“Troy,” he says. “Come out. I’d like you to meet somebody.”
The boy does not move.
“It’s okay,” Franklin says. “Come out.”
The boy creeps out of the hole, hesitant at first. When he sees the candy woman, he cowers behind Franklin’s legs.
Jujy approaches the boy and bends down to him, staring him in the face.
“This is Jujy,” Franklin says.
Troy reaches out to her, timidly, to shake her hand. Jujy takes his hand, pulls him towards her and bites into his wrist. The boy shrieks as she rips a tendon out of his arm and thrashes her head like a shark.
“No!” Franklin screams, unable to stop her with the egg in his hands. “Stop!”
Jujy releases the crying child. “Why?”
“I didn’t want you to eat him!”
“I thought you were giving it to me,” she says. “I thought it was a present.”
Franklin puts down the egg and grabs the boy’s wrist. He applies pressure to the wound as he tears a strip of cloth from his apple red suit and uses it as a tourniquet.
“No, I want to take him back to the surface,” Franklin says.
“It’s only food,” she says, reclaiming the egg from the ground. “We can’t let food live after they’ve seen us. That’s the law.”
“Forget about the law,” he says. “Just let this one live.”
“I kill children all the time. Why do you care if this one lives or dies?”
“I know him,” Franklin says. “I promised him I would take him home. Let him come with us. Please.”
Jujy stares at him with an angry face. Not because he wants to save the boy, but because he is being disobedient. Then she gives up.
“I will allow this,” she says, handing Franklin the egg. “But you are never to argue with me ever again. You do what I say when I say it.”
Franklin nods at her and looks down to the boy.
“Keep quiet and do exactly as I say,” Franklin says to him.
The boy just holds his wound, crying.
“Quiet,” Jujy says, smacking the kid across the face. She turns to Franklin. “If it cries my people will hear it.”
When the boy stops crying, Jujy grabs him by his wounded arm and pulls him through the yard towards the cavern exit.
On the way out of the cave, Franklin scans the area and stores everything he sees inside of his brain. Troy whimpers at Jujy as she tugs on his wounded arm, splashing blood onto the white chocolate ground as they flee. It doesn’t take them long to get to the exit.
As they go around the bend, they run into a group of candy people. The boy screams. Jujy stops so quickly that Franklin runs into her. He stumbles, but catches himself on his false leg. Though he doesn’t drop the egg, the blanket falls off.
There are five candy people there. One is rainbow-colored, one is fat and red, one has a big green cotton candy beard, one is gumball blue, and one looks like he’s wearing a giant wedding cake for a hat. They all stare at Jujy. They see her pulling the boy towards the exit. They see Franklin carrying the egg. It doesn’t take them long to figure out what is going on.
“Run!” Jujy cries, then she takes off, going back the way they came.
Green Beard looks at his fellow candy people and they nod their heads.
Franklin runs after her as fast as he can with the egg in his arms. The candy people climb like spiders up the side of the hill towards them, trying to cut them off. The boy shrieks as Jujy rips him through the chocolate mud. Even pulling the boy, she moves three times as fast as Franklin.
“Jujy,” Franklin calls, so that she knows he’s falling behind.
She turns and comes back for him. Instead of running, she grabs Franklin and pulls him off of the path into the lollipop trees. They zigzag through the forest. When they get to a ditch, Jujy pulls them down to the ground.
“We have to hide,” she whispers.
The candy men scurry through the forest, looking for them. Troy’s cries become louder as he sees them across the pond of watermelon soda.
“Quiet,” Franklin tells Troy as he holds the egg securely between his legs.
Troy continues to cry.
“You have to be quiet or they will hear us,” Franklin says.
Troy continues to cry.
Jujy grabs Troy by the hair and pulls him towards her. She bites into his neck and rips muscle tissue from his throat. The boy shrieks louder.
“Jujy!” Franklin screams.
“He won’t stop crying,” she says. Then she bites into his throat again.
