When she opens her eyes, she sees him looking at her and blushes.
“We’ll have to pretend to be mates,” she says. “It is the only way you can stay here. In our culture, men and women only share a home while mating.”
“I don’t want to be your mate,” Franklin says.
His words throw her off balance, as if she has never considered the possibility of a man not wanting her as a mate.
“You don’t have a choice,” she says. “I chose you as my mate. You don’t have a say in the matter.”
“I believe I do,” he says.
“In our culture, when you want to mate with somebody all you have to do is chain that person to your bedpost. It is usually against the person’s will. All it takes is a little cunning, some persuasion, or physical force.”
“That is why you did this to me?” Franklin says. “You wanted me to be your mate?”
“In our couplings, there is a dominant and a submissive. Females are usually the submissives, but I wanted to be a dominant like my mother was with her mate. In this cave, there are no males weak enough for me to dominate. If I did not find you Licorice would have claimed me as his mate.”
“You did this to me so that you wouldn’t have to marry Licorice?”
She cocks her head at the word marry.
“It is against the law for one to claim a mate who is already coupled,” she says. “He will not be allowed to even try to claim me as long as I have you chained to my bed.”
“So how long must I stay here?” he asks.
She dodges the question. “I’m happy that it has worked out so far. Licorice has a horrible flavor. I could not bear to mate with him. He has spent the last year building a large house for us. He wanted it to be the most luxurious house in the cave. It is being made of the most exquisite truffles, pastries, and candied pears. In the backyard, he plans to put in a dulce de leche fountain and a large gelato playground for the dozens of children he wanted me to produce.”
She scratches her fingernails along her candy cane knee when she speaks about Licorice, causing a shrilling noise in Franklin’s ear hole.
“I can’t imagine how disgusting our children would be,” she says. “I could never mate with a man like him.”
“So you would rather mate with me?” Franklin asks.
“It will just be for show,” she says. “Because you are human, I do not think it is possible for us to produce offspring.”
“When will I be able to leave?” Franklin says.
Jujy’s mind leaves the room before Franklin gets an answer. Her pink eyes stare off into space as she scratches white lines into the red parts of her knee.
Beneath his new candy-coating, Franklin’s skin becomes so itchy that it burns. He tries to inhale as much fragrance from the candy woman as possible to dull the pain, but no matter how much he ingests the itchiness will not go away. It feels as if bugs are crawling beneath his sour apple skin.
His stomach is constantly upset from eating nothing but sweets. There are nuts and dried fruits in some of the candies he eats, so he does not feel completely malnourished. But the main ingredient in his diet is sugar.
“You need meat,” Jujy tells him whenever he holds his aching stomach.
“I would rather die than eat children,” he tells her. It is something he repeats often.
“There has to be a way to get you to eat meat,” she tells him.
Jujy attempts to cook a marshmallow rabbit she caught in the gumdrop forest. Franklin tries to explain how to cook meat, but as the dominant member of their coupling she does not allow him to help her prepare the food.
She skins the white fluff from the animal with one of her butterscotch fingernails. Franklin asks her to gut the animal, but she refuses.
“I will prepare the meat in the way I see fit,” she says in her high-pitched elf voice. “It is my role as the dominant.”
Her home does not have a kitchen. The closest thing she has for a kitchen is a dining room table and a rancid polka-dotted chest in the corner that is used for meat storage. She can’t build a fire in the house, because her candy walls would melt at such a high temperature. She has to build a fire behind her house and cook it on a sharpened peppermint stick.
While she is outside, the marshmallow puppy snags a piece of the rabbit’s skin from the corner of the table and pulls it down. Instead of eating the skin, the puppy rolls over onto it and then rubs his back against it in a snake-like wiggle.
