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Raoul watched as Christine stirred the giant bowl of sugar and milk and cricket flour and vermillion berry. She was making a very special dish in bulk, and he didn’t mind that he didn’t get to taste any of it.
Well, maybe he minded a little.
Okay. He minded a lot.
She lovingly scooped out small spoonfuls of the dough onto the baking sheets before putting them in the oven. All of these cookies, and none they could eat themselves.
FlickerTreat was coming up.
It was a wonderful holiday for children, who could go door to door and receive sweets from each house that had a flickering candle in the window. It was a less wonderful holiday for Raoul, who didn’t get to try any sweets beforehand.
“Help me cut out the wrappers, dear,” Christine asked, smiling at him.
He couldn’t say no to his wife.
He picked up the sheet of shellipain paper and began cutting out little rectangles with a knife. The cookies would be done in just a few minutes and once they cooled, they would each be wrapped in paper, ready to pass out to the children who came by tonight.
“One cookie per child,” Christine reminded him. “We don’t want to run out.”
Raoul glanced sidelong at the hundred or so cookies she’d already prepared.
“I’ll miss you tonight, but the Masquerade is a very big event for the Opera House. I’ll be thinking of you every minute while I’m away,” she told him, and leaned in to kiss his cheek.
He smiled, but his smile turned crooked when he saw Erik standing in the doorway, staring at him with wide, unblinking eyes.
Erik scampered up and held his hands out expectantly.
“No,” Raoul said petulantly.
Erik held his hands up higher, his clawed fingers making a grabby motion.
Christine picked one of the cookies off the tray and gave it to Erik, who quickly shoved the entire thing in his mouth. His eyes went even wider.
“Hey, what gives?” Raoul asked.
“He can have one,” Christine said with a nod.
Erik went to the corner and sat down, licking his hands.
“I have to go get dressed for the ball now,” she said as she left the room.
Erik waited till Christine was out of the room before approaching Raoul for another cookie.
“You already had one,” Raoul told him. “You’re not getting another one.”
Erik’s brows knitted together pathetically. He made a little noise of effort as he tried to reach for the cookies on the counter, but he was too short. He reached his hands up, begging.
“You got one and I didn’t get any. The rest are for the FlickerTreaters, you can’t have any more.”
Erik looked at him reproachfully before going to sit on his haunches in the corner again, eyes full of sorrow, wrapping his arms around his knees and making a disapproving noise every few seconds that sounded like a cat sneezing.
It disgusted Raoul, but he merely frowned and focused on wrapping up the rest of the cookies, putting them in a giant basket that he would put by the door.
Christine came out a while later, dressed as a domino—a black domino with seven white dots.
“You look beautiful,” Raoul said.
"Thank you Raoul," she said, her voice muffled from inside the costume. "I will see you later tonight, my dears."
Erik ran and hugged her leg before she left, and she patted his head.
Once she was out of the house, Erik climbed up on the kitchen counter and reached for another cookie. Raoul swatted at him with a spatula. He dodged the attack and arched his back as he stood on all fours, hissing at Raoul.
"No," Raoul said firmly. "The only person who gets to eat any of these are the FlickerTreaters."
Erik huffed and jumped off the table, running away into a different room.
Erik was beyond peeved that Raoul wouldn’t let him have another cookie. They were for the FlickerTreaters, were they? Well! Erik would see about that. He crawled to his nest in Christine’s closet where he kept much of his own clothes and other various things that weren’t for him but fit him.
In the kitchen, blissfully unaware, Raoul finished putting the cookies in the basket. He took them to the front door and lit the candle in the window before going back to the kitchen to get himself a tall glass of drinkable ink on ice.
Erik snuck around to the front of the house, a wicked grin on his face as he extinguished the flame of the FlickerTreat candle in the window. He scurried off before Raoul came back.
Raoul settled himself by the door, ready to hand out the treats. It wasn't long before the first child showed up. They held their little gloved hands out, trembling with excitement, and Raoul handed the child a cookie. The child, dressed in some kind of cloak costume, ran off with the prize. Raoul smiled. Children were so cute.
There was a string of children who came after that, all of them a handful of minutes apart, all of them alone. All of them with such strange costumes! One had a giant hat that covered her face, one wore such a long dress with a high collar that hid his face. There was a group of children going up to the doors across the rue. Raoul frowned a little as they passed by his house without stopping, but was quickly distracted by the next FlickerTreater, a child dressed up like a skeleton. Raoul jumped a little in surprise.
"Excellent costume!" he told the child as he gave them a cookie.
The child cackled in an unsettling way and ran off.
At last, the last cookie was handed out. Raoul had been hoping that perhaps there would be at least one left over for him to eat, but he supposed FlickerTreat really was for children, and besides that, he had promised Christine.
"Enjoy!" Raoul said wistfully as he gave the child the cookie. He watched the child reach under their hood and stuff the wrapped cookie into their mouth before running away on all fours.
Another FlickerTreat night over. He had such good memories of this night as a lad. He went to extinguish the candle in the window only to find that it was already out. He blinked. Had he forgotten that he'd already turned it off? Or had it gone out on its own? He scratched his head, wondering.
Either way, the only thing left to do was wait for his wife to return home. He hummed a happy tune to himself as he went inside, thinking about all the little children who were out there enjoying the cookies Christine had made. They all seemed to be about the same age, he mused, or at least close to it. They'd all been about the same height. Most FlickerTreat nights had a wide variety of children coming up. Well, life was strange like that sometimes. It didn't mean anything.
