fingernails are as strong as glass and as sharp as knives. Franklin cries out. He points his gun at the candy man’s stomach and fires twice, throwing the creature back.
The candy man shrieks. He raises his claws and goes for Franklin’s throat, but Franklin gets him first. He fires three bullets into the creature’s head at point blank range. A fleshy human brain explodes out of the candy skull in blubbery chunks. The creature falls back. The blue swirl in his lollipop eyes goes white.
Franklin falls into the marshmallow flowers, holding his stomach. He looks around to see if any other candy people are in the area. The gunshots would surely attract attention. He’s out of bullets. The rest of the bullets are hidden in his apartment. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do if other candy people show up. His cane sword is his only defense.
He decides to act quickly. Even though his insides feel like they’ve been shredded into pulp, he drags the corpse of the candy man across the meadow. He is much heavier than a normal human. Franklin can tell the candy coating adds another 53.7 pounds.
He winces as he drags the body and cries out whenever he slips in a puddle of caramel or vanilla frosting. Then he hears pounding footsteps coming towards him from the other side of the hill. He pulls harder, but it only makes him lose his balance against the terrain and fall down more frequently. The gun slips out of his pocket, but he decides to leave it. He doesn’t need it anymore. All he needs is to get out of there alive and bring this body to the police.
The noises that are coming closer no longer sound like footsteps to Franklin. They are more like thumping sounds, like somebody is dribbling a dozen basketballs at once.
Franklin sees a group of multi-colored blobs the size of beach balls bouncing over the hill towards him. They are cherry, orange, lemon, lime, and grape balls of living gummy candy. Though they have no limbs, the candies each have a single eye in the center of their bodies and large mouths.
Franklin doesn’t know what to make of them. He is more surprised than afraid. Just to be on the safe side, Franklin moves quickly away from the gummy blobs, pulling the body with all his strength. But the creatures follow him. They catch up and swarm him, bouncing up and down around, circling him like little gummy sharks.
The blobs block his path and force him to stop. He smacks at one of them with his cane, but it just comes right back. He smacks another one, but it catches the cane in its mouth and won’t let go. Franklin swings the little blob through the air, but it is stuck to the cane like a leech, making slurping noises.
An orange blob wraps its mouth around the candy man’s foot and bites it off. The creature doesn’t actually have any teeth, but it is still somehow able to suck the foot off of the candy man’s leg with ease. The gummy creature is transparent, so Franklin can see the candy man’s foot inside of the blob as it bounces around.
The rest of the blobs attack. They bounce in and take bites out of the dead candy man’s flesh and bounce out. They do not attack Franklin, so he assumes they are only after the corpse. Half of the body is absorbed into the bellies of the blobs within minutes. Franklin knows this isn’t good. If he doesn’t get the body back home nobody will believe his story.
He jerks his cane with all his strength, sending the blob attached to the handle across the meadow. Then he smacks at any creature that comes close to the body. He knocks some of them back, but there are just too many of them. For every one he knocks away, three more come in from behind and take bites out of the corpse. Franklin pulls the sword out of the cane and stabs one of them with it, but the blob doesn’t die. The hole seals itself up right away and the creature suffers no damage, not even pain.
Franklin knows that he can’t give up, so he continues fighting them. He tries cutting the blobs in half, or stabbing them in their eyes, but they just reform themselves and continue their attack. Then the blobs stop going after just the corpse, and start going after Franklin. When he notices this, Franklin drops the body and backs away. Half of the blobs stay with the body, the other half come after him.
Within moments, the gummy blobs gobble up the rest of the corpse and Franklin finds himself surrounded again by the bouncing creatures. He chaotically thrashes his cane at the swarm and hits a lemon blob so hard that it knocks the cane out of his hand. Then the blobs charge in at him. He leaps over a cherry blob and runs for a giant candy cane growing out of the earth. Before they can take a piece out of him, he climbs up the candy pole to safety.
The blobs stay at the foot of the candy cane for an hour, bouncing hungrily up and down at him. Franklin sweats. At first, the moisture causes the candy cane to become sticky, which makes it easier for him to hold. But he sweats more and the candy cane becomes slick. He slides down the candy pole, and quickly climbs back up, only to slide down again. It takes only a few minutes before he loses his grip and falls into the swarm of gummy predators.
As he hits the ground, a blob jumps onto Franklin’s chest. It is a fat purple blob that drools grape-flavored saliva as it opens its wide smiling mouth around Franklin’s head. There is a cracking sound and the grape blob is thrown off of Franklin’s chest and flies twenty-one feet into the air.
Lifting himself up, Franklin sees that someone has come to his rescue. A woman with a long red licorice whip flips through the air and lands on a chocolate malt ball nearby. She whips at the gummy blobs, sending them flying in all directions. The blobs scatter. The sound of the cracking whip seems to frighten them. They aren’t sensitive to pain, they are sensitive to noise. His rescuer just has to crack the whip a few more times and the rest of the gummy blobs flee into the lollipop forest.
Franklin looks at the woman. It is a candy woman. She walks towards him with red and white striped legs, her red vine whip thrown over her shoulder, and a big smile on her face. When she rubs her fingers through her cotton candy hair, Franklin recognizes her. She is the woman from his childhood. The one that murdered his brother and sisters. The one that ruined his life.
He goes for his cane sword on the ground, but when he comes up she is already standing in front of him, smiling at him.
“Are you cinnamon?” the candy woman says to Franklin. Her voice sounds like that of a cartoon elf. “I love cinnamon.”
She smells him and rubs her hand along his red suit. “Or are you candy apple?”
Franklin backs away from her. She smiles at his shyness and he becomes paralyzed at the sight of her razor- sharp teeth. She steps closer to him. The smell of artificial strawberry fills his nostrils. It intoxicates him even more than it did when he was a child. His eyes drift into a state of bliss. She smells him again and her face becomes confused.
“I don’t smell candy apple or cinnamon or anything,” she says. “What’s your name?”
He wants to cut her in half with his cane sword while she is off guard, but finds himself responding to her question.
“Franklin,” he says, stepping closer towards her.
“What kind of candy is that?” she asks.
“It’s not a candy, it’s my name,” he says.
“You mean you weren’t named after a type of candy?” she says. “I thought everyone was named after candy.”
“No,” Franklin says.
“Huh…” she says, leaning her hand on her glossy hip. “Well, my name is Jujube, but you can call me Jujy.”
The candy woman steps around Franklin and examines him.
“Hey, your brain is showing,” she says to him when she walks behind him.
“I know,” Franklin says.
She pokes at his brain a little, but stops once Franklin shakes her fingers away.
“Sorry,” she says.
As Franklin sways in the drunken delight, Jujy licks him on the shoulder.
“Your candy-coating doesn’t have any flavor at all!” she cries.
“I’m sorry,” he says.
“Wait a minute…” she says.
