“I felt that if he touched me, I'd die. and then the thought crawled into my brain that if he didn't touch me, I'd die.” -Kitty Thomas:  The Auction

At this very moment, in the town of Coures d'Coures, young Kurt is running through a field of daises. He is nine years, forty-seven weeks, six days, and twenty-three minutes old. Beside him is his dog, Digby. Digby is three years, nine weeks, ten days, and thirty-eight minutes old.

And not a minute older.

Because the very next moment, Digby ran across the road and was hit by a passing semi-truck and killed instantly. Young Kurt, startled by the sudden loss of his nearest friend, ran to the body of his beloved pet. Hesitantly he reached out to touch Digby's fur.

Flash.

Digby was alive again.

This was the moment that Young Kurt realized for the second time, that he was not like the other boys in Coures d'Coures. The first time had been when Kurt was nine years, eight weeks, nineteen days, and thirty minutes old and he realized he was in love with his next-door neighbor, Blaine Anderson. Blaine was a boy however and young boys didn't normally fall in love with other young boys. Kurt recognized this but knew that his heart was more important than what the rest of the world thought about him. And his heart was telling him that he was in love with his next door neighbor. In their world of make-believe, Young Kurt and a boy named Blaine, ruled the world. They played the biggest concert halls in the country, and toppled cities as large as the back-yard. This newly discovered difference, however, was slightly more extraordinary than simply loving another boy.

Young Kurt could touch dead things and bring them back to life.

This touch was a gift given to him, though not by anyone in particular. There was no box, no instructions, no manufacturer's warranty. It just was. The terms of use were not immediately clear, nor where they of immediate concern. That is, until Young Kurt's mother had a sudden and unexpected aneurysm, dying instantly.

She had just set the timer and slipped a pie into the oven. Three plum, Kurt's father's favorite. Kurt's mother and him always baked together on Saturday mornings, it was their special time together. Several weeks before Kurt had finally told his mother that he thought it was in love with the boy next door and she had blinked quickly before smiling and telling him that no matter who he loved, she would always love him. She loved Kurt until she died. Lying on the floor of the kitchen with a slightly dazed look on her face. Kurt had never brought a person back to life before, he had done a few flies and of course Digby, but never a person. He reached out with his hand shaking and touched his mother's cheek.

Flash.

A golden sheen spread over his mother's body and she blinked and sat up.

“Oh, I must have slipped! Silly me. Did the timer go off?” The timer still had one more minute so she stood up and Kurt sat stunned at the kitchen table. His mother had just died. Now she wasn't dead anymore. He was momentarily distracted from his reeling by noticing Blaine playing outside with his dad next door. Kurt smiled and Blaine somehow chose that moment to look at Kurt's window and smile back.

Then the timer went off and Blaine's father unexpectedly fell over and Blaine was running to him and touching him and crying.

That was when Young Kurt learned one of the two rules that governed his gift. Keep a dead thing alive for more than one minute and something, or someone, else had to die in their place. He learned the second rule when he went to bed that evening.

His mother tucked him into bed like always and smiled kindly. Then she leaned down to kiss his forehead and when her lips touched his skin a flash of blue light spread through her and she fell back again. Dead. Kurt leaped out of bed and touched his mom over and over again but nothing happened.

This was the second rule. First touch life, second touch, dead again forever.

Young Kurt saw the boy named Blaine one more time in his life. At their respective parents funerals the two boys caught each others eyes and walked towards each other. A mixture of grief, stress, and hormones led to their first and only kiss before parting ways forever.

Young Kurt was shuttled to the Longburrow School for Boys by his distraught father and left at the doorstep. For the next seven years Kurt lived at the school, hardly talking to his father and hardly talking to anyone else. And he became obsessed with pie.

Thus Young Kurt became the Piemaker. At this very moment, in what will now be referred to as the Present, Kurt is 23 years, 243 days,ten hours and fifteen minutes old. He is the Piemaker and this is where he makes his pies.

