“Bakery Boy” by Thomas Fuchs from Queer Fish: An Eclectic Anthology of Gay Fiction (Volume One), Pink Narcissus Press (2011). Edited by Margarita Bezdomnya and Rose Mambert.
What a wildly inventive story. I loved this. It was like a kinder, gentler version of a classic trope: the narrator who happens upon a curiosity shop that’s never been there before. Wedged between two more prominent businesses, it calls to him, and he ends up buying something odd without fully thinking through the consequences. Of course, the item nearly destroys him, but when he goes back to the site of the shop, intending to complain? It’s gone. As if it never was.
This story is one of that ilk, only the shop in question is not an antique store, it’s a bakery. Yes, that’s right. This is another one for our potential anthology.
N.S. Beranek 