away.
His parents never forgave him for surviving the encounter, nor did he ever forgive himself. He tried telling everyone about the candy woman, but they all thought he was delusional after such a tragic experience.
Outside of the old lady’s house, Franklin pets the gun in his pocket and stares at the park at the end of the street. By the sweet scent in the air, he is pretty sure that it was a candy person who just went over that hill in the park. All he has to do is go after it, pull out his gun and shoot the creature dead. It’s that easy. Then his sweet little Laura will be avenged.
But as much as he wants to, and needs to, he can’t get himself to go after it. He shakes with excitement at the thought of revenge, but he doesn’t go after it. He hesitates, makes excuses, tells himself that he just imagined the candy person. Then he lets out a puff of air. He takes his hand away from the gun in his pocket and uses it to pet his kitty and hug her tightly to his chest.
Franklin spends the rest of the day hating himself for not having the courage to go after the candy person in the park. At one of the breweries downtown, he drinks a few Belgian-style ales. He only goes to the brewery once a month, because he can’t afford it and because he doesn’t get very buzzed anymore due to his artificial brain.
Drinking a Tripel, he pets Crabcake in his red suit pocket and wonders how many children will die because he let that thing live. He doesn’t know why he hesitated. It was perfect timing, too. He had the gun with him and the neighborhood was mostly empty due to it being in the middle of a workday. He only runs into candy people a couple times a year at most. It might be three years before he sees one again. Then again, this was the second one he had run into in just a month. He wonders if they are hunting more frequently. Perhaps they are getting hungrier or perhaps they are growing in number.
After he finishes his beer, he asks the bartender with the Santa Claus tattoo for another abbey-style on cask.
“Sorry, buddy,” the bartender says, shaking his head. “All out.”
“Of the abbey?” Franklin says. “No you’re not.”
“The keg is cashed,” says the bartender.
“You still have approximately one hundred and twenty-two ounces left in the cask.”
The bartender shakes the cask. Beer splashes inside, but he still shakes his head. “Nope, empty.”
“Look,” Franklin says, taking off his apple-red hat and placing it onto the counter. “I can tell how many ounces are left in it based on the sound it makes when it is pumped. I know that you know there is more beer in the cask and you just don’t want to give me anymore for some reason or another. If I had to guess I would say that this is the last of the batch. It is a really good beer. You probably want to take the rest of it home for yourself.”
“It’s not that,” the bartender says. “You’ve just had too many beers already.”
“But I’ve only had three beers,” Franklin says.
“But each of those were over eight percent alcohol.”
“But three glasses of wine isn’t too much in restaurant and red wine is usually thirteen or fourteen percent.”
The bartender squints his eyes and frowns at him.
“Look,” Franklin says. “I just want one more beer. That leaves you one hundred and eight ounces left to take home. That is still plenty of beer.”
“Yeah, but—” the bartender begins.
“You might have noticed I said one hundred and eight ounces rather than one hundred and six. If you poured me a normal sixteen-ounce pint there would only be one hundred and six ounces left, but you haven’t been filling up any beers all the way to the top of any glasses you have been pouring which has been shorting people out of two ounces of beer per glass. I am okay with this. I don’t like to complain. But if you will not give me another pint from the cask, I would at least like six ounces of it to make up for the beer I already paid for.”
The bartender shakes his head at Franklin as if he were the biggest asshole customer he’s had all week.
“Fine,” the bartender says, and pumps him a beer from the cask.
When he gets the beer, he discovers it’s six ounces short of a pint. The bartender still charges him for a full pint and quickly walks away to serve another customer before Franklin has the chance to complain about it.
On his way home, Franklin runs into Troy in the street again. This time the kid is all alone.
“Hey Fagboy,” Troy says to Franklin. “Where the hell were you? I’ve been waiting for you all day.”
Franklin ignores him and keeps walking.
“I need some money,” Troy says. “Right now.”
“I’m sorry, I’m broke,” Franklin says.
“Right now!”
“I told you I don’t have any money.”
“You better have some money. Or else you know what’s going to happen.”
Franklin wonders if the kid knows he is lying.
“Look kid,” he says. “I spent it all at the bar.”
“You have to have some money. Just give me whatever you’ve got.”
Franklin stops and turns to the kid. “What do you need it for, anyway?”
“It’s Jimmy’s birthday tomorrow. I want to get him that new transformer he’s been asking for. Our parents aren’t going to give him shit.”
“He’s your little brother?” Franklin asks.
“Yeah,” Troy says. “I look out for him.”
Franklin stares at him for a moment. Then he nods his head.
“Okay,” Franklin says. “I’ll give you what I’ve got. But it’s not much.”
“Give me all of it,” the kid says.
Franklin gives him seven dollars and some change.
Troy takes the money and runs off. Then he turns around and says, “Thanks, Fagboy!”
And when the kid turns around Franklin hears him say, “What a stupid bitch.”
Franklin stands in the street for a few minutes, wondering if he has just been duped. Even with his fancy hi- tech brain, Franklin can’t outsmart an eleven-year-old.
At home, Sarah and Susan are waiting for him. There is another guy with them, sitting on the couch. He might be the guy from the night before or maybe he’s somebody else. The apartment is destroyed. It smells like smoke and pee. Franklin guesses they’re on another meth binge. They always destroy the apartment when they go on a meth binge.
“What happened?” Franklin asks.
He notices that his handmade cubicle has been razed to the floor. Part of it is blackened as if they lit it on fire and then pissed the fire out, which would account for the smell of the room.
“We’ve made a decision,” Susan says. “We want you to move out.”
“Yeah,” Sarah says.
“What did you do to my office?” Franklin says as he digs through the pee-soaked boards in the corner of the room.
“We burned it,” Sarah says, giggling. “We burned all your stuff.”
“You burned my clothes? My laptop?”
“We don’t want you here anymore,” Susan says. “You’re a loser.”
“I’m a loser?” Franklin says. “Neither of you have worked a day in your lives.”
“Just get out,” Susan says.
“This is my apartment,” Franklin says. “My name is on the lease.”
“We don’t care,” Susan says. “David just got kicked out of his place so he is moving in. The three of us decided that you should go.”
“Who the hell is going to pay your rent then?” Franklin says. “If you think I am going to then you’re even stupider than I realized.”
“David will,” Sarah says. “He has loads of money.”
