The Cannibals of Candyland Read online

  Franklin takes the gun out of his coat and hides it in some dirty underwear. He knows his wives won’t go anywhere near his underwear. Then he removes his right ear and pushes a small yellow button on the side of his head. The back of his skull opens like a sunflower, revealing his swollen oily brain.

  Besides giving up his personal life to the hunting of candy people, he has also given up his natural human brain and had it replaced with a more advanced artificial brain. He spent all of his inheritance on the operation. The brain is made of silicon-based imitation neural tissue that works as a hybrid between computer and brain. It has given him a picture-perfect memory, the math skills of a calculator, advanced deduction and puzzle-solving skills, superior eye/hand coordination, and the ability to think or read twenty times faster than anyone else can speak. He can also beat any video game without losing a single life, most of the time.

  Although he assumed the brain would be a major benefit in the hunt for candy people, it hasn’t yet been much use to him. His two wives approved of the operation because they thought he would be able to get a high-paying job with his new brain, but that didn’t happen to be the case. Companies stopped hiring people with artificial brains a few years ago, after they discovered all the defects. Almost five thousand people received the operation before anyone realized that the brains don’t last as long as normal human brains. They have a tendency of breaking down, freezing, or frying in the way that most computers do after a few years. Many people who have had the operation had their memories wiped, some had lost senses or had their senses swapped so that they saw what they smelled and felt what they tasted, some had become vegetables, and many have gone completely insane without warning. Nothing has happened to Franklin yet but the doctors told him that it is only a matter of time. He might have three days, three years, or three decades. Nobody knows for sure. But they do know that it will happen someday and there is nothing that can be done to stop it.

  Much of the skin on Franklin’s face is plastic. They had to remove his ears, the skin on his scalp and his forehead or else the flesh would rip every time he opened his head to let his brain breathe.

  That is one of the things Franklin likes most about his artificial brain… letting it breathe. His brain overheats once or twice a day, sometimes three or four times during periods of high stress. When this happens, he has to open up his skull and let it air out for ten minutes or so. Airing out his brain is incredibly relaxing to Franklin. It is like having a strong brandy and a good cigar at the end of a long day.

  As his brain pulses against the cool draft, Franklin closes his eyes, strokes his purring candy-colored cat, and listens to the screeching music on his headphones that has become as calming as white noise.

  Franklin Pierce is self-employed. He makes his living teaching pet owners how to give the Heimlich maneuver and CPR to their dogs. It has strangely been a profitable venture for him. People care a lot more for their pets than he thought. At first, he wanted to make money by selling a manual on pet care. He wrote a book called “How to Save Your Best Friend’s Life: A Do it Yourself Guide to Pet Paramedics.” The book teaches people how to save their pets from choking, drowning, heart attacks, bleeding to death, and other such emergencies that require quick action in order to save a pet’s life. He sold a lot of copies in pet shops and local bookstores, but found that more people were interested in taking lessons in person rather than reading his manual. So he started teaching lessons. He gives a group class twice a month and teaches private lessons almost daily.

  Today Franklin is giving a private lesson to an old lady with a large angry Doberman who lives in the West Hills. When he arrives at her house, he meets a frowning overweight purple-haired woman wearing a large red bow and a flowery dress.

  “Take off those shoes and that smile,” she says to him.

  She tells him that her dog gets angry whenever he sees someone smile.

  Franklin complies. As he takes off his shoes, he hears Crabcake meowing from outside. Although he takes his kitty with him everywhere he goes, he never takes her into a client’s home. He’s never sure how his client’s pet will react to her, so he always keeps her by the mailbox.

  “Here he is,” the old woman says as she presents her dog.

  Franklin lets out a puff of air as he sees the dog. The animal matches the old woman in every way. It is old, overweight, and wears a flowery bandana with a red bow. It even has purple hair.

  The dog growls at Franklin. As he usually does whenever he gets nervous, Franklin puts his hands in his pockets. Normally he does this to pet Crabcake, whose soft purr relaxes him, but this time he doesn’t have a kitty in his pocket. This time he has a gun. He pets the barrel of the gun and finds that it, too, relaxes him.

  Franklin never wanted to buy a gun, even though he was hunting the Candy people. All he wanted to do was capture a candy person on film and then prove to the world that they exist. Once the world accepts that they do exist, he imagines the military will hunt them down and exterminate them all.

  He has been successful at capturing them on tape three times. The first two times were not very clear. He got them from a distance, a safe distance, but they just looked like people in crazy-colored clothing. Even the community of candy man hunters online didn’t believe they were real. Even he wasn’t sure about one of them. But the third time, he captured one of them perfectly. He was less than twenty feet away, on a balcony above it, and was able to zoom right into the creature’s face. It was like the creature was posing for him and stood there for a good five minutes. It was a perfect shot. The best footage anyone had ever captured.

  Franklin thought he had won. But, still, nobody believed his footage was real. The cops laughed at him. News stations wouldn’t respond to his letters or phone calls. Some of his online buddies believed the footage to be real, but most of them were skeptical. That’s when he decided that the only way to prove the candy people are real is to kill one of them and use the corpse as indisputable evidence. That’s when he decided to buy a gun.

  As he teaches the old lady how to save her grumpy dog’s life in the case of an emergency, Franklin caresses the gun in his pocket. He imagines what it will feel like to shoot one of the candy people, blow apart their candy-coating, and splatter their guts all over the sidewalk. He wonders if killing just one of them would be enough to avenge the death of his little brother and sisters. He wonders if the military will do anything about them, or if he’ll have to kill them all himself.

  The Doberman growls at Franklin as his lips turn into a large wicked smile.

  After his job is done and Franklin picks Crabcake up from the old lady’s lawn, he sees something in the corner 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 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.”