Troy stops crying. He holds his neck as he tries to push her away from him.
“Let him go,” Franklin whispers. “He’s stopped.”
Jujy releases him. She looks at Franklin, chewing on a large piece of the boy’s flesh like bubblegum.
“I’m not willing to risk our baby for it,” she says.
Franklin gives Jujy the egg and goes to the boy. Blood is gushing out of him, but his jugular has not been cut. He tears another strip of cloth from his apple suit and wraps it around the boy’s throat.
“Keep pressure on it,” he tells the boy. “If the bleeding is stopped you will survive.”
The boy puts pressure on the wound but he does not respond.
“Let’s go,” Jujy says.
With only one candy person in sight, they make a run for it. The fat red jawbreaker candy man is on the other side of the pond. He sees them as they run towards the exit, but he is too slow to get around the pond to cut them off. He yells for the others in a deep guttural voice.
They run into a pack of gum-goblins in the sugar grass field near the exit. The ferocious fruity-colored blobs bounce up and down at the wounded child. Carrying the egg under her arm like a big football, Jujy pulls out her red vine whip and cracks it at the creatures as they run through the field. The gum-goblins chase after them, snapping at their heels like gummy sharks.
The rainbow candy man cuts them off before they get to the exit. Jujy strikes at him with her whip, but Rainbow catches it in his purple jaws and rips it out of her hands. A gum-goblin lunges at Troy and Franklin. They duck and the blob flies over their heads at Rainbow. The candy man yells as the blob bites into his face.
“Come on,” Jujy cries to the others.
As Rainbow falls to the ground, the gum-goblins swarm him like piranha. They take bites out of his candy flesh as they bounce up and down at him. Franklin looks back to see Rainbow’s head disappearing into a yellow blob’s stomach. The severed head still screams within the gelatinous goo.
They make it through the maze of sewers to the streets above. Hiding in a park, underneath the slide, they watch as the other candy people crawl out of the manhole after them. They gurgle at the moon and then separate, hunting the streets for the traitorous candy woman.
“Now what are we going to do?” Jujy says, almost ready to cry.
“We need to get out of the streets,” Franklin says. “We can go back to my place until they give up their hunt.”
“Is that far?”
“No,” Franklin says.
When it looks safe, they crawl out of the playground into the shadows. Then they creep out of the neighborhood towards Franklin’s apartment.
On the way, Jujy says, “I can never go back. If I return home they will kill me.”
“Then you won’t go back,” Franklin says.
“Where will we live?”
“We can live here, in the human world,” Franklin says.
“I can’t live here,” she says. “I would never be accepted into human society.”
“Then I will hide you,” Franklin says. “I will disguise you as a human as you disguised me as a candy person.”
“Will it work?” Jujy asks.
“I believe so,” Franklin says. “But we will have to deal with my wife. She will probably be at the apartment when we get there.
“What is a wife?”
“She is my mate.”
She gets
angry. “You have a human mate?”
Franklin said the wrong thing. “Not really. We are married but I do not love her. Actually, I hate her more than anyone I have ever known.”
Jujy feels somewhat relieved by his words, but she’s still a little angry and jealous.
“You can’t have a human mate anymore,” she says to him.
Franklin just nods his head.
When they get to Franklin’s apartment, Crabcake greets them at the door. The little kitty meows at Franklin and crawls up his leg into his arms.
“Crabby!” Franklin says, nuzzling his nose into his red, green, and white fur. “You’re okay!”
The apartment is a bigger disaster then it has ever been. It reeks of meth smoke and urine. All of Franklin’s burned belongings are still on the floor. Crabcake’s kitty litter box has not been cleaned at all and the cat poop is piled so high that it has spilled out onto the carpet. Jujy puts the egg on the floor and examines it for cracks. Troy falls on the floor and crawls to the other side of the room.
Sarah, Susan, and their boyfriend, David, are passed out on the couch. When she wakes up, Susan yells, “What the fuck?”
