The Witch dumps out her purse containers of ointments, cover-up, shadows,and blushes scatter over a book case packed with books, games, and boxes of non-edible manipulatives. She applies her make-up for the fifth time this morning to hide the raccoon eyes which have been becoming darker and increasing in circumference over the past few weeks.
Today is the day. Oven is preheating. The children are finally ripe enough to be picked. The day before today, the witch had started a tale about an old lady rolling out dough to make a gingerbread man. The gingerbread man runs away but gets caught and eaten.
The kindergarteners, with the help of their teacher, prepared gingerbread dough and used plastic cookie cutters to shape them into men the day before, ready to be baked.
But now the doughy men have run off and escaped. Oh where, oh where to? The teacher continues reading a story book, ““Run, run, run as fast you can! You can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man!”
She stops to drink a sip of water. The aspirin doesn't seem to be kicking in yet. Doesn't really matter at and several concealers, this point, the oven is waiting.Ms. Mancel finishes the rhyming story and sits with her hands folded in a rocking chair, “If we all work together, you know what? I think we will be able to find the gingerbread men, catch him, and eat him. Now who's with me?”
All nineteen children jumped up, raised their hands, shouting, “Me! Me!”
Ms. Mancel instructed the children to form a line, with Rachel (the line leader of the week as the classroom's bulletin board says so) leading.
The Witch smiled at the principal as the class marched by his office, who smiled back, as she lead the children into the kitchen. The lunch ladies were more than obliging to offer their space for the sake of the children, as the school's food is trucked in and heated in plastic wrapped disposable trays and not cooked on site anyway.
The Witch knows much about her creation, how she came to be. As long as she keeps a low profile (or at least, flees the scene after having a little desert), she can outsmart the Fixer.
Little Rachel, our line leader for the week, knew nothing about the Fixer or Thinks and things or how a think can become a thing. However, it was little Rachel that overpowered the Witch.
The industrial sized ovens in the school are huge. So huge, in fact, that it makes the kitchen look a morgue. The witch had the children wait at the lunchroom tables, she walked through the door to make preparations in the kitchen. She discards the dough the children had prepared into a recycling bin (she didn't bother looking further for the proper receptacle). She was so absorbed in hastily scraping off the gingerbread dough men with a spatula tha she would have noticed an empty spot in the middle of one of the pans.
A man steps behind the witch, shadowing her with his tall frame. She greeted him with a grimace on her face. He was like any other man, except with dark brown, grainy skin with a chalky, white flour on his arms and face. He look at the with his black beady eyes and full cherry lips, daring her to make the first move. He wore an apron and nothing else.
“Who are you?” laughed the witch.
“I'm the gingerbread man.”
The witch laughs even more.
The gingerbread man doesn't waver. He takes a step forward. The witch snarls. He grabs her wrists and she trips over her own feet as she spits on him. He grabs her from around and pushes her towards an oven. He opens it with one hand. She uses this moment to break away and feels something fall inside of her blouse.
She spies a stray cookie crumb fall to the floor. She smiles at this discovery. Instead of taking this chance to run away, she kicks in his shin until his ankle and foot detaches from the rest of his body. He grabs her by the hair and shoves her into the oven, head first as though she were a rag doll. She kicks him with her high heels in the neck and then his head. The smell of her own burning hair makes her gag uncontrollably. He shuts the door before he crumbles to dust on the floor.