He walked into their bedroom to change into his pajamas but stopped suddenly. There was the strangest noise coming from Christine's closet. He frowned hard, slowly approaching, his hand hesitating just a moment before throwing open the door.
There, at the very bottom of the closet, wrapped in a pile of clothing, was a pile of shellipain wrappers, the same amount that he passed out tonight, and on top that pile of wrappers was Erik, shoving cookies after cookie into his mouth, crumbs flying everywhere. He stopped mid-bite as he looked up at Raoul, eyes wide.
"You!" Raoul squealed. "It was you! All of them were you!" He pointed a shaking finger at him, accusing him. All of the costumes he'd seen that night lay in a tangle at Erik's feet.
Erik swallowed the rest of the cookie in his mouth, eyes unblinking, no sign of remorse.
Raoul sucked in a deep breath.
"I'm going to tell Christine!"
Erik gasped dramatically, dropping the shellipain he was holding. He looked like he had been stricken by Raoul's words. Once he stopped wheezing he began frantically digging through the clothing nest, at last pulling out a still-wrapped cookie and offering it up to Raoul, his eyes pleading.
Raoul immediately understood that this was a bribe. Christine would be angry that none of the cookies had been passed out, but did Christine have to know?
He made eye contact with Erik. There was an understanding here. They both wanted cookies, and neither wanted Christine to find out. He took the cookie from Erik, who smiled when he did. Raoul unwrapped the cookie and put it in his mouth. It was exquisite, melting in his mouth with a hint of isopod aftertaste.
Erik held up another one, temptingly, and arched the area of his face where an eyebrow would be.
Raoul sat on the closet floor with him, eating another cookie.
"We never tell Christine," he mumbled around a bite, and Erik nodded vigorously.
After they'd finished eating, they took the wrappers and tossed them into the fireplace, watching them crackle and pop and turn to shiny ashes. Erik and Raoul exchanged serious glances, as though they were now co-conspirators in a murder.
Christine arrived home shortly after. She took a few moments for herself to take off the stuffy domino costume and then swept into the sitting room wearing her dressing gown, hair down, face glowing. She sat by the fire and stretched and sighed and then smiled sweetly at her two favorite people.
“How was FlickerTreat?” she asked. “Did the children enjoy their cookies? Did you pass them all out?”
Erik and Raoul exchanged a glance. For a brief moment, they wondered if the other would betray him.
“Yes,” Raoul said. Erik did not contradict him.
“Come sit with me, Raoul,” she entreated, patting the cushion next to her.
He came and sat down and kissed her. Her smile turned a little crooked after the first kiss, and her brow furrowed. She grabbed his collar and kissed him again, smacking her lips after she pulled away, frowning.
“Raoul, you taste like—“
“How was the party, my dear?” he asked desperately.
Erik scuttled over and curled up at her face, rubbing his face against her ankles and making a wistful sighing noise.
She smiled as she looked down, completely forgetting that Raoul tasted suspiciously of cookie.
“The party was just marvelous, really,” she said, reaching down to caress Erik’s bald head as he leaned into her touch.
She regaled them with tales of what had transpired at her work party, of how someone had sucked all the alcohol out of the punch and no one could figure out why they weren’t getting buzzed, and of how Andre and Firmin somehow both came dressed in the same costume and forgot who they were for an entire half hour because of it.
She talked and talked and Raoul brought her a cup of tea (taking a moment in the kitchen to wash his mouth out with chocolate milk) and eventually she was overcome by the warmth of the fire and the coziness of the room and she fell asleep against Raoul’s chest.
Raoul breathed a sigh of relief. She hadn’t asked about the cookies. He looked down at Erik, who was resting at her feet, wrapped up in the lace ruffles of her dressing gown. He gave him a thumbs up, and Erik solemnly returned the gesture.
He carried his wife to their bed, and Erik shuffled after them, yawning. Raoul thought the bedroom still smelled vaguely of cookies, but if he knew Erik—and he did—come morning it wouldn’t even matter because the perfume Christine had put on him the previous morning would have all worn off.
The next morning, however, it became abundantly clear that they’d forgotten to burn up one of the shellipain wrappers. It must have fallen from their hands as they’d taken them to the fireplace. Christine saw it as they went to the kitchen, and she stopped, gasping at the sight. She placed her hands on her hips.
“Who did this?” she demanded.
Raoul and Erik froze, staring at the bright pink paper.
Then Erik ran up to Christine and buried his face in the skirts of her dressing gown, pointing at Raoul. Raoul gaped at the scene of his betrayal.
She gave Raoul a glare as she stooped down to pick up the wrapper. Erik clung to her dressing gown, tears in his eyes.
“I tried to stop him, Christine,” he said in the scarily deep and rich voice of his.
“Oh, well,” Christine sighed. “Perhaps it wasn’t fair to not make any extras for you both… Perhaps I can make some more tonight, just for us.”
“Why, Christine! What an unparalleled delight,” said Erik.
Raoul huffed.
Later that afternoon, Christine really did make more. Sitting outside in the garden as she fed cookies to him and giggled almost made up for the stinging betrayal by Erik, who was munching on his own cookies and watching them with unfocused eyes. Almost.