“Edgar?” Her voice was the same, but softer. “What happened to me?”
There was no way to say it politely, so he outright told her the truth. “You shrunk.”
“I’m a midget?”
Edgar shook his head. “No. Well, not exactly. You still have the same proportions. It’s just that you got smaller everywhere. You look exactly the same otherwise.”
“Oh.”
He didn’t know what to say after that. Besides the obvious change, Gemma appeared totally healthy. The candies had certainly done something to her, something unpredictable. She had eaten three of the yellow ones, and she had dropped in height three successive times. That’s how Edgar remembered it. It wasn’t a coincidence; the candies had to be linked to the shrinkage.
Maybe they each have different effects, he thought to himself, looking down at the tinier version of Gemma. Yellow shrinks, but the others do different things.
She looked up at him. “We have to find a way to change me back. I can’t go home … like this. I can’t. You were right from the start. I shouldn’t have eaten those.”
“What? You don’t like being short?”
“Edgar, this is serious!”
“Okay, okay!”
He looked at the package again, but there was nothing that they hadn’t seen already. Surely there was something on there about the changes and what happened after eating each flavor of candy, but the answer would’ve been worn off. If the yellow one made you shrink, then one of the others had to make you grow, right? It made sense. But, there were several flavors in the bag. One of them might reverse the changes, but which one?
“Maybe it wears off,” he suggested.
“Edgar, I have to be home soon! I can’t just wait around for it to wear off. Are you nuts?”
He shrugged. “The only other idea I have is that you try the other ones. If yellow makes you shrink, maybe another color makes you grow?”
“Possibly, but there’s like ten colors in there.”
“Yeah, well …”
Edgar gazed down at the girl. Gemma had always been slightly taller than average, but now she was the smallest adult woman he had ever seen in his life. She might’ve been a kid dressing in her mother’s clothes had it not been for her proportions. She hadn’t moved since eating the three candies either. Down in the mess of crumpled denim he spotted something pink and small.
“You wore a thong today?”
“Edgar! The candy, remember?”
“Right.”
Without any useful information printed on the package, returning Gemma back to normal size was completely trial and error. He reached into the bag and pulled out a handful of gummy candies with several flavors represented. Ignoring the yellow ones, Edgar plucked out a pink one.
Gemma sighed. “I hope this works.”
He handed it down to her, and she chewed and swallowed it. Once again the joy returned to her shrunken face.
“Oh, that’s watermelon! It’s so juicy. It’s like I’m actually eating watermelon.”
“Feel anything?” Edgar asked.
“Not yet. Give it a minute, remember?”
So, they waited. All eyes were on Gemma’s body as the changes came. She seemed to grow a bit, and that prompted Gemma to begin celebrating. However, instead of jumping back up six inches, it was only two or three.
“That must not be the right—” She stopped and covered her mouth.
Meanwhile, Edgar took a step back. “Holy shit.”
“Quick, give me another pink one!” Gemma shouted as her voice deepened. “Now!”
He fumbled in the pile of candy, searching for another pink one as Gemma changed even more. Her hair went right back into the scalp, but not all the way. At the same time, her shoulders widened underneath the oversized shirt, and Edgar swore he saw something tenting it out down below. He tore his eyes away, found another pink-colored piece of candy, and handed it down to her.
“Well, we know what that one does,” she said before popping it into her mouth.
A minute later, Gemma was completely female again, but still the same size.
“How about the black one?” she asked.
“Licorice?” Edgar grabbed one from the pile. “You sure?”
“As long as it ain’t pink or yellow we have to try it.”
“Okay.”
The wait between the swallowing and the actual changes was the worst part. Edgar could only guess what was going to happen. As with the others, Gemma loved the rich flavor of it, but that wasn’t important. All that mattered came a little while later, when the shrunken girl mentioned that her skin had started to itch.
“Oh, I’m getting a tan! Edgar, look. Wait a minute. Damn.”
It wasn’t a tan, Edgar saw. Gemma’s skin was rapidly darkening, but her features were changing slightly as well. Within a matter of seconds she had turned into a black woman—a tiny black woman the same height as Gemma and somewhat resembling her. She opened her hand for another, and Edgar found a second black piece of candy and handed it to her.
Thankfully, her skin lightened not long after, but her eyes began to slant.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said the now Asian Gemma. “I guess that changes race. Give me another.”
The third piece of candy turned her back to herself.
“What’s left?”
“Quite a few,” Edgar said, looking at the pile still in his hand. “Purple and orange and blue and—”
“Give me blue. I like blue.”
“Blue it is. You better not swell up like a blueberry.”
“Yeah, funny.”
Gemma swallowed one, and they both waited once more. Thankfully it wasn’t the one that turned her into a living blue ball. Instead, she appeared to jump up six inches, filling out her clothes a little better. They both breathed a sigh of relief.
“Thank the Lord,” Gemma said, pausing to swallow two more blue candies. “So, yellow makes you smaller, and blue makes you bigger?”
“And pink changes your gender and black changes your race,” Edgar added.
