed mother could summon.

They’d drifted apart over the last few years, and since his eighteenth birthday, he’d been spending most of his time at work and then God knew where else. She recognized that he’d come home drunk more and more often lately. Quite frankly, she didn’t know what to do. Drinking was a slippery slope, if there ever was one. Perhaps that was why he’d gotten such a kick out of that stupid segment in that stupid movie, that old girl with her bottle of Jim Beam, the same cheap, sugary-sweet bourbon Jacob’s father drank before he hit the road. Lord save her if he turned into his father. Next the boy would come home with some pregnant tramp in tow and a DUI ticket in his penniless pocket. He’d been skidding, and soon it would be too late. He’d reach the inevitable precipice, and then down, down, down he’d go. It was why she offered to take him to a movie, to reconnect. He was still her son, and she was still his mom.

But it hadn’t gone well. She’d let him pick. Creepshow was perhaps the dumbest movie she’d ever seen, and he’d somehow gotten drunk right under her nose. It was almost as if he were a seasoned vet, hiding it in plain sight. She’d worked with a few alcoholics. Either they got help, or they got canned.

“Calm down, it’s legal, Mom. I’m not a baby anymore.” Jacob yanked his arm free. “I’m gonna go—”

“Like heck! You’re coming home. One night not getting stinking drunk won’t hurt you!” Carla gripped him under the armpit and got to walking.

He staggered next to her, whining, sounding very much like the baby he said he wasn’t.

—

He was so different in the mornings, especially mornings after he’d had too many. He started work at 6:00 AM, and she started at 5:45 AM. He worked for Davey’s Better Roofs, and she worked at Baketown Café. He was a laborer, and she was a baker.

“Have a good day,” she said, smiling at his bloodshot eyes, thinking, Maybe that’ll learn ya.

“Yeah, you too,” he said, and as she closed the door, she heard him mumble, “Where’s my cake?”

She shook her head. His mind was impenetrable to lessons. As she mixed and stirred and folded and side-eyed the clock, she couldn’t help but think about him. It was upsetting, and by lunch, she’d been asked twice if she was all there. That boy was in her thoughts too much, and now she was getting angry because it was one thing to ruin his own life, but it was something else altogether to ruin her life.

“Carla, get your mind on your work,” Marge Lindin said, the manager of Baketown.

The place was swamped with orders. She had flour handprints on her cheeks and chocolate sauce smeared up her forearms.

“Sorry,” Carla said and got back to putting icing on a tray of tarts.

“You been slow all day. What’s up?” Marge leaned her soft hip against the countertop and then swiped an errant glob of icing from her arm with an index finger before plugging it into her mouth.

“Jacob.”

“What’d he do?”

Carla sighed. “He grew up. Physically anyway.”

“Ah, hun, it was bound to happen.”

“I hardly recognize him anymore...he’s driving me nuts.”

Marge straightened and smirked. “You need to go on a date.”

Carla shook her head. The last thing she needed was a man in her life. Another man in her life. No, thank you. What she needed was for her son to act his age or get on up out of her hair.

“I’d settle for a good night’s sleep, knowing Jacob was asleep in bed next door,” she whispered after Marge left her to her work.

—

At 2:01 AM, Carla shot from bed, heart freight-training in her chest. She looked at the light streaming around the door and then to her clock radio with the deep-red digits. Out beyond the door and the hallway, Jacob and three other voices shouted, “I want my cake! Where’s my cake?”

Carla broke from her bedroom in only a T-shirt and some off-white undies, her feet clapping over the vinyl flooring. “What in the heck are you doing?”

Jacob turned. His expression was sloppy-drunk, and his eyes were red. He smelled like he’d swum in cheap whiskey.

“We saw Creeeeeeepshow!”

Behind Jacob were the Higgins boys—fraternal triplets Jacob had chummed with since kindergarten. They used to be such nice, upstanding boys. Seeing them drunk with her son cast a mighty shadow over her opinion of them.

“Hey, Mrs. Johnson,” one said.

Carla never could tell them apart, so she didn’t know who had spoken, though at that time of night, it didn’t matter.

“Geez, Jacob, you have work in the morning! And more importantly, I have work in the morning!” Carla stamped her right foot. She instantly regretted it, feeling like a sullen child who’d been refused a second helping of ice cream.

“Eh, if it’s beauty sleep you’re worried about, you don’t need it, Mrs. Johnson,” one of the brothers said. He was so drunk he was swaying over the sink, swallowing steadily when he wasn’t speaking.

“Can it,” Carla said. “Now, if you’re staying, go to bed and shut the heck up. It’s too late for this, and you’re too old to be acting this way.”

She charged back to her room and slammed the door. She lay in bed, eyeing the shadowy ceiling, wondering how she got such a short end of the stick. By and by, she began to drift before coming to again. It was only minutes since she’d left the kitchen and now heard them whisper-yelling, “Where’s my cake!”

She tried to drown out the noise with her pillow, but it didn’t really suffice. Her son was speaking directly into her head.

—

Jacob was in the washroom vomiting great gargling heaves when Carla went off to work.