The three of them get up. David grabs a baseball bat from the floor.
“Who the hell are you freaks?” Susan says, hiding behind David. “Get the hell out of here!”
Sarah moves in closer. “Franklin?” She examines his face. “Is that you?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” Franklin says.
“You have finally lost it,” she says. “You’ve been obsessed with the candy people for so long that you’ve started dressing like them.”
Susan looks at the bleeding child on their floor. “What the hell did you do to that kid?”
“It wasn’t my fault,” Franklin says.
“You’re even killing kids?” Sarah says. “Are you eating them, too? You sick fuck!”
Jujy gets between Franklin and his wives.
“He’s not your mate anymore,” Jujy tells them. “He is mine now. We have an egg.”
Sarah looks at her. “Who’s this psycho bitch?”
“I’m his dominant,” Jujy says. “You are never to speak to him again.”
“Just get the fuck out of here, you freaks!” Susan cries.
“We can’t leave,” Franklin says. “We need to stay here for a while. Just for tonight.”
“Fuck no!” Susan says. “You leave now.”
David gets closer, his bat raised over his head. “Get the fuck out or you’re fucking dead!”
Franklin pulls the sword out of his cane and points it at David.
“We can’t go,” he says. “Let us stay and you won’t get hurt.”
His wives laugh at him.
Sarah gets in his face. “You’re so pathetic, Franklin. You are the biggest loser I’ve ever known. I married you because I thought you were going to be rich…” Then she grabs the sword out of Franklin’s hand, his infected muscles too weak to prevent her from prying open his fingers. She points it at him. “But you turned out to be just a fucking joke.”
As she jabs the sword at Franklin, Jujy catches her arm and throws her across the room. Susan and David gasp as Jujy reveals her razor sharp teeth to them.
“She’s a real one,” Susan says, trembling. “The bitch is a real candy person.”
David swings his bat at Jujy, but she dodges out of the way and cuts through his neck with her butterscotch fingernails. Blood sprays onto Susan as he falls to the ground. Before Franklin can stop her, Jujy breaks Susan’s neck and then lunges at Sarah as the crying young woman runs for the door. Troy watches from under the table, as Jujy rips the woman into shreds with her claws and teeth.
“He’s my mate!” Jujy says, between bites. “He can’t have a human wife!”
Sarah’s screams echo through the apartment as the candy woman eats her alive. Jujy doesn’t kill her quickly. She tears open the woman’s stomach and chews her insides. She eats her way through to the woman’s heart. Sarah doesn’t die until the candy woman bites into her heart and tears it out of her chest.
When she is done, Jujy spits the bleeding organ onto Sarah’s corpse and says, “She tastes terrible.” She turns to Franklin. “How could you have mated with her?”
Jujy wraps the egg in a warm blanket that Sarah had been sleeping on. Then she presses her body against it.
“We need to get rid of these bodies,” Franklin says.
“I don’t want to eat them,” Jujy says.
“No,” Franklin says. “There’s no time. We have to get rid of them.”
“Put them outside,” Jujy says.
“I’ll take care of it,” Franklin says.
He puts their bodies into garbage bags and throws them out of the window into the alley.
“I need to go down there and hide them,” Franklin says.
“I should be doing that and you should be sitting on the egg,” Jujy says.
“This is my world,” Franklin says. “I know it better than you.”
Jujy looks away from him.
Franklin peeks at Troy under the kitchen table. “I’ll be right back, Troy. Then we’ll go to a hospital.”
Troy shakes his head.
“Don’t worry. You’ll be fine.”
Troy holds his neck and says, “I wanna go home.”
“You’ll go home soon,” Franklin says.
Before he leaves, Franklin plugs a flash drive into his brain and copies all of the information on the candy people to it. He puts it into his suit pocket, then turns to the boy.
“Just in case something happens to me,” he tells Troy, patting his pocket.
The boy nods.
