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The last time Rob visited his grandmother's house, he was half his age and only a juvenile delinquent. Now, he was a full grown adult and freshly released from 10 years in prison. The rest of his family wouldn't take him in unless he cleaned his act up, stopped drinking, and found a job. But Grandma knew how to treat Rob right.
Rob knocked at the door and waited. Nobody came, so he knocked again. Grandma must have been out or something, Rob thought. He looked around the entryway to the door, and found the little frog statue where Grandma still kept a spare key after all these years. Rob let himself in the front door.
"Grandma? Anybody home?" Rob called out as he walked through the entryway into the small, cozy one-story flat. An old overstuffed couch that looked out of style twenty years ago lined one wall. Nearby was the flowery chair that Grandma always sat at when she watched her soap operas. Photos of family covered the walls, including more recent photos of Rob's brother and his new family. Rob snorted as his eyes rested on that photo.
The smell of the room brought back so many memories for Rob. He could smell the mix of mild mildew, cleaning products, and his Grandma's old-lady perfume. There was another familiar smell in the air, though, something Rob wasn't expecting.
"Gingerbread cookies?"
Rob noticed the little gingerbread house on Grandma's dining room table. The house was ornately decorated in red, green, and white frosting. White frosting coated the roof, with intricately carved shingles that must have taken hours to carve. The posts that held the graham cracker overhang above the porch were made of candy canes. Little green blocks of rice cereal and marshmallow grew like shrubs in front of the house, with little gum drops growing out of them like flowers.
On the front porch of the gingerbread house stood a male and female gingerbread person, positioned so that they appeared to be holding hands. Out in front of the house were two more smaller gingerbread children. One appeared to be jumping rope with a strand of red licorice.
Rob remembered his Grandma was a good cook, but he never remembered her making gingerbread cookies. He surely didn't remember her making such fancy artwork with her deserts. Rob's Grandma was more of a pie woman.
Looking at the gingerbread house and the gingerbread people triggered a signal of hunger in Rob's stomach. Rob remembered that he hadn't had anything but prison slop the last ten years. While he would have preferred a steak for his first meal out of the joint, he would settle for some gingerbread cookies for now.
Rob reached out and snatched the two gingerbread children. He greedily stuffed them into his mouth, biting their heads and upper torsos off. A small crumb belonging to the hand of one of the gingerbread children fell from Rob's lips and spilled into the carpet below. Rob relished the fresh sweet and spiced taste of the cookies. They were soft and warm, like they had come out of the oven an hour before.
Rob devoured the rest of the gingerbread children and wiped his mouth with his forearm, and that was when he saw something. There was something in the face of the