“Serves you right,” she said as she closed the door.

As she walked by the big bay window, one of the triplets who’d slept over waved from inside. She simply shook her head. None of those boys were kids anymore. How could they live like this?

Just inside the bakery doors, she stopped and a realization hit: her son might be corrupting those boys. She then corrected herself aloud, “They’re men. Young, but men, and they can think for themselves.”

“Who?” Marge said from behind the counter.

Carla waved it off and stepped to the back. As she pulled on a fresh apron, she whispered, “He better not miss work.”

She started her day, but her mind really never stayed alongside her body. She dropped things. She mismeasured. She forgot ingredients. She...

“These croissants are as black as tar. Darn it, Carla, pay attention and use the timers if you can’t keep track.” Marge spun on her heels with a huge sheet of hot croissants and dumped them into a trash bin. “I know you’ve been doing this forever, but sometimes...” she trailed.

The comment about the timer hit like a slap. Only the newbs needed the timer. Carla wanted to remind Marge that she hadn’t burned anything since her second week and that she’d been at the place almost twenty years already but didn’t.

“Sometimes, my butt,” she whispered as she began a new batch.

—

“Where’s my cake? Where’s my cake?”

Carla howled as she bolted from bed, “Shut the hell up! Do you know what time it is?”

It was almost 3:00 AM.

At the sound of his mother’s cry, Jacob spun so fast he slipped off his stool and thumped heavily on the linoleum floor. The others laughed.

Carla charged like a mountain goat, horns poised to do some damage. She pushed between two of the triplets and loomed over her sloppy drunk child. She could hardly believe he’d ever been a part of her.

“Guess what we saw tonight?” Jacob said and then laughed. “Where’s my cake, Bedelia?”

“How can you be so irresponsible? You have work in the morning!” Carla was shaking all over. Again, she stomped her foot. “How, Jacob?”

“How can you be so pretty at your age?” one of the triplets said.

She turned, her frown so deep her eyebrows seemed double-sized, thanks to the shadows suddenly surrounding them.

“What in the heck are you doing here again?” Carla asked but didn’t wait for an answer.

She retreated down the hall, slamming the bedroom door in her wake. She lay listening, every now and then side-eyeing the digital readout of her alarm clock. She eventually fell asleep, despite the rising cries of, “Where’s my cake? I want my cake!”

—

Morning came, and the only cries were coming from beyond her window: baby robins in a nest. Carla arose, sleepy and annoyed because there was someone to blame, but she got ready like any other day. On her way past, she stopped at her son’s doorway. One of the triplets was on the floor under a ratty old comforter blanket. She gritted her teeth and reached over the boy and began shaking Jacob.

“Get up, you’ll be late for work.”

“I’m up. I’m up,” he said, groggy as the recently deceased. He licked his gooey lips and widened his bloodshot eyes. “I’m up.”

Yeah, right he was up. Carla huffed. She didn’t have time for any of this nonsense. She was already late herself. That boy was screwing up both their lives.

“I want to talk to you right after work, so come straight home, got it?”

“Got it,” he mumbled into his pillow.

—

“Geez, that kid has you going every which way,” Marge said.

They sat side by side in the small employee break room, coffee mugs before them like refuge from the storm. Carla massaged little circles over her temples.

“If you don’t get him under control, it’s going to cost you. Get me?” Marge raised her eyebrows.

Carla glanced sidelong at her boss. Oh, she got her loud and clear...but Jacob.

“You know what I’m saying, right? If that boy of yours starts costing me...” Marge trailed.

Carla nodded, halfway to defeated. Everybody was going through a tough time. Interest rates had skyrocketed, and anyone not on a fixed mortgage was suddenly looking for ways to cut corners, especially business owners.

“I get you. I think it’s his friends. Or that he’s too social...but maybe the friends.”

“Figure it out. Perhaps you should take a day.” Marge stood, lifting her mug to chest high.

“I don’t—”

Marge cut her formally best employee off. “I can’t afford you coming in and acting like a rookie. I have the new girls for that, and they make half what you do. Half. Get me.”

“Yes. I’ll figure it out, just...” Carla trailed, putting up her flour-dusty hands.

Marge nodded once and then drained her mug before departing the breakroom.

—

Jacob’s voice carried like a well-blown tuba. “Bedelia!”

The triplets chimed in, “I want my cake! Where’s my cake?” and so completely in unison it was as if they’d practiced it.

Carla flopped over to face her bed stand and turned her alarm clock so the digits wouldn’t further distract her from sleep, 3:18 AM. She huffed and climbed out from under the covers. This had to stop. She was going to lose her job because her adult son was acting like he was above the real world and its repercussions.

She stomped out of her room and down the hall.

“Jacob,” she said and let it hang.

“Looking good, Mrs. Johnson,” one of the Higgins boys said.

He then made kissy lips at her. They were all plastered yet again.

“Hey, Ma,” Jacob said. He was leaning up against the sink, a string of thick, brown saliva connected his mouth to the drain.

“How does Davey put up with you coming in hungover every day? I can’t figure it out,” Carla said, hoping the new angle might hit the strike zone. She needed to get through to him.