“There are others that we didn’t try,” she said, finishing her rapid growth spurt back to her normal height. Her shirt once again fit, which had an unfortunate side-effect of now exposing her body below the waist. Gemma gasped as she saw that her crotch was naked and hastily tugged her panties and jeans up. “You didn’t see anything.”
“Sure,” Edgar laughed. “Whatever you say.”
Gemma glanced at her phone. “Damn. We wasted thirty minutes out here. Leave the candy and we’ll come back tomorrow.”
“Leave?” Edgar was a little surprised. “You sure? This is like the greatest discovery in the history of mankind, and you just want to leave the candy out here in the barn?”
“They belong to someone else,” she explained. “Don’t pretend you didn’t think of that. The bag was old, but the candy inside was still fresh. They weren’t opened that long ago. Someone else has been eating them.”
“Who?”
Gemma grabbed her backpack and started for the woods, leaving the barn. “You want to wait and find out? Come on. We’ll mess with them tomorrow. It’ll be Friday. I won’t need to be home until late.”
“I guess you’re the boss,” Edgar said, placing the bag of candy behind the tractor where she had found it and following her towards the woods.
They returned to the barn again on the following day. Edgar had been thinking about the candies since morning, their special powers and the changes that had happened to Gemma’s body. He almost thought it all to be a dream until he saw the bag again, right behind the rear tire of the old obsolete tractor. The Snoogies were where he had left them, apparently untouched. He grabbed the bag and placed it on the tire. The shuffling of the candies produced a strong fruity scent again, which greeted his nose.
“I wrote down what all the colors did,” Gemma said, dropping her backpack to the ground and bringing out her phone. “I made a list. We should test what the ot
hers do.”
“If you insist,” Edgar said, stepping away from the bag. “Go right ahead.”
“Well, since I was the one that did it yesterday, you should try them out.”
He thought Gemma was joking, but she was completely serious.
“What, really?”
“Sure. Why? Are you afraid?”
Edgar shook his head, though deep down he wasn’t so sure. It worried him a little by how easily the candies changed Gemma yesterday, twisting her flesh and making her shrink painlessly. If she would’ve swallowed a few more of those yellow gummy candies, who knew what would’ve happened! But, he wanted to prove to her that he wasn’t scared. If she could do it, then so could he.
Gemma sat herself down on an old, rusty barrel, allowing her legs to dangle. “Well?” She seemed to be enjoying all this.
“Fine, whatever. I’ll do it,” Edgar said, inhaling sharply to calm his nerves and strolling over to the package of Snoogies. He remembered the colors that Gemma had tried yesterday. Black changed race, and pink changed gender. Yellow and blue had to do with shrinking and growing, respectively. He ignored all those and found a purple one. “Here goes nothing.” He popped it into his mouth.
Edgar expected a grape flavor to quickly hit his tongue. After all, what else was the color purple and fruity? When it did, it was stronger than any other type of candy. In fact, the gummy, firm texture seemed to evaporate right on his tongue, turning into something softer and juicy. It felt like he was actually munching on a real grape!
“Wow,” he breathed. “I didn’t think they’d be this tasty.”
“Has a kick of flavor, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Edgar said, nodding and swallowing it all down. The grape flavor remained in his mouth for long after, even until he felt the first tingles and suddenly reached out to catch himself as if he had gone off balance. It was a weird sensation, like falling from a tall height. It almost made him cry out, but he opened his eyes and saw that he was still in the barn, and his feet were firmly planted on the ground. Nothing apparent had changed.
“Whoa,” Gemma said, putting her phone aside. “So that’s what purple does.”
“What? What does it do?” Edgar looked down, but he didn’t see anything different. His clothes still fit him, so he hadn’t shrunk. Likewise, his skin was still white, and he didn’t have boobs. He even reached there to make sure.
“You lost some years.”
“Wait, I’m younger?”
“By four or five years probably, yeah,” Gemma said. “It’s like with the yellow candy. You lose the same amount of height each time. With the purple ones, I bet you go backwards in years the same amount with each one. Take a few more and you’ll be back in diapers!”
Edgar felt a shiver pass up his spine. “Yeah, no thanks. I’m not reliving that.”
Truthfully, he didn’t feel all that different. He pulled out his phone and activated the front-facing camera. His face appeared on the screen. There wasn’t much to see, except that acne had sprouted on his face again and his cheeks were a little plumper. Besides that, he looked almost the same. Even after going back four or five years he was still a teenager. But, Edgar imagined that if he ate another purple-flavored candy things would be much more different. And what if he ate a handful of them? There were only so many years to go back. If he went too far …
Gemma was lucky she had only eaten a few of the yellow ones first.
“Very well,” she said, looking at her phone again. “Purple makes you younger. Let’s see another one.”
“Fine. Hopefully the next one makes me older.”
Edgar returned to the bag of Snoogies and searched around inside for a new color. One color he hadn’t tried yet was green. He pulled one out between his fingers and tossed it into his mouth. Once again, the rush of flavor was almost instant. Green, as it turned out, tasted a lot like an apple. As he bit into the gummy candy, he felt the crispness of an apple between his teeth, and the moist fruit beneath the skin. It was like he was biting into the real thing!
“Oh, that’s the bomb,” he said. “Like the best apple I’ve ever tasted.”