Franklin misses Crabcake. He’s worried about what has happened to her. If his wives have her they are probably not taking good enough care of the kitten. They might forget to feed her or change her litter box. They might even abuse her. It is also possible that they killed Crabcake out of spite, because Franklin always cared for the cat far more than he cared about either of them. But he tries not to accept that possibility. It is too unbearable of a thought. If he ever gets out of here he promises himself that he will get Crabcake back no matter what.
The marshmallow puppy sees Franklin crying and crawls into his lap. It looks at him with a panting tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth. When it barks it sounds more like a human impersonating a dog, like a voice actor who plays a dog in a cartoon.
“Circus Peanut likes you!” Jujy says, as she walks through the door carrying a blackened rabbit corpse.
“Circus Peanut?” Franklin says, looking at the puppy. He didn’t realize it before, but the puppy does look a little bit like a circus peanut. He has a subtle orange tint with peanut-like indentions on his back.
“He’s my little munchy,” she says.
She takes Circus Peanut from his lap and squishes him into her bosom. Franklin watches in repulsion while she speaks baby language to the animal, making kissing noises, and revealing her gory teeth as she smiles at it.
Franklin goes to the table to inspect his meal. Aside from skinning the animal, she did nothing to prepare the meat. The head is still on it, charred eyeballs looking at him. The outside is overcooked. The inside is still slightly raw. The peppermint stick melted while it was being cooked, giving the meat a minty center.
Although it is one of the worst things he has ever tasted, he eats as much of it as he can. Jujy went through a lot of trouble to make it and he knows she will be upset if he doesn’t eat it all. Halfway through, he asks himself why he cares whether he hurts her feelings or not. She is a monster and must be killed. But he continues to eat. He needs to stay on her good side, at least for now.
There is a knock at the door. It is Licorice. Jujy opens the front door a crack, but does not let him in.
“I saw smoke,” Licorice says. “Somebody built a fire behind your house. Was it you?”
“Yes,” she says. “It is not against the law to build fires.”
“Fire is dangerous,” he says. “If a fire is too close, you could melt your skin or even your house. You shouldn’t be starting fires.”
“You don’t have to tell me about fire,” she says. “I’ve worked closely with fire before, in the candy mill. I know how to use it without melting my skin.”
“There is no point in starting fires,” he says. “Why did you need it?”
“I was cooking some meat.”
“Cooking meat?” he says. “Why were you cooking meat?”
“I made it for Sour Apple,” she says. “He likes his meat cooked.”
“He likes his meat cooked?” Licorice rubs his black chin hair. “It is funny that he eats cooked meat in the way that humans eat cooked meat.”
“There isn’t a law against cooking meat,” she says.
“But it is suspicious,” he says. “Humans eat cooked meat. Perhaps your mate is really a human?”
“You saw him,” she says. “You know he is not human.”
“Perhaps he is a human in a candy disguise,” he says. “You know it is against the law to associate with humans?”
“Yes,” she says, “but I do not associate with humans. Did you know that it is against the la
w to interrupt a mating cycle?”
Licorice frowns and steps back.
“You have entered my nesting area,” she says. “If I report this you will be severely punished.”
“I only came because I thought it was an emergency,” he says.
“But as you see it is not,” she says.
“I’ll be back,” he says.
“If you come back I will be forced to defend my nest,” she says. “It is not against the law to kill one who invades a nest.”
“This won’t be a nest for much longer,” he says from the caramel road.
Franklin curls into a ball in his bed on the floor. He believes it is actually a doggy bed, because every night he shares it with the marshmallow puppy that sleeps against his armpit. His skinless chest beneath the candy coating burns with so much itchiness that he doesn’t want to be conscious anymore. He wants to rip off his candy skin and pour rubbing alcohol all over himself to kill the bacteria that is infesting his wounds. He smiles as he envisions laying his skinless body into a tub of hot water. The thought of the peaceful warmth calms his nerves and numbs his body a little. But before the pleasant dream pulls him into sleep, a thought jerks him back into awareness. He thinks about how painful it would be to remove his candy skin. His flesh has already grown together with his sour apple coating. If he were to rip the candy from his body he would also be tearing off a thick layer of his flesh.
