“It will just be for show,” she says. “Because you are human, I do not think it is possible for us to produce offspring.”
“When will I be able to leave?” Franklin says.
Jujy’s mind leaves the room before Franklin gets an answer. Her pink eyes stare off into space as she scratches white lines into the red parts of her knee.
Beneath his new candy-coating, Franklin’s skin becomes so itchy that it burns. He tries to inhale as much fragrance from the candy woman as possible to dull the pain, but no matter how much he ingests the itchiness will not go away. It feels as if bugs are crawling beneath his sour apple skin.
His stomach is constantly upset from eating nothing but sweets. There are nuts and dried fruits in some of the candies he eats, so he does not feel completely malnourished. But the main ingredient in his diet is sugar.
“You need meat,” Jujy tells him whenever he holds his aching stomach.
“I would rather die than eat children,” he tells her. It is something he repeats often.
“There has to be a way to get you to eat meat,” she tells him.
Jujy attempts to cook a marshmallow rabbit she caught in the gumdrop forest. Franklin tries to explain how to cook meat, but as the dominant member of their coupling she does not allow him to help her prepare the food.
She skins the white fluff from the animal with one of her butterscotch fingernails. Franklin asks her to gut the animal, but she refuses.
“I will prepare the meat in the way I see fit,” she says in her high-pitched elf voice. “It is my role as the dominant.”
Her home does not have a kitchen. The closest thing she has for a kitchen is a dining room table and a rancid polka-dotted chest in the corner that is used for meat storage. She can’t build a fire in the house, because her candy walls would melt at such a high temperature. She has to build a fire behind her house and cook it on a sharpened peppermint stick.
While she is outside, the marshmallow puppy snags a piece of the rabbit’s skin from the corner of the table and pulls it down. Instead of eating the skin, the puppy rolls over onto it and then rubs his back against it in a snake-like wiggle.
Franklin misses Crabcake. He’s worried about what has happened to her. If his wives have her they are probably not taking good enough care of the kitten. They might forget to feed her or change her litter box. They might even abuse her. It is also possible that they killed Crabcake out of spite, because Franklin always cared for the cat far more than he cared about either of them. But he tries not to accept that possibility. It is too unbearable of a thought. If he ever gets out