The Cannibals of Candyland

by Carlton Mellick III

  “I’m not one of them,” Franklin says. He puts his cane sword back together and then kneels down to the boy. “I’m human. I’m wearing a disguise.”

  Troy backs away from him.

  “You know me,” Franklin says. “I live in your neighborhood.”

  He shows him his apple red suit jacket. “You used to always make fun of my clothes.”

  Troy takes his pair of thick-rimmed glasses out of his pants pocket. They are cracked and bent. When he puts them on his face, his eyes light up as he recognizes Franklin behind the candy coating.

  “You’re the fucking old faggot that killed Jimmy!” His eyes go from fearful to enraged.

  Troy charges Franklin and tackles him at the knees. Franklin’s false leg twists and he tumbles to the ground. Troy punches him with tiny fists yelling “Motherfucker! Motherfucker!” with tears in his eyes.

  Franklin grabs him by the wrists and tells him, “It wasn’t me. I swear. It was one of them.”

  They look at Licorice’s corpse.

  “I tried to save your brother but I was too late,” Franklin says. “The creature got away just as you arrived.”

  The boy tries to break out of Franklin’s grip. “Liar! Motherfucking liar!”

  “I avenged his death,” Franklin says. “I followed the creature down here and killed him. I plan to kill all of the candy people.”

  Troy stops struggling and cries. Franklin lets him go.

  “What the hell are they?” Troy says, rubbing the blood from his forehead.

  “They are cannibals,” Franklin says. “They eat children. This is their home.”

  “Where did they come from?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Franklin says. “We need to get out of here before any of the others show up.”

  Troy nods.

  “Do you know the way out of here?”

  Troy shakes his head.

  “You don’t even remember the direction you came from?”

  Troy shakes his head.

  Franklin lets out a puff of air. He looks around the landscape, and then turns back to the boy.

  “Do you think you can help me carry that body?” Franklin asks, pointing at the corpse.

  Troy nods.

  “Good. Let’s go.”

  They carry Licorice over a few hills back the way Franklin came. When they feel safe enough, Franklin buries the body in a puddle of fudge. Then they head back to Jujy’s house.

  “I’m going to have to bring you back with me,” Franklin tells him. “I will hide you in a place where they won’t find you.”

  Troy stops. “I want to get out of here. Now.”

  “Unless you know the way out, we can’t leave,” Franklin says.

  “I don’t want to stay in this place,” Troy says.

  Franklin stares down at him. Troy cowers. When he sees Franklin, he still sees a candy person. There’s not much of him left that resembles a human.

  “I will make sure nothing happens to you,” Franklin says. “I promise.”

  When Franklin arrives back at Jujy’s house, he has no idea where to hide the boy. The house only has two rooms. Jujy would find him if he hid anywhere inside. He has to find him a place to stay outside. Searching around the outside of Jujy’s house, he discovers a crawlspace that goes under the building.

  “Climb down in there,” Franklin says.

  Troy looks at the hole leading under the house and shakes his head.

  “Fuck no,” Troy says. “I don’t like tight spaces.”

  “You don’t have a choice.” Franklin pushes him towards the hole. “They will kill you if they find you.”

  The kid reluctantly crawls under the house, turns around and looks out of the hole back at Franklin.

  “Not many of them come around here,” Franklin says, “so you are probably safe. The one you have to worry about is the woman who lives in this house.”

  As Franklin points up at the house, Troy looks up and inches back into the darkness.

  “She’s not here now,” Franklin says and the boy stops. “But if you see her you stay hidden. She will kill you if she finds you.”

  “Will you kill her like you killed the other one?” Troy asks.

  “I don’t know,” Franklin says. “I need her for now. She is the one who put me in this disguise. She is keeping me safe. But I am her prisoner so I need to get back inside before she finds out I was gone.”

  Troy nods.