Franklin hopes he will get used to the intense itchiness in time. For now, he just has to survive. Once he escapes he will be able to find a doctor who will remove the candy and make him human again. He wonders if it is possible for him to look human again. He is missing limbs and much of his skin. He’s not sure if doctors will be able to replace all of the parts of him that he has lost.
He wonders how he will be able to escape and bring the body of a candy person to the police. It will be difficult enough just trying to escape. If he has a body with him it will be next to impossible. If there was night in this place he might be able to escape under the cover of darkness, but the purple lights beaming down from the ceiling of the enormous cavern never dim.
Franklin wonders if Jujy should be the candy person he brings to the police. She would be the easiest one to kill. She is the one who killed his brother and sisters and ruined his life. He knows he should kill her. But something deep inside of him becomes sad at the thought of killing the girl. Even though she murdered his family, removed pieces of his body, turned him into a monster, and keeps him as a prisoner in her home, he still doesn’t like the idea of ending her life. She is not the monster he thought she would be. She is not a vicious killer. She just doesn’t know any better.
He wonders if it is possible for him to bring her to the surface alive. Perhaps if he can gain her trust she will take him to the surface with her during a hunt. Then he can knock her out with his cane and bring her to the police.
As he lays there cringing he promises himself that he will gain her trust. He will get her to the surface. And he will make the world believe in the candy people. The only problem is he isn’t sure whether the submissive member of a coupling is allowed to go on hunts. He doubts it. He is also worried that she won’t take him on hunts because he doesn’t eat the meat of children. To completely gain her trust, he will need to become one of them in every respect. Franklin understands that he is going to have to do a lot that he doesn’t want to do in order to gain her trust. He isn’t sure he’ll be able to go through with all of it.
Circus Peanut catches a Cadbury crème egg in his mouth. He brings the chocolate ball to Franklin. Franklin rolls the egg into the next room. Circus Peanut chases after it.
Franklin discovers that his itchiness isn’t so bad when he keeps busy, so he plays ball with the marshmallow puppy. He kind of likes Circus Peanut. Even though he is a strange creature that looks a bit like a living cartoon, he thinks the dog is cute. Having a puppy around comforts him and makes him miss Crabcake a little less. Franklin always feels better when he is around animals.
When Jujy arrives with their food, one bag of chocolate and another bag of dead children, she has a worried look on her face. If it were a couple days ago Franklin would have ignored her, but now he needs to establish a relationship with her so that he can gain her trust.
“What’s wrong?” Franklin asks, pretending to be concerned.
Jujy drops the bags onto her table, cracking one of the chocolate wafer boards. She groans in an annoyed tone. Her cotton candy hair is frizzed in the wrong direction.
“Licorice came to me in the park,” she says. “He still wants to end our coupling.”
“What can he do?”
“It is not against the law to end our coupling if we do not produce offspring,” she says. “If we do not breed he will be able to claim me as his mate.”
“What are we going to do?” he asks.
“We are going to mate,” she says.
“But you said it is impossible for humans to breed with your kind?”
“We have to try,” she says. “It is against the law to breed with humans so I have never heard of it being done before. It might be possible. We must try.”
“But we can’t actually mate,” Franklin says. “If the child comes out half human they will know.”
“We still must try,” she says. “Otherwise you will be killed and Licorice will chain me to his bedpost. I would rather mate as a dominant to a human than as a submissive to such a horrible-tasting man.”
Franklin breaks eye contact with her and pets Circus Peanut, squishing his hands into the marshmallow fur. He suddenly realizes what a big deal this is. He’s going to have sex with the candy woman. It is like having sex with the boogie man. Not only that, but they will try to have children together. Franklin never wanted to have children. He is uncomfortable with the idea of having children. Now he is going to have one with the creature from his nightmares. He doesn’t even know how it is possible for the candy people to have sex, since they don’t have any sex organs.
