Blood dribbles out of Franklin’s mouth. Even though most of his senses are dulled, his stripped teeth are still intensely sensitive to the grinding stone against the nerves in his teeth. Even the air brushing through his teeth as he inhales causes his eyes to water.
His senses are also not dulled to the intense aroma of the candy woman’s shit piling into the candy dish like a coil of soft serve ice cream. The excrement is a swirl of pink and purple colors. It emits a very sweet and tangy smell, like Nerds watermelon-grape candy. Yet it also has a terrible stench within the sweet. A rancid infected wound smell that is far more foul than that of human feces.
Franklin cringes at the aroma and tries to break away from her grip on his jaw, but his muscles are too weak. He tries to speak to complain to her, but only blood bubbles out of his mouth. When she is finished, she pulls out a roll of toilet paper-sized bubbletape and wipes her hard strawberry buttocks. But she only pushes the candy dish to the side, doesn’t even bother to put the lid back on the dish, so Franklin is forced to endure the smell through the duration of his teeth sharpening.
Eventually, Franklin builds a tolerance to Jujy’s strawberry drug. It doesn’t affect him as much as it did. He is able to think more clearly.
When Jujy tries to feed him the meat of a child, Franklin has the willpower to resist.
“I won’t eat that,” he says with his new green gummy lips.
“But I hunted it for you,” she says.
“I can’t eat children,” he says. “It’s terrible.”
“No, these are really good ones,” she says, looking in her bag for a good piece. “Just try a bite.”
Franklin grabs her with his marzipan hand. “No, I mean it is a terrible thing to eat children. I won’t eat them.”
“But what will you eat?” she asks.
“Anything else,” he says. “Candy.”
“It’s not healthy to eat just candy,” she says. “You need meat.”
“I’d rather die than eat the meat of a child,” he says.
Jujy looks at him with a confused frown, as if he’s offended her in some way. Franklin thinks that if anyone he should be the one who is offended. She digs through the pieces of flesh, looking for one that might be suitable for him, but Franklin just shakes his head at everything he is offered.
Jujy returns with a new bag of food for Franklin. This time it is filled with candy instead of flesh. There is a mound of chocolate that looks as if she cut it out of the side of a hill. There are peanut butter taffy flowers. There are spicy ginger plants, jawbreaker rocks, and a dead marshmallow animal.
The animal looks like some kind of rabbit or a squirrel. It’s not exactly either. Blood is leaking out of its white marshmallow fur.
“There is meat inside of it,” Jujy tells him. “You can survive on these.”
Franklin eats the chocolate and peanut butter taffy, but decides against the animal. The idea of bloody raw meat wrapped in marshmallow does not appeal to him. Jujy gives him an annoyed look when he doesn’t eat it, like there is something terribly wrong with him.
“Why are you keeping me prisoner here?” Franklin asks.
“You’re not my prisoner,” she says. “You are my guest.”
“Then unchain me,” Franklin says, tugging on his neck brace.
“It is for your own good,” she says.
“Just like removing my body parts and replacing them with candy is for my own good?” he asks.
“Yes,” she says.
Then she points at the marshmallow animal. “It is also for your own good if you eat that.”
Franklin cringes when he looks down on the creature. Its swollen bloody tongue dangles out of its white fluffy mouth.
“I can’t eat raw meat,” he says.
“Raw?” she asks. “What is raw?”
“Uncooked,” he says.
“Like the way cookies are cooked?” she asks. “Cooked meat would be weird.”
“That’s how humans eat meat.”
“We use cooking to make our buildings and furniture. We don’t cook food. That would be gross.”
“I thought you people read books about humans,” he says. “You should know humans cook their food.”
“I never read books,” she says. “Reading is boring.”
Then she smiles at Franklin and bites the marshmallow animal’s head off.
Licorice returns to meet Jujy’s guest as he had promised.
Most of Franklin’s skin is now coated in candy parts. He looks just like a candy man. He can’t believe he has become like one of the creatures he fears. His eyes are the only thing that appear to be human. Jujy gives him a pair of green candy sunglasses to cover them.
He still wears his apple-red suit, but it has been saturated in sugar and artificial flavorings so that it appears to be candy clothes. He holds his cane in his hand, so that he can draw the sword in case of defense. Jujy doesn’t release him from his chain and collar. She ignores him when he tells her it might look suspicious.
“Black Licorice,” Jujy announces as the candy man enters her home.
She points at Franklin. “This is Sour Apple.”
“Good to meet you, Apple,” he says in his deep bubbling voice. “I hope you are feeling better.”
Licorice steps forward and shakes Franklin’s hand.
“Yes,” Franklin says, holding the man’s hard black fingers in his soft marzipan palm.
By the way the man squeezes his hand, Franklin can tell he is making sure the hand is made of candy.
“You are from the northern cave?” he asks.
“Yes, he is,” Jujy says.
“I’m good friends with someone who recently moved here from the north cave,” Licorice says. “His name is Red Vine. Do you know him?”
“Never heard of him,” Franklin says.
“That’s funny you’ve never met given the number who live there,” he says. “How many of them are there, again? Twenty?”
“A little more,” Franklin says, putting on his best bluffing poker face.
“With such a small population, I would think that you would know everyone there. My buddy Red Vine says he knows everyone there. Perhaps you know him by his nickname, Razzleberry?”
Franklin can tell what he’s trying to do. Even without his advanced brain, he would be able to see through this game he is playing.
“Never heard of him,” Franklin says. “Are you sure he is from the north cave?”
“I am positive,” he says. “Perhaps you know each other and don’t even know it. Maybe I should introduce you. Would you like that?”
“There wouldn’t be any point,” Franklin says.
“Why not?” says the candy man.
“Because there’s no such person,” Franklin says. “I don’t see the point in meeting someone that doesn’t exist.”
Black Licorice smiles.
“You’re not as dim as Jujube,” he says. “No, you’re actually pretty smart. Almost as smart as a human.”
“Smarter,” Franklin says.
“Smarter?” Licorice laughs, and rubs Franklin’s shoulder. “I think I like you, Apple. You’ve got strength of character.”
“Thank you,” he says.
“I suspected you to be the human being who killed Float,” he says. “I see now that I was wrong.”
“Jujy told me about this,” Franklin says. “You found meat within a gum-goblin. Did it turn out to be your friend’s or a human’s?”