  “I’ll check on you when I can. If you get hungry there is chocolate and candy all around here. You can’t survive on candy alone but it will be enough to keep you going for a few days. We’ll get out of here soon, but I need you to stay here and keep quiet until then. Can you do it?”

  Troy nods.

  Franklin backs away from the hole and returns to Jujy’s house. To reattach the chain to the bed, he uses the hot air from the showerhead to melt the candy chain into something soft and pliable. When he’s back in the bedroom, he holds the link together until it cools down and hardens back into its original shape.

  When Jujy returns home, her belly is stretched so large that the candy on her torso is beginning to crack. She is holding her stomach, digging into her skin with her long nails. Rivers of sweat flow down her taffy skin.

  She looks at Franklin with a cringing face. Franklin asks her what is wrong.

  “It’s coming out,” she says.

  Franklin goes to her. “Already?”

  As Franklin helps her into the bedroom, he’s able to feel her human muscles flexing beneath the sweat-drenched taffy skin. Her temperature has risen, causing her candy coating to become softer than usual. In the bedroom, she kicks the marshmallow puppy off of his doggy bed so that she can squat down over it.

  “You’re going to have it on the dog’s bed?” Franklin asks.

  “It’s not a dog bed,” she says. “It’s a baby bed.”

  The candy woman spreads her legs and squats over the round mattress. She has Franklin hold her blue hand as she squeezes the baby out. Her claws cut into his wrist at the pain but she does not whimper. Franklin can tell she doesn’t want to appear weak in front of him.

  Her vaginal lips separate with ease in their softened state. They stretch out. Just a few inches at first, but the opening soon stretches to be a foot wide, then two feet. Franklin looks down to see something brown emerging. It isn’t shaped like a baby.

  “What is that?” Franklin cries.

  Jujy just looks at him with an angry face.

  “That’s not a baby!” he says.

  Jujy squeezes his hand tightly, slicing through his wrist. As his blood trickles down her blue and white arm, she tells him, “It’s an egg. The baby is inside.”

  Once the midsection of the egg passes through the opening, her vaginal muscles squirt the rest of it out onto the doggy bed in one push. Then Jujy plops down on the mattress and sighs. She wraps her legs around the egg and has Franklin wrap his arms around her body. She lies her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes. Franklin isn’t sure how such a large thing could have come out of Jujy. He also isn’t sure how a chocolate egg could have endured inside of her without melting.

  As she breathes deeply against his shoulder, Franklin examines the egg. It is like a giant Cadbury crème egg. He isn’t sure if it is his imagination or not, but the egg seems to be pulsing. Somewhere, deep inside, is their child—A mutant offspring between himself and the candy woman who killed his siblings. Franklin doesn’t know if Heaven exists. But if it does, he hopes that his brother and sisters aren’t watching him right now.

  After Jujy awakes from her nap, she goes into the kitchen and returns with a box of art supplies. A wide scary smile stretches across her face as she says, “I’ve been excited to do this ever since I was a kid.”

  “What?” Franklin asks.

  “Now we get to decorate the egg,” she says as she takes out brushes and containers of paint.

  “Why decorate it?”

  “It’s tradition,” she says.<
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  For hours, Jujy decorates their child’s egg like an enormous Easter egg. Her face is lit up like a child’s as she paints pink and white swirls around the top. Franklin paints blue polka dots on top of the white swirls.

  “Normally only submissives decorate the eggs,” Jujy says. “But I don’t see why you get to have all the fun without me.”

  Franklin shrugs. He doesn’t paint very much of the egg because his hand is shaking. It is from withdrawal. Even though she is sitting right next to him with her legs spread apart, her intoxicating pheromones aren’t affecting him. Perhaps the act of giving birth has neutralized their effects. Perhaps her body is no longer producing the drug because she no longer needs to mate.

  After they are finished with the egg, Jujy leans back and smiles at her craftsmanship.

  “Beautiful,” she says.

