There was a blueberry muffin. It sat, proud and fluffy and completely unassuming, on top of the breadbox. Vanessa wondered vaguely why it wasn't inside the breadbox with its brothers and sisters, and also why the breadbox was in the middle of the street. It was unusually dark for noon, even though the sun blazed brighter and hotter in the sky that it ever had before. The power of its rays beat an incessant tattoo of white-hot pain against the back of her neck. Beads of sweat started at her hairline and slipped, in the ways of perspiration, along her skin. it stung her eyes and teased her lips. It trickled down her throat, and wriggled its way under her collar.

Everywhere itched. Vanessa yearned to scratch, and was distressed to discover that her hands were bound. She could not move.

The wonderful, mouth-watering scent of goodies baking assaulted her nostrils. It was a startling reminder of grandpa's farm. Before she'd died, not too long ago, grandma had been the absolute best cook around. Vanessa had always enjoyed visiting them then, because she'd been allowed to eat as much as she wanted of whatever she liked. She inhaled sharply, smiling despite the way the sun burned her skin, and licked her lips. They were very chapped, and her tongue got stuck to them.

"Ow," Vanessa forced the awkward word out around her tongue, golden eyes wide as saucers, and attempted to free the muscle from its cage. She tugged stubbornly, determined to win this little battle of inconvenience. But, the harder she pulled, the more like glue her lips became. It was not long before they developed a mouth of their own, and swallowed her tongue completely.

Vanessa choked and spluttered, lipless mouth full of her own blood, and was helpless to defend herself against the attack of this new, much stronger mouth. It was hungry and desired to eat, so it pulled out her teeth. One by one they want, and Vanessa's tears, inspired by her pain and her terror, mingled with sweat as tooth after tooth were twisted out of her gums.

The new mouth laughed at her. It was a cruel, heartless sound that seeped like a poison into her soul and all but stopped time. The sun had not moved an inch from its ancient and rightful position in the sky.

The fruity smell of the baking blueberry muffin had been replaced by the stink of burning flesh, and Vanessa was struck by the realization that there had never been a muffin at all. It was her head; only her head, and it festered like a rotting apple under the sky that glowed with a fiery animosity. The sun was punishing her for some unspeakable crime she could not remember committing.

"Smells like muffins," said the new mouth with its voice, which, if it were not for the note of inherent bloodlust, would have sounded exactly like her own, "smells like muffins."

The new mouth had stolen her tongue and her lips and her teeth, but she still had a voice. Vanessa tried to scream. The sound got lost somewhere in her throat, drowning as she was in crimson waves of her own blood, and came out sounding more like a desperate gurgle than any substantial shriek of terror. She shook with the knowledge of an impending demise, but had resolved to be brave for the last moments of her life.

Golden eyes glowered with malice as the new mouth chuckled and snapped its chops. The new mouth opened wide, revealing a throat-less cavern of bad breath and blackness, and swallowed the head, which had stupidly impersonated that blueberry muffin, whole.