“He don’t put up with nothing. He fired me when I was late this morning,” Jacob said and then spit into the sink, his guts clenching as he convulsed.

“More like afternoon,” one of the triplets said.

“He didn’t inherit your work ethic...or your beauty,” another of the triplets said. He played with the collar of his T-shirt, as if that would somehow be enticing to her.

“Ain’t you sweet,” Carla said, sneering at the boy. She looked to Jacob again. “You got fired?”

“Screw him anyway,” Jacob said and then coughed something up from deep that rode a steamy wave so great it also shot from his nostrils. Instantly, once it was out, he started feeling better and leaned away from the sink. He ran the tap and gulped a mouthful of water before he stood straighter. He put on a phony grin and said, “I want my cake. Where’s my cake?”

“Jacob, you totally…”

“I want my cake!” the triplets shouted.

“…screwed up this time.”

“Where’s my cake?” the triplets said.

“Go to bed, you old bird,” Jacob said and then swung open the fridge and dug out a sixer of Molson Export in stubby, brown bottles.

Carla swallowed, dumbfounded. She couldn’t believe it. He’d never been even close to this bad. It was one thing to act foolishly, but to disrespect his mother, in her home... She backed down the hall until her butt bumped the doorknob of her bedroom. She continued into the darkness. She lay down on the rumpled bed and stared at the shadowy ceiling, listening to the endless drunken cries for cake.

Had that stupid Creepshow ruined her son?

No, that wasn’t right; he’d been drifting. The idiocy of that film simply gave him something to shout.

It had to be this moronic trio that soured her good boy. Had to be.

She sat up then, walked to her dresser, and plucked the phone receiver from the base. She spun the rotary and waited until she heard Marge’s voice on the answering machine tape, explaining the hours. She envisioned that tiny cassette in the bulky machine next to the phone at the back of the café’s kitchen, wheels spinning, collecting her words.

“I’ve decided you’re right. I need to take a day off. Just a day. I’m going to straighten all of this out.” She lowered the phone from her cheek.

“I want my cake! Where’s my cake?” the boys shouted.

“You’ll get your cake,” Carla said after she hung up.

—

“Jacob, Jacob, wake up,” Carla said as she shook her son. She wore an apron and was covered in icing and flour.

Jacob gave a sideways glance at his alarm clock. It was nearly noon.

“I made you a gift.”

He squinted at her and smacked his lips. “You didn’t go to work?”

“No. I stayed home to bake you a cake...or rather, cakes. I think you’ll really appreciate my eye for details. You’ve watched that silly movie how many times? And I only saw it once, but still, I think, I think...just, come on, sleepyhead.”

Jacob kicked out of his bed and followed his mother as far as the washroom door. “Gotta pee,” he said.

Carla nodded, huge smile playing across her tired but happy face. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

There were three white towels rising like steeples above mystery dishes when Jacob finished up in the can and stepped out. He squinted at them. “What’s that?”

Carla waggled her eyebrows and then cleared her throat, readying to go baritone. “Here’s your cake!” She lifted the first towel. “Here’s your cake!” She lifted the second towel. “Here’s your cake!” She lifted the third towel.

Jacob’s chin quivered, and his eyes bugged. Carla had done an incredible job working from memory, mimicking the final scene of the Father’s Day segment from Creepshow. Each of the triplets’ decapitated heads was canted slightly, eyes rolling upward, lips tight, and with icing running down from their scalps. Each had a handful of candles riding the surf of the icing and different-flavored platforms beneath to steady the heads: angel’s food, chiffon, cheesecake.

“Here’s your cake! Here’s your cake!” Carla shouted low as she used a disposable lighter to ignite the candlewicks. “Here’s your cake!”

Jacob dropped to his knees and began gagging.

“Here’s your cake!”

The doorbell rang.

“Here’s your cake!” Carla said even as she walked to the door. She swung it open and said one final time, “Here’s your cake!”

A woman stood on her stoop in a slim, black dress. Her face was puffy from crying. “I’m sorry, what?”

Oh, uh, I was talking to my son. Can I help you?” Carla said. “

“Jacob’s your son?”

Carla nodded.

“My boys were right, you are very pretty.”

“Your boys?” Carla said but knew and felt that wonderful happiness begin to fleet.

“Sure. Ned, Barry, and Steve...the triplets.”

“Of course.”

The Higgins mother sniffed up a heavy breath. “I have to tell how much your son has helped my boys in this trying time. He’s been a godsend. They needed to act out, finally, after Elmore went. He was sick for so long, and... Jacob was a perfect escape for them. I don’t think they’ve ever stayed out so late. But they never forgot to call me to tell me they were sleeping over here.”

“Oh,” Carla said.

“Yes, well... Anyway, I’m here to pick them up, the burial is this afternoon, and...you know how it is when young men need to blow off some steam.”

“They really are sweet boys,” Carla said thickly and stepped back to let the grieving woman inside.

“I’m so fortunate I have them. With Elmore gone—ooh, smells good in here.”

XX