This is a short Halloween story I had written as part of a two story chapbook I was going to give away digitally, but just haven't had the time to work on. Sadly, its not edited so its in a very raw and primal state as you read it here. But hey, its FREE and it was the best I had to offer because I'm a terrible planner. It, and the other story, were written in a style that I normally don't use, trying to capture that almost 1950's vibe. I don't know if I pulled it off or not. Enjoy!
Gumdrop Eyes
by Guy Medley cute artwork by Jim Boring
Sarah answered the soft rapping at the door, the giggles
beyond bringing forth a smile to her face. Three small children stood upon the
porch under the yellow light, one dressed as a bed sheet ghost, one as a crude
Frankenstein and the third as a vampire or some other such ghoul.
A mousy
voice just above a whisper squeaked from beneath the sheet of the ghost, “trick
or treat,” the sheet trembling not in the slightest as it might have any other
time a warm breath brushed against it.
She
could smell their sweetness; licorice and lemon drops and fresh pulled taffy.
And she could swear it was blue and pink cotton candy tufts that escaped wildly
from beneath caps and hoods and frightful plastic masks, sugary and wispy in
the gentle night breeze.
Sarah
filled their outstretched sacks with handfuls of candy, smiling down at the bizarre
little children. The ghost looked up and beyond its ragged cut eyeholes she
could see purple eyes staring back at her, unblinking like two sugared sapphires.
Like twin gumdrops she thought delightfully.
The
three children ran off toward the next waiting house, their little bodies
making a sticky, syrupy sound as they retreated across the lawn, and Sarah
watched on in fascination and bewilderment and in a little bit of terror as
they went.
“Come
away from there, Sarah,” George called from the living room. “Quit gawking at
those little beggars and come sit down, now. Our program’s about to begin any
second.”
Sarah relaxed
in her chair, looking at but not really seeing the television in front of her.
“Who was it anyway, the Jackson kids?” he asked.
“No.
No, I don’t believe so. I’m not entirely sure who they were. Not at all.”
George
mumbled back, happy enough with the answer and returned his attention once
again to the television.
When
all of the candy had been handed out, Sarah switched off the porch light and
headed up to bed.
A chaos
brought her to the bedroom window where she looked out onto the street below. The
three odd children were being pursued down the street by a pack of children
still adorned in mask and costume. They advanced upon the trio slowly, as if
they were leading a funeral procession through the deserted street. In a
macabre way she supposed that was indeed what they were doing after all.
Whooping and hollering and screaming savagely, they at last caught their
quarry, and what soon followed was a scene more gruesome than any Sarah had
seen in a lifetime.
She
watched as the strange little children were thrown to the pavement, their candy
bags bursting open as the other children ripped and pulled and kicked them
mercilessly like so many vultures squabbling over a bloated carcass. Their
screams were like tortured metal, nails on blackboards in the still night as
the little savages rendered them to bits. In their multi-colored nakedness the
three appeared almost clownish, she thought.
Chunks
of candy scattered across lawns and into the street as they were dismembered,
torn limb from limb like a troop of burst piñatas. Their sugary guts, pink and
blue and raspberry red, glistened in the light of the waning moon. Yards of black
and red licorice rope were ceremoniously unspooled from split torsos, gumdrop
and lollipop eyes plucked and sucked from sugar skulls and popped between sweet
stained teeth.
It was
a sickeningly sweet slaughter right outside her house. And yet, she couldn’t
bring herself to remove her eyes from the spectacle below. The confectionary
cannibalism brought on by masked terrors gripped her attention fully.
The
mouths of the attackers stained nearly black by the colored sugars they chewed,
greens and reds and yellows so bright, frothed into a vicious spittle that
slipped from their mask hidden mouths and dribbled over chins. A small girl,
hands and gown a hopeless, hideous mess of tacky sugar juice, looked up, up
into the high window where Sarah watched aghast, and smiled. Sarah couldn’t see
the smile under the mask of a green witch, but she knew the wicked thing was
there all the same.
Sarah
curled into a frozen ball under the blankets to await morning as a host of
terrible images danced through her head. She couldn’t even be sure that what
she had witnessed was real. How could it be? Children made from candy was a
preposterous idea. Pure fantasy. She must be more exhausted than she realized.
She
slogged out the front door for the paper the following morning, the previous
night’s terrors still reeling in her head. Upon the sidewalk and street the
only remaining evidence to last night’s slaughter were small syrupy puddles
that dogs and ants licked happily at. A few colorful clumps of cotton candy
drifted lazily across the lawn waiting to dissolve peacefully in the fresh dew.
A
sudden splash of water broke her away from morbid memories of the night past,
washing away a spot of sugary death from the driveway. “Can you believe the
mess those damned cretins left behind?” George said, aiming the garden hose at
yet another spot and dissolving it to the heavens. “Every Halloween. It gets
bothersome, really.” The dissolved sugar sluiced from the driveway in a torrent
of cold water and ran into the gutter drain, ants and all, as she watched.
“Probably
those pesky Collins kids, always running about like they own the neighborhood,”
he continued. “No, I just don’t understand these kids nowadays. Not one bit,
Sarah.”
No, she
thought, he probably didn’t understand them. But she did. Oh, she understood
them perfectly. And right now she needed some sweet, sweet candy.
