of his eye. It is something moving down the street towards a small neighborhood park. Something with bright colors that glitter in the sunlight.
When Franklin looks up, he sees pink cotton candy hair disappear behind a grassy hill. And in the air, he smells something sweet and fruity, like a wet artificially flavored strawberry lollipop. It’s the same thing he smelled when he met the candy person as a child, over twenty years ago.
Franklin encountered the candy person when he was ten years old. He was with his older sister, Hillary, who was twelve, his little brother, Andrew, who was nine, and his little sister, Laura, who was seven.
He had just finished playing basketball with Andrew in the park. He didn’t like basketball, but his brother loved it and loved playing against Franklin because he always won. Andrew only liked to play games that he was guaranteed to win.
After the match, Andrew kept saying, “You got pwned!” over and over again. Pwned was Andrew’s favorite slang word and used it as much as possible.
“I pwned the hell out of you!” Andrew said.
“Yeah, yeah,” Franklin said.
“Don’t swear,” Hillary said.
“I didn’t swear!” Andrew said. “Pwned isn’t a swear word.”
“I meant hell,” Hillary said.
“Oh,” Andrew said.
The four of them often visited the park. Andrew went because he liked to play basketball and climb trees. Hillary went because she liked to climb trees and make sure nobody got into any trouble. Laura went because she liked to get into trouble and find toadstools. Franklin went because their parents didn’t like it when he stayed indoors, drawing pictures and reading books all day.
Franklin would rather have stayed home than gone to the park, but he didn’t completely loathe the experience. He liked spending time with Laura, who was his favorite sibling. Although she was only seven, she was fearless, clever, and charismatic. Nobody could stop her from doing whatever she wanted to do, not even Hillary. She was everything that Franklin was not. He envied her.
While Andrew and Hillary went off to climb a big tree in the middle of the park, Franklin went with Laura to find toadstools. She liked toadstools because they reminded her of fairies.
“How about this one?” Franklin asked, pointing at a toadstool growing under a bench.
“Nah,” Laura said. “It’s too mundane.”
“Mundane?” Franklin asked.
“It’s boring and ordinary. I only want the ones that are special.”
Franklin pointed at another one.
“How about that one,” he said. “That one looks like a turtle!”
“Nah,” Laura said. “That one is ugly and deformed. Only ugly fairies would sit on a toadstool like that. I want to find a pretty one so that a pretty fairy will sit on it.”
Laura planned to put the toadstools she collected into a flowerpot and place it on her windowsill in the hope that a fairy might come and sit on one of them. Then she would catch the fairy, put it into a cage, and keep it as a pet. Having a pet fairy was what Laura wanted more than anything. The rest of the family thought it was kind of weird, but Franklin thought it was cute.
Laura and Franklin were the two weird ones in the family. Whenever Laura did anything weird, their parents would laugh. Whenever Franklin did anything weird, their parents would get angry. Franklin concluded that it was only okay to be weird if everyone already really likes you.
When Franklin found a toadstool with pink spots and a light blue hue, he knew it was just what Laura was looking for.
“How about this one?” he told her. “This one is perfect.”
But Laura didn’t look at it. Her eyes were focused on something else. Something much more interesting.
“What?” Franklin said when she would not respond.
He smelled the sweetness of strawberry lollipops in the air. Then he saw what Laura was looking at. A brightly colored woman, kind of like a clown, was walking through the grass towards them.
It was a woman made of sweet treats. She wasn’t wearing any clothes, but her skin was coated in a layer of candy. She had pink cotton candy for hair, white taffy skin with cinnamon cheeks, plump gummy lips, a maraschino cherry nose, red and white striped legs like candy canes, shoulders made of chocolate, blue hands that looked like gloves of bubblegum ice cream, long butterscotch candy fingernails, a rainbow-swirled belly like a giant circus lollipop, and soft marshmallow breasts with gumdrops for nipples. She carried a jump rope of red licorice and a large white bag. The only things not made of candy were her eyes, but they were as pink as strawberry soda.
“Wow, she’s pretty!” Laura cried. “I bet she has treats in her bag!”
Then Laura ran towards the candy lady.
Franklin knew something was wrong with the woman. He could sense it in the way she glared at him with her pink snake-like eyes and the way she curled her hard candy fingernails as if they were raven claws. Even though he sensed danger, he couldn’t help but become drawn to the woman. The sweet smell in the air that filled his lungs was intoxicating. It warmed his mind with a calming bliss that took away all of his fears and worries. It pulled him towards the woman’s heavenly sweetness.
Franklin saw that Andrew and Hillary were also drawn to the woman. They had climbed down from the tree and walked like drunken zombies towards her. They were even closer to her than Laura and looked to be twice as dazed.
It was Andrew who got to the woman first. He said hello to her and asked her for candy. She didn’t speak. She took him by the shoulder and pulled him closer, allowing him to lick her sweet candy stomach. As he closed his eyes to lick, the woman wrapped her claws around him. That’s when Franklin noticed her teeth. Although her outside was sweet and pleasant, her insides were nasty and horrific. Her tongue was like that of a snake’s and her teeth were razor-edged nails.
The woman bit into Andrew’s neck and tore out his throat. That’s when Franklin snapped out of it. He screamed as he saw the woman tear into his little brother and thrash her head around like a shark ripping a chunk out of a seal. She made squealing growling noises as she thrashed at him. Franklin then realized she was more like a vicious animal than a human being.
Andrew’s blood splashed into Hillary’s face. She cringed and wiped the blood out of her eyes. It wasn’t until she took her hands away from her face that she realized where she was and what was happening. She shrieked and turned around to run away, but she didn’t get far. The candy woman whipped her red licorice vine at her and it wrapped around her throat. The woman jerked it back like a fishing rod and Hillary’s neck made a loud cracking sound. Then she fell limp to the ground.
Franklin turned to run, but Laura didn’t follow him. She was still in a trance. Even though she just witnessed her brother and sister murdered by the woman, she was still drawn towards the candy smell. Franklin tried to pull her by the arm, but she resisted with all her strength. He tried to pick her up, but she kicked him as hard as she could in the stomach. He tried slapping her face, but she didn’t seem to notice.
The woman dropped Andrew’s body and stepped towards them. Blood dripped down her white candy chin as she exposed her teeth. Franklin pulled on Laura as hard as he could, but she would not move. Once the woman was within arms reach, he had no choice but to let his sister go and run for his life. He ran several yards away and then turned around. He watched as his sister embraced the candy woman like her own mommy, with a big smile on her face. His sister didn’t even let out a whimper as the woman bit into her belly. It was like Laura was so drugged that she couldn’t feel a thing. The candy woman kneeled over her, coated in gore, pulling her insides out and stuffing them in her mouth. Before she died, Laura turned her head and looked at Franklin. The big smile was still on her face like it was the happiest day of her life.
That’s the image that burned in Franklin’s memory. It is what he has seen every day when he goes to sleep at night, and every morning when he wakes up. He sees his little sister smiling at him as the creature made of candy squats over her open body, eating her innards.
The woman didn’t come after Franklin. After she was done eating and after Laura had stopped moving, she gathered the remains of her victims into her large white bag. Then tossed it over her shoulder and walked