  Franklin feels things crawling inside of his chest. He’s not sure if there are ants still alive under the candy coating or if puss is dripping out of the infected wounds. He presses his hand against his chest and pushes hard on the candy, hoping to kill any ants that might be alive in there. The pressure against the itchy wounds is painful yet strangely satisfying.

  “I’m hungry,” Jujy says. “Want to eat?”

  Franklin shakes his head, but she disregards his response and pulls herself onto her feet. He sits there against the egg, holding his wounds. He needs to get back to the surface as soon as possible. If only he could get Jujy to show him the exit.

  “Can we go on a walk today?” Franklin asks her.

  “No,” she says. “You can’t go on walks anymore.”

  “Why not?” he asks.

  “We’re now in the incubation period of our coupling,” she says. “You have to stay here and keep the egg warm.”

  “Keep the egg warm?”

  “You are the submissive,” she says. “It is your job to sit on the egg and keep it warm until it is ready to hatch.”

  Franklin looks at the large egg. He isn’t sure how he can sit on it without it breaking.

  “Do it now,” she says. “Wrap your body around it while I make your food.”

  Franklin sits on the mattress with the egg between his legs. As he wraps his arm around the egg, the marshmallow puppy licks at the side of it.

  “Like this?” Franklin asks.

  Jujy pulls the puppy away from the egg and picks it up into her arms. “Yes.”

  Then she breaks the puppy’s neck.

  Franklin’s jaw drops at her. “What did you do that for?”

  “I’m making your food,” she says.

  “You’re going to cook your dog?”

  “It’ll be easier this way,” she says. “I don’t have to go hunting for you now.”

  “But he was your pet,” he says. “I thought you loved Circus Peanut?”

  “I needed to get rid of it anyway,” she says. “It’s not good to keep animals in the house during the incubation period. They try to eat the egg.”

  Franklin just stares at her in shock as she walks to the kitchen, skinning her pet’s marshmallow hide with her bare teeth.

  For the next couple of days, Franklin sits on the egg for Jujy. She doesn’t go on hunts during these days. She just watches him as he keeps her egg warm. When it is time for bed, she leaves him on the doggy mattress to sleep against the decorated shell. He’s not even allowed to leave to go to the bathroom. She just holds a candy dish under his buttocks and tells him to defecate in there.

  The feeling in many parts of his body has disappeared. His flesh beneath the candy coating has become so rotten it’s black. He needs Jujy to leave the house so that he can sneak Troy back to the surface and get himself to a hospital. But she doesn’t seem like she is going to go on another hunt any day soon. He wonders what would happen if he told her the truth. He wonders if she would let him go if she knew about his condition.

  “I have something to tell you,” Franklin says to Jujy.

  When Jujy looks him in the eyes, she can tell how serious it is. She crawls across the floor to Franklin and presses her body against the other side of the egg.

  “I have been waiting for you to tell me this.” Jujy puts Franklin’s hands into hers, staring at him across the egg. “I have to tell you that I feel completely the same way.”

  “The same way?” Franklin says.

  “Even though you are a human we can still have an emotional bonding,” she says. “We can still be soul mates.”

  Franklin doesn’t know what to say to her.

  “Go on,” she says. “Tell me.”

  “Tell you what?” Franklin says.

  “Weren’t you going to tell me that you submit your soul to me?” Her face becomes confused.

  “No, I was going to ask . . .”

  Jujy bares her teeth at him and scratches her claws along the top of his false hand. “I want you to submit your soul.”

  “Submit my soul?”

  “Yes,” she says. “I’ve been waiting every day for you to tell me this.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Jujy groans at his ignorance. “A dominant shows a mate she loves him by capturing him and chaining him to her bedpost. The submissive usually does not love the dominant at first. It takes time for him to grow to love her. But eventually the submissive shows his love to the dominant by telling her that he submits himself completely to her. He submits his mind, body, and soul. He tells her that his entire being belongs to her and will obey her for the rest of his life. That’s what I want you to say.”