Franklin drags the bodies down the alley to the dumpsters one at a time. As he pushes the last one up into the garbage, he hears footsteps coming up behind him. The smell of artificial banana flavoring fills the air.
When Franklin turns around, he sees three candy people approaching him. Green Beard, Blue Gumball, and Wedding Cake Head.
“Where is she?” Blue Gumball asks Franklin.
Franklin doesn’t respond.
“Where is your dominant?” says Wedding Cake head. “Where is Jujube?”
“Submissives aren’t allowed to leave the cave,” Green Beard says. “Why are you out here? Surely, it is not to hunt.”
Franklin looks around the dumpster, searching for something he could use as a weapon.
“Who are you?” Green Beard says. “I do not recognize you.”
“I am Sour Apple,” Franklin says.
“You’re the one Black Licorice was speaking of,” Green Beard says. “You’re the one he suspected to be human.”
“The human who killed Float,” says Wedding Cake Head.
They move in closer. Franklin steps back.
“You are human, aren’t you?” Green Beard says. “That is why you came here. You were returning home.”
“That’s not true,” Franklin says.
“Don’t deny it,” Green Beard says.
“We can smell the human behind the candy,” says Wedding Cake Head.
Franklin spots what looks to be a shotgun behind the dumpster. He examines it a little closer and it really is a shotgun. He thinks it can’t be possible. Why would there be a shotgun behind a dumpster? But then he thinks of reasons for a shotgun to be there. Maybe a teenager bought a shotgun and hid it here so his parents wouldn’t find out. Maybe a criminal stashed it here while running from the cops. Maybe a bitter wife found her husband’s hidden illegal gun collection and decided to throw it out while he was at work. No matter what the case, Franklin has a shotgun. He hopes it has bullets.
“You are friends of Licorice?” Franklin asks, a little more confident now that he has a weapon nearby.
They come closer.
“You know that he is dead, right?”
They stop and look at each other.
“He has not been seen in days,” Green Beard says.
“I killed him,” Franklin says.
“I did,” he says. “And if you don’t get out of here I will kill all of you.”
They laugh.
Franklin goes for the shotgun. He jumps behind the dumpster and grabs it. But once he picks it up, he realizes that it is not a real shotgun. It is only a toy.
But Franklin points the toy at them as if it were real. “Stay back.”
The candy men look at the toy. They either realize it is not a real weapon or have no idea what shotguns are.
“Kill him,” Green Beard says.
As Blue Gumball charges at Franklin, the sound of a shotgun echoes through the alleyway. Gumball’s chest explodes into Franklin’s face. Franklin looks down at his toy shotgun. The shell didn’t come from it.
Behind the candy people, Franklin sees a mob of people entering the alleyway. They are all candy hunters. Parents who have lost their children to the candy people and have nothing left to live for but revenge. People like Franklin.
“There they are!” the woman with the shotgun screams.
Guns are fired into the candy people. Green Beard and Wedding Cake Head turn away from Franklin and charge the crowd. The mob screams as the woman with the shotgun is cut down by Wedding Cake Head. They fire into Green Beard, but he doesn’t go down quick enough. He kills three of the candy hunters before he dies.
Franklin runs from the alleyway back to his apartment. The mob disperses as Wedding Cake Head tears off an old man’s leg and beats a woman to death with it.
When Franklin gets back to his apartment, Jujy is sitting at the kitchen table, eating a human hand. Franklin closes the door and slowly approaches her. He looks under the table to see Troy’s body.
“What did you do?” Franklin asks. “Did you kill him?”
She wipes her bloody mouth with a napkin.
“The child was already dead,” she says. “It bled to death.”
“He was fine,” Franklin says. “The bleeding had stopped. You killed him.”
“It was only food,” she says.
“He wasn’t just food,” Franklin says. “He was a human being!”
“You should eat some,” she says. “You’ll see it is nothing more than food.”
The Cannibals of Candyland Page 10