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.”
She gets up from her chair and goes to Franklin, licking blood from her fingers.
“Now that we’re living in the human world it will be so easy for me to catch prey,” she says. “They live all around us.”
She kisses Franklin. He tastes the gore in her mouth.
“We can start a new cave,” she says. “Right here. It’ll be just the two of us and our children.”
Franklin turns away as she tries to kiss him again. He looks down at the telephone. It is covered in blood. He follows a trail of blood to the boy’s body.
“Did he use this?” Franklin holds up the phone to Jujy.
“He was talking to it,” she says.
“Shit,” Franklin says. “He must have called the police or his parents. We need to get out of here now.”
“We can’t go,” she says.
“If they find you they will kill you,” Franklin says.
“I will kill them,” Jujy says.
“We have to go,” he says. Then he scans the floor. “Where’s Crabcake?”
He doesn’t see his kitty anywhere. While searching the room, he smells smoke. It is coming from the bathroom. As Franklin enters the bathroom, he finds a fire pit in the bathtub. His cat has been skewered on his cane sword and is roasting over the fire. He turns to Jujy with red watering eyes.
“I knew you wouldn’t want to eat any of the child, so I cooked you this.” She smiles at him, as if she did something very nice for him and is awaiting thanks.
Franklin’s words choke out of this throat. “She was my pet. How could you kill her?”
“You’re not allowed to have pets,” she says. “We have an egg now.”
When Franklin looks into her eyes, he doesn’t see Jujy anymore. He sees the woman who killed his brother and sisters. He sees an evil creature who should not be allowed to live.
Franklin picks up the cane sword with his false hand and stabs Jujy in the stomach with it.
She looks at him with a sad, confused face. Crabcake’s flaming corpse is still attached to the blade as Franklin shoves it deeper inside of the candy woman.
“You’re just a monster!” Franklin says. “You need to fucking die!”
Jujy watches him as he stabs deeper. “But you submitted your soul to me?”
“I’m not your submissive anymore,” Franklin says.
Jujy goes from sad to angry. She grabs Franklin by the waist and throws him to the ground. She cuts into his face and armpits.
“Submit to me,” she says.
Crabcake’s flames begin to melt Jujy’s candy skin.
“Submit,” she says.
Franklin punches her in the face. He grabs her by her cotton candy hair and bites into her shoulder. He bites through the strawberry-kiwi flavoring and into the meat, chewing her flesh and swallowing. Then he takes another bite out of her.
“I’m the dominant!” she cries. “You don’t eat me, I eat you!”
Jujy bites into his collarbone and peels off the skin. Every bite Franklin takes out of her, Jujy takes a bite out of him. They eat each other and cut into each other as they wrestle through the living room. The flames melt their candy coating into liquid. The sugar becomes caramelized and sticks them together.
After a while, Jujy’s biting becomes licking and kissing. Franklin continues to bite her.
“Please, stop,” she tells him.
Franklin doesn’t stop.
“I don’t want to kill you,” she says. “I love you.”
She kisses his cheek as he bites into her neck.
“I promise I won’t eat children anymore,” she says, crying. “I can eat human food if it will make you happy. I can be the submissive and you can be the dominant if you want. Or we can be equals. We can both be dominants. I don’t care. I just want to be with you.”
She grabs him by the throat and forces him to kiss her.
“You love me,” she says. “I know you do.”
“You’re a monster,” Franklin says.
“What about our baby?” she says. “You’re going to love our baby. I know it.”
She kisses Franklin again and he kisses her back.
The door breaks in and four policemen enter with guns pointed at them.
“Get down!” the cops shout.
Jujy jumps to her feet. The flaming sword slips out of her stomach and falls on the floor.
“Get down now!” the cops shout at her.
She doesn’t move.
One of the cops moves too close to the egg on the couch. Something snaps in Jujy when he sees the cop’s thigh brushing past the egg. She charges him. The other cops fire at her. The bullets break through her candy coating and enter her chest. She flies backwards and hits the floor next to Franklin.
She quivers on the ground. Blood oozes out between her razor teeth.
“She’s a real one,” says a cop with one eyebrow. “We’ve got ourselves another goddamned candy person.”
Jujy reaches her hands out to Franklin but he won’t take it.
“Kill the other one, too,” says the one-eyebrowed cop. “They’re dangerous.”
They point their guns at Franklin
“Don’t shoot,” Franklin says. He gets on his knees. “I’m not a real candy person. I’ve been her prisoner for weeks. She dressed me up to look like this. I’m human.”
The other cops look at the cop with one eyebrow, not sure what to make of Franklin.
“I’ll show you,” Franklin says.
Then he peels off the green candy shell on his chest. When the rancid odor hits the room, one of the policemen runs into the hallway to puke. Another officer shoots Franklin in the stomach.
Franklin hits the ground. He looks down at his skinless chest to see that his flesh has become so infected and swollen that it looks less human than it had with the candy coating. Blood and puss drain from his bullet wound. A
