Bakery

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

― Mahatma Gandhi

The Hartwell Bakery had been the town’s pride for generations, its warm windows glowing like amber eyes in the pre-dawn darkness. Margaret inherited it from her grandmother, along with the leather-bound recipe book that bore stains no amount of scrubbing could remove.

The bread was extraordinary—customers claimed it satisfied hungers they never knew they had. Lines formed before sunrise, faces eager and desperate. Margaret noticed how their eyes seemed brighter after eating, yet somehow more vacant, like windows into empty rooms.

The recipe book contained instructions for thirteen loaves, though Margaret could never remember making more than twelve. The thirteenth recipe was written in a different hand, the ink seeming to shift and writhe when she wasn’t looking directly at it. The ingredients were… unusual. Flour from grain that grew in no known soil. Salt from tears of specific provenance. And the final component—a single drop of something that tasted of copper and starlight.

Each night, Margaret found herself drawn to mix the thirteenth batch, her hands moving of their own accord. The dough was wrong—too warm, too yielding, pulsing like living flesh. But when morning came, twelve perfect loaves sat cooling on the racks.

The thirteenth was always gone.

The customers kept coming, smiling their empty smiles, buying their daily bread. And in the depths of the night, Margaret could hear something stirring in the basement—something that had grown fat and content on the offerings she couldn’t remember making.

Some hungers, she realized, were never meant to be satisfied.