Cursed.

I didn’t realise it was a curse until later.

It’s not the first thing you think of, is it? Curses? Sounds a bit ridiculous. If someone says something vaguely unsettling to you, you naturally assume they’re a sandwich short of a picnic and best avoided in future lest they come at you with a sharp object.

You don’t assume curse.

Tell someone you think you’ve been cursed and before you know it, they’ll be whispering to their neighbours that you’re into black magic and wizards and once they saw you run into the street at midnight, half naked and chanting at the moon.

It’s just not done.

***

It happened about three months ago. I was driving along the highway, which felt endless to me - after two years in the US, I’m still not quite accustomed to the sheer scale of it.

I was tired and cranky and running very late for a meeting I didn’t want to go to. I’d sat for an obscenely long time that morning in gridlocked traffic being roasted by the sun and reduced to urinating in an empty coke bottle.

I’d missed breakfast and was starting to feel it, but the highway was deserted - no diners, gas stations, nothing.

To cheer myself up, I started to fantasize about doughnuts.

A perfectly fat, round doughnut, stuffed with so much jam (or jelly as they say here to my endless disapproval) that it would squirt out when I sank that first bite into it.

A sweet, delicious sugar hit to help me make it to the end of the day with my sanity somewhat intact.

I was in the midst of indulging this borderline pornographic fantasy, when I saw what looked like a food truck materialize in the distance. It was parked just off the road, with a sign propped outside. As I approached, the chunky red lettering became legible: ‘Every flavor doughnuts! Best you’ve ever had!’

I immediately slowed and swerved off the highway, kicking up dust as I brought the car to a stop. Surely this sudden appearance of the very thing I craved was a sign? A validation that I could have my delicious doughnut and my meeting would go wildly well, and from this moment on all I would know is success?

I dashed out of the car and over to the van, giving the lady behind the counter a once over. She did not look like an expert doughnut maker, or someone who had any experience with food hygiene – too many rings and zero hair net over her bushy grey curls – but I decided to chance it.

‘One raspberry jelly doughnut’, I demanded. ‘And as your sign says, after the morning I’ve had, it really better be the best.’

She narrowed her eyes at me.

‘Amelia,’ she said. ‘Nice to meet you.’

I considered her name - and mine - to be unnecessary padding in what should be a very simple exchange.

‘Amelia,’ I emphasised in a not entirely pleasant way. ‘One raspberry jelly doughnut!’

I’m sure she intended her look to be devastating as she handed me the doughnut, but I pointedly ignored it.

‘Five dollars’, she said in a tone that matched my own.

‘Five dollars?’ I cleared my throat. It was obvious she was hiking the price on purpose, and I loathed the thought of her knowing she’d phased me. ‘Here’, I said, slapping the money on the counter with what I hoped was devil may care indifference. ‘Better be good.’

I bit into the doughnut, anticipating that gush of sweetness, except… there was no gush. It was just… fine. Middling. There was so little jelly it took three bites to find it.

I’d somehow built this up as a life changing moment, so I was understandably disappointed. I didn’t need spit it out exactly, but I felt compelled to make a point about customer satisfaction.

‘That was disgusting,’ I cried, putting on my best appalled expression. I pointed at the sign. ‘False advertising!’

The woman - this Amelia - had clearly never heard about the customer always being right. She made a shooing motion at me. ‘Oh, get out of here’, she said. ‘You wouldn’t appreciate a gift from the universe if it smacked you in the face!’

‘A gift?’ I took extra offence at that. ‘I paid, lady! I paid and it was damned overpriced!’

Amelia smiled then - rather inappropriately I thought - and said in a strangely calm tone of voice, ‘Every day that you don’t taste the perfect jelly doughnut, you will only crave it more. And more. And more. And yet they will always taste like ash in your mouth.’

And with that she yanked down the metal shutter on the truck with a clang and silence descended.

‘That’s dramatic’, I yelled. I stomped back to my car, then turned to the van one last time. ‘Learn to cook!’

***

That was three months ago now and I think my behaviour since can best be described as concerning.

Like today.

I surveyed the scene in front of me.

Can you murder the person ahead of you in line because you’re 85% sure they were about to order a jelly doughnut?

I mean you can, clearly, but should you?

‘It wouldn’t have been good though,’ I rambled to the girl behind the counter, who was holding a tray of doughnuts out to me with shaking hands. ‘I have to try them all see! The one I miss, might just be the perfect one!’.

I nudged the body with one dirty dress shoe. ‘Just imagine if she’d got the only one in the batch that tasted good, like a doughnut should’. I laughed.

Cradling my tray, I shuffled off to turn the sign on the door over to closed and pulled out one of the chairs by the window, letting it screech across the floor.

I turned my full attention to the doughnuts. One of these had to the one.