“We should start in the soontime,” she says, sucking on a little boy’s toe.
“I won’t kiss you,” Franklin says.
They are sitting on the bed together. Franklin sits with his legs crossed. Jujy sits with her knees open like a frog. Both of them are awkward and not sure where to start. Franklin has always been awkward in sexual situations and Jujy admits that she has never mated before. The candy people only have sex during the coupling period and she has never been coupled before.
“Why not?” Jujy says, pouting her gummy lips at him.
Franklin forgot that he was trying to get on Jujy’s good side. He knows this is a good opportunity to get her to like him. He is about to become her lover. It will surely help gain her trust. But the idea of kissing her gory, rancid mouth disturbs him.
“I’m sorry,” he says, uncomfortably petting her shoulder. “I just don’t want to taste the dead children in your mouth.”
“I can wash out my mouth with watermelon soda,” she says.
“I still think I would prefer not to,” he says.
She gives him an angry look and her voice becomes firm. “I am the dominant. It doesn’t matter if you dislike my taste.”
Franklin nods his head. He rubs his prosthetic candy leg nervously and looks down at her crotch. He notices that she doesn’t have a vagina. Her crotch is coated in red hard candy, like she is wearing strawberry jolly rancher panties. But the panties are not clothing, it is part of her skin. The males of their species are also coated in candy down there. He doesn’t understand how they are able to have sex. There is a small hole at the bottom of the panties for going to the bathroom, but he doubts that can be used for sex.
“How does this work?” Franklin says. “You don’t have a vagina.”
She opens her knees wider and looks down at her crotch.
“It’s because I’m a virgin,” she says. “Only those who have mated in the past have exposed genitals.”
“I still don’t unde
rstand,” Franklin says.
“The first time mating,” she says, “partners remove each other’s candy coating from their genitals. I don’t have to remove yours since your genitals are already exposed, but you must remove mine.”
“How?” Franklin asks. “Do I break it open?”
“No,” Jujy says. “That would be painful and cause me to bleed.”
“Then how?”
“Use your tongue,” Jujy says. She opens her gory mouth and licks the air with her long snake tongue. “You lick the candy down until the genitals are exposed.”
“It’s under your candy?”
Jujy nods her head. Franklin looks down at her smooth red crotch. She widens her knees a little more. Franklin now recognizes that she has been sitting in this position so that he would have easy access for licking. Franklin doesn’t move or speak for a few awkward moments.
“It’s good,” Jujy says. “It’s strawberry. It’s not a gross flavor like black licorice.”
Franklin looks her in her pink eyes for a minute, then breaks eye contact. Although his mind is still a bit foggy and
intoxicated, every once in a while he has a moment of clarity and realizes this is really going to happen. He is actually going to have sex with this monster from his youth.
“It takes a while to lick through it all,” she says. “You should start now.”
Franklin nods his head. As he leans closer to her, he can tell that she is releasing a lot more of her intoxicating strawberry scent than usual. It’s coming from between her candy cane legs.
“Your smell is making me dizzy,” he says.
She smiles. “Do you like it?”
Franklin nods his head sluggishly. “What is it?”
“It attracts mates and food,” she says. “It is at its strongest when mating.”
Franklin’s mind becomes more drugged than the first time he met Jujy. He forgets that she is a monster. She just looks like an ordinary girl to him now, who is wearing some kind of clownish Halloween costume. He actually becomes attracted to her. It reminds him of the time he was in college and slept with an overweight girl when he was drunk. In his intoxicated state, he saw an incredibly attractive girl hiding under all the pounds of fat. He wanted to have sex with that hidden girl. As he examines Jujy in his drunken state, he sees an incredibly attractive woman hiding under a Halloween costume made of candy. He wants to have sex with that hidden woman.
The Cannibals of Candyland Page 6