Kurt had purchased a large shop in the bottom of the building where he also lived and converted it into his pie shop. The sign over the door read 'The Pie Hole.' It was an odd looking building, Kurt had managed to make the entire shop look like a giant pie complete with a fluted crust that domed at the top for the roof. From there his apartment complex grew out of the pie like an enormous pie-bird. The outer ring of the Pie Hole contained the tables and booths for the guests and the inner ring held a bar and the kitchen where he did the baking.

The Piemaker never ran out of fresh fruit for with his gift he could make any rotten fruit into the perfect specimen of ripeness, as long as he only touched it once. The Pie Hole attracted a diverse and unusual crowd, from the finest of culinary critics to tourists who had walked in because they saw a funny sign. At this very moment one of the more interesting customers of the shop, Mercedes Jones, as having a conversation with the Piemaker's assistant and waiter, Chandler.

“Each day I choose a pie, I focus all of my energy on that pie and at the end of the day, guess what? I've sold more of that pie than any other.” Chandler said excitedly. He did nearly everything excitedly.

“Hmm. What's your choice today.” Merceds Jones asked uninterestedly.

“Rhubarb.” Chandler practically sang.

Mercedes quirked an eyebrow and responded, “Three plum. Ala mode.” and returned to the newspaper in her lap.

Mercedes' attraction to Three Plum Pie was what had originally made Kurt notice the young black woman. What had made Mercedes notice Kurt had been something entirely different. Three months, eighteen days, nine hours and thirty-six seconds previously, Mercedes Jones, Private Investigator had been chasing a murderer across several rooftops. Nearly catching up, Mercedes had reached out her hand to grab hold of the man's shirt but her momentum propelled him off of the edge of the roof and he fell to his death. The Piemaker had been taking his trash out to the dumpster behind his shop when a corpse had fallen unexpectedly unto his trash bags and a flailing arm had brushed his exposed skin.

Flash.

The man blinked and corrected himself before trying to run again. Kurt frantically chased after him and touched his skin again so that the man fell dead. Shuddering, Kurt threw the garbage into the bin and walked back into the Pie Hole, not knowing that someone else had witnessed the event.

After seeing the extraordinary talents of the Piemaker, both confectionary and corpse, Mercedes proposed a mutually beneficial agreement. The Piemaker would work with Mercedes on murder cases. He would touch the victim, they would ask how he died, and they would split the reward money. The partnership had saved the Pie Hole from bankruptcy many times before and the Piemaker knew to drop everything when he saw an order for Three Plum Ala Mode.

When Chandler had brought back the order, slightly dejected, Kurt rushed past him with the pie and sat down across from Mercedes in her booth.

“What do we have?”

“Drowning, maybe murder. The press got wind of it so there's a big reward in it for us.” Mercedes said excitedly. “Lonely Tourist Dies on Cruise.” Said the headline of the paper.

“So where is the body?”

“Little town north of here, Coeur D'Coeures, ever hear of it?”

The Pie-maker had, of course, heard of Coeur D'Coeures before. At that very moment every memory of his time there flashed through his brain with a golden sheen, his mother. His mother dying, he reviving her, his mother dying again. His father collapsing when he came home. And the boy called Blaine. Kurt absentmindedly touched his lips that Blaine had so long ago brushed his against in the middle of a graveyard.

“Kurt?” Chandler had returned and had touched Kurt on his shoulder to get his attention. Kurt snapped out of his reverie and flinched at the touch. “Do we have any more Rhubarb?”

“What? Oh no. We ran out earlier. Offer them blueberry, we have way too much of that.”

For the second time that day Chandler Kiehl walked away from the front booth dejected. He did not know that the Piemaker flinched away from every touch and not just his own. Because Chandler had a secret, a burning love for the Pie-maker resided deep within his heart and the Piemaker's indifference towards him felt like a bank collecting on the house as collateral for a failed loan.

“So are you coming?” Mercedes asked impatiently.

“Yes. Yes. Sorry. What's the name?” And before Mercedes responded Kurt knew. Somehow, deep down he knew what she would say.

“Uh... Blaine. Blaine Anderson.”