  “But I . . .”

  Jujy grinds her claws deep into his good hand.

  Franklin stops. He takes a deep breath. He realizes his survival depends on his response to Jujy.

  “Okay,” Franklin says. Jujy loosens her grip, then squeezes his hand lovingly. “Originally, I had something different to tell you. It is also important. But now that you have brought up this topic I will confess to you something that I have had on my mind ever since the first time we made love…”

  He pauses to breathe, hoping Jujy is going to buy what he has to say. She smiles at him. Tears are welling up in her eyes even though he hasn’t said anything yet.

  “You are the most important thing in my life. You are my whole universe. You are my only reason for living. For the rest of my life, all I want to do is serve you and make you happy. I want to raise your children. I want to obey your every command.” He pauses for a moment. As he notices that Jujy is buying it based on the tears rolling down her white cheek, Franklin tries to hold himself back from laughing at himself. “I submit to you entirely. I submit my mind, body, and soul. I will be yours, forever.”

  Then Jujy leans across the egg and kisses Franklin deeply.

  Her gummy lips wrap around his mouth, razor sharp teeth scraping against his teeth. He tastes dead child blood as she sucks his tongue down into her throat. Franklin has no choice but to kiss her with as much passion as he can manage.

  After a while, Franklin discovers that it isn’t very difficult for him to feign his love for her. He realizes that it isn’t entirely an act. Although he hates everything about her as a candy person, he still has feelings for her somewhere inside of him. Whenever he looks at her, he doesn’t see the woman who killed his brother and sisters anymore. He only sees Jujy.

  “So what were you originally going to tell me?” Jujy asks.

  Franklin takes a deep breath and reveals the cracked section of his side to her.

  “Smell that,” he says.

  She smells his side and cringes at the foul odor issuing out of the hole. Then she licks it.

  “Why do you taste so gross?” she says.

  “I’m rotting,” he says. “My wounds have become seriously infected. If I don’t get help I am going to die.”

  “Die?” she says. “You can’t die now.”

  “I’m a human. We aren’t the same as you. Cutting off my skin and covering me with candy was not good for me. I need to go to a hospital. A human hospital.”


  “You can’t go back to the humans,” she says.

  “If I don’t go back I will die.”

  “What if I heal you?” she says. “I can give you new candy skin.”

  “There is nothing you can do. You have to let me go. Now. I will probably die within a few days if you don’t.”

  “You submitted your soul to me. You said you would be with me forever.”

  “I will come back,” he says. “I promise. If I don’t go I will die.”

  “If I unchain you then you will no longer be my submissive . . . I would rather you die than not be my submissive.”

  “Then you can come with me,” he says.

  “To the humans?”

  “I’ll even stay on the chain,” he says. “You can trust me. I have submitted my soul to you.”

  “What about the egg?”

  “We can bring that, too.”

  “It is against the law to take eggs out of the cave. If anyone finds out they will feed us to the lemon hogs.”

  “Then we will have to make sure they never find out,” he says. “So, will you take me to the hospital?”

  Jujy stares down at the egg and scratches her kneecap.

  “We’ll have to wrap it in the blanket,” she says. “And you will have to carry it.”

  “Okay,” Franklin says. “I will keep it safe.”

  “If I remove your chain you have to still obey me as if chained,” she says. “You submitted your soul to me so you must still do as I say.”

  “Yes,” he says.

  “We can’t keep you chained because if anyone sees you on the chain they will come to investigate. Submissives also aren’t allowed outside of the cavern.”

  Franklin nods.

  After she unhooks his chain, Franklin tells her, “There is something I want to show you. Outside.”

  “Outside?”

  “Under your house.”

  Jujy looks at him curiously as she wraps the egg in a blanket.

  Franklin carries the egg out of the house, his cane hooked to his arm. It is difficult for him to walk without his cane, but he manages. In the back of the house, Franklin calls down to the boy.