Gemma made note of it on her phone.
The taste was one thing. Snoogies were delicious, no doubt about it. However, it was the change that he was most anxious for, and neither one of them had any idea what to expect. Edgar hoped he’d age up again, but there were still other colors to experiment with. One of them surely would make him gain some years. But was it green?
The minute passed, and Edgar felt the effects. Tingles raced through his body, each one ten times more extreme than those brought on by the grape-flavored candy. He saw the floor rising up, coming closer to his face. Gemma herself seemed to grow, and the barn appeared to expand in all directions, becoming larger and larger. Then, Edgar’s clothes swallowed him up as the color drained out of his eyes, leaving the world in black and white and everything in between. On all fours now, he poked his way around underneath the shirt and pants, leading with his nose, finding a way out. A long, slimy tongue lolled out between his wet lips when he saw the human woman again.
Gemma covered her mouth. “Oh my God! Edgar, is that you? That’s not what I expected.”
He heard the words, but for some reason they didn’t have the same meaning as before. He couldn’t talk back, and he didn’t feel the urge to. Instead, he trotted towards her on his hands and feet. A strong scent pulled him towards her legs, and then up to the rest of her body. He tried to stand, but found his posture awkward and totally ill-suited for such a thing. Instead, he lay his upper body onto her lap and looked up into her eyes. He couldn’t stop panting. And something behind his butt wouldn’t stop wagging back and forth. Just seeing her made him happy.
“Awww,” Gemma cooed, patting him on the head. “You’re a nice dog, aren’t you? You know, you look a lot like Edgar’s dog. Maybe that was the last animal you touched?”
Edgar felt an urge to lick her palm when it came towards his face. He didn’t know why. It just seemed like the right thing to do, like it was the only way he could show affection. And maybe there were some crumbs he could find. She patted him and played with his long, floppy ears, telling him he was a good boy. Edgar sure as hell hoped he was! This human girl was cute, and he hoped she’d feed him.
Strange noises came out of her mouth again.
“Well, while I’d love to take you home and have my own dog, I don’t think you’d be too happy with that,” she said. “Let’s see if I can turn you back to normal.”
The human woman stood, and Edgar was forced back on all fours. He followed closely at her side, never letting her be more than two feet away from him. He picked up a fruity scent on his nose. It reminded him of something, but he couldn’t remember what. Whatever it was, he hoped it was food. The woman was digging around inside a bag. Then, she had something in her hand. The scent became ten times stronger. He followed with his nose and grabbed it with his tongue. Oh, it was tasty!
“So, green is animal,” she said. “Let’s see what white does. Maybe that’s vanilla? I didn’t see many of those left.”
Edgar gobbled the treat down as quickly as he could, and then wished she had some more. It sure was delicious, but it wasn’t all that filling. She was watching him now, just standing there not doing a thing. He wondered if something was wrong. Humans didn’t usually stand still like that. Maybe he needed to do something. He barked at her. Maybe that was the trick to get more food.
“You silly thing,” she said, grinning. “Coming up on a minute now. I hope it turns you back.”
He cocked his head to the side. Humans had this weird, complex language. It was so simple for others like him. All you had to do was bark! He felt an itch down underneath his hind leg and sat himself down to investigate. With the leg raised up, he licked at the spot, hoping that the pretty human lady wouldn’t mind this interruption.
A series of tingles raced through him.
Gemma covered her mouth, hiding her joy.
“Holy shit! That was incredible!”
For Edgar, it was like he had been in a dark room, and now suddenly the lights were on, and someone was watching him. He realized he was naked and that his tongue had been down really close to his privates. He looked up, seeing the barn again and Gemma standing over him with a wide smile on her face. His cheeks started to burn.
“Was I a … a dog?”
“You don’t remember yourself as a dog? You made a really cute one!”
His head was a bit foggy, but Edgar knew that he hadn’t been himself. The colors had drained out of his eyes, and he had been on all fours with his tongue hanging out of his mouth. However, he had never really looked at himself, or thought that anything about the whole interlude as an animal had been odd in the slightest. It had all seemed completely normal to him at the time.
“You mind if I … uh … dress myself?”
“Oh, you don’t want me to watch, huh? Fine.” Gemma spun around. “As I said while you were checking for fleas, green must be animal. I’m pretty sure you turned into your own dog. Buster, isn’t it?”
“That’s the one,” Edgar said, grabbing his clothes and throwing them on.
“And you look like you’re back to your proper age again,” she said. “Maybe white reverses all the changes at once. I didn’t see many in the bag. Just a few left, but there are plenty of other colors.”
“I need a break from this,” Edgar said after he had dressed.
The summer afternoon was hot, and the barn provided some shade. Regardless, without a wind the interior was positively stuffy. Gemma opened her backpack and pulled out two bottles of water, handing one of them to Edgar. He quickly drank a third of it down before closing the cap and breathing a sigh of relief.
“I did some looking on the internet last night,” she said. “I even asked my dad. Couldn’t find out a thing. He’s never heard of them.”
“Could be from a different country,” Edgar suggested, “or a limited production run. Never know. Maybe they never left the testing phase.”
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