The gingerbread cookie realized the sheet beneath his body had cooled to room temperature. He knew it was safe to sit up. His cooled, settled frame meant he was no longer in jeopardy of losing an appendage, or worse yet, his head. He lifted his flat, brown noggin, and looked left then right. His fellow cookie-mates lay flat, unmoving. The cookie-man hopped up, ran toward the nearby colored frosting tubes, and stared down at them.

A wicked smirk spread across his face. He gathered several tubes of the decorative frosting within his soft, biscuit limbs and hurried them back to his cookie-companions. Making quick work of it, he decorated half of them with red bikini underwear and gave the other half frowns and googly-eyes. The silly images pleased him.

“My idea wasn’t so half-baked! They look great!” He doubled-over into a fit of laughter.

He stood, laughing and gazing at his creations. Suddenly, a brilliant idea came to him. He hurried over to the kitchen utensil holder and pulled out a knife. He struggled to stifle a laugh as he carried the metal blade over to his flat ginger-flavored friends. Slicing away, he removed a few legs, several arms, then made precise cuts out of several of their heads to give the appearance of bite marks. Authenticity was essential to Mr. Gingerbread, so he added red gel to each sliced part, creating a realistic bloodied look.

“Now,” the cookie-man began, “it’s time for me to look good!”

He gave himself blue eyes, an orange mouth, then added some yellow and pink frosting to his body.

“Perfection!” Mr. Gingerbread exclaimed.

A moment later, he realized that perfection meant appealing—which meant irresistibly appetizing. He did NOT want to be eaten.

He spotted a nearby container of chocolate pudding, rushed toward it and jumped inside. The mud-like bath tarnished his biscuit body and filled him with delight. He smiled and sighed.

A brown, mushy thing, nestled against a stovetop burner, caught his attention. The cookie-man climbed out from his pool of pudding and reached between the stovetop grates to retrieve the nasty-looking item.

“Oooh…the remains of an avocado…rotting away!” He smiled and began mashing the greenish-brownish chunk of food within the palms of his hands. “Delightful!”

The gingerbread man smeared it all over his upper body and face to make himself less desirable to his maker.

The baker entered the room and was horrified by the vision before her.

“What the hell happened here?”

She presumed that her kids made the mess before dashing outside to play. The annoyed baker began cleaning up.

The bikini-wearing cookies were deemed not appropriate for giving away, nor were the looney-faced ones. But, the baker opted to keep them for consumption by the family. However, she felt that the nasty avocado-coated cookie, dunked in chocolate pudding, was beyond disgusting. She tossed it into the trash.

Mr. Gingerbread was thrilled. Relocation to the local landfill meant he could run amok throughout the vast grounds.

Upon arrival to the dump, he spotted many discarded stale, half-eaten cookies running around. Glee filled his entire biscuit body.

The ginger-flavored man called out to the other cookies. “Hey, I’m one spicy cookie!”

The group of cookies turned to look at him, smiled, and headed over to greet him.

The gingerbread cookie winked at two peanut butter cookies as they dashed toward him. He coiled his hands around his mouth to create a megaphone of sorts.

“Ya can’t catch me, ‘cuz I’m the Gingerbread Man!” He chuckled and ran away from his pursuers.