Longlist – 2026 Gooseberry Pie Annual Writing Competition
by Zebulon Huset
It started with the simple teaspoon-tablespoon mistake, and salty buttercream frosting lead to fifteen cakes instead of one; fifteen cakes could bring at least as many rats and raccoons so fourteen cakes with still somewhat salty buttercream went to fourteen strangers chosen by instinct, four of whom became acquaintances, one, named Merengue, transitioned into a girlfriend turned ex-girlfriend turned stalker who he worried would find a depressingly average replacement to stalk. It was the possums that first found the leftover pounds of buttercream in the garage and moved in like they had squatter’s rights, then what looked like a mound of bubble gum kept slashing his tires when Merengue was busy. Moving had once seemed scary, when he was a kid after the divorce, but after a few times as an adult on the run it had become a safety blanket—a way of life—but how the buttercream tracked him down in the Azores made Canberra seem impressive, even he had to admit, so he sculpted a mouth and tongue and found an accordion for lungs and finally heard the frosting’s tale of woe. Created, unwanted, unfulfilled, salty—and even though he hadn’t formed the frosting into fangs or venom glands, the sting was not sweet but burned like acid, his sugar cube arm dissolved in a screech of pain as the snow globe walls closed in on the scene with a Hitchcock zoom. The buttercream frosting swelled in size and erupted upon him, consuming the man like a sea star, then reformed in his image. Renewed, purposeful, the buttercream picked up his phone and searched the contacts for Mom.
Zebulon Huset is a high school teacher, writer and photographer. He won the Gulf Stream 2020 Summer Poetry Contest and his writing has appeared in Best New Poets, Booth, Meridian, Rattle, Smartish Pace, The Southern Review, Fence and others.
Photo by Joanna Stołowicz on Unsplash
