The Gingerbread Man (Melanie Martinez X Reader)

7-Strawberry Shortcake

I sat alone that night.
It was a busy day, and I was tired.

All I could think about was that wink she gave me, the exact moment repeating itself constantly in my head.
I couldn't make it go away.
Why was it haunting me this badly?

Squeezing my head between the pillows wasn't really helping, so I decided to give up and go on my phone.
We weren't supposed to, of course, so I had to be stealthy about it.

It was already about 1am, so I doubted they would even check on us.
However, just to be extra careful, I pulled the blanket over my head and turned my phone brightness right down.

I opened snapchat.
From where I had added her in the library earlier, Melanie's bitmoji, with it's arm up, was
alluring me to message her.

She'd probably be asleep by now, but for some reason I was craving to see her again.

'Say hi!' The app encouraged me.

Giving in to my urges, I took a deep breath and clicked on it.

My heart was in my mouth as I stared at the keyboard that had now emerged from the bottom of my screen.

'Hey'
I thought about typing more, but just ended up deleting the whole message anyways.

I kept typing different messages until suddenly her bitmoji popped up and my heart started to race.
Now I had to think quick.

But then she started to type, and a message came through.
'Can you hurry with your typing I'm waiting here' I rolled my eyes and laughed quietly. 'Sorryyy I was just saying goodnight'
'All that typing for goodnight? 💀'.

I switched off my phone with a smile now on my face.
It wasn't really leaving her on read if I was just going to see her in the morning anyways.
And still, she was all I could think about.

I buried my face in my pillow again, this was going to be a long night.

When I woke up it was 7am.
I instantly remembered yesterday, and what we needed to do now.

Changing into my uniform promptly, I went to meet with my friends outside.
We returned to the principal's office and walked over to the body.
Maggots and flies were now feeding off of it.

"That's so bad," I spluttered.
Angelita had scampered off somewhere to find things to help us.

"Almost as bad as you leaving me on read last night."
I was shocked at her comment, and laughed nervously at her sarcastic face.

"I guess I... fell asleep?"
I shrugged, and we both knew I was lying.
Technically, I wasn't; I did fall asleep, just purposely.

Shortly after, Angelita returned with plenty of equipment.
She was holding things like gloves, bags, and even three rusty shovels.

Struggling to carry it all, she passed around the tools and we transported the principal to the school field.

It was a massive area, and grass stretched for miles.
Due to the weight of everything, we couldn't go too far, but we got as far as we possibly could.

Dropping the bag of appendages to the ground, we begun to dig a grave shaped hole.
Then we tipped the remains into it.

My hands throbbed, so I couldn't even imagine having to do that on my own.

Then even after that we had to cover him with the soil we had already dug out.

After a while, when he was mostly buried, we tossed our shovels down.
This was tiring work, and we couldn't really be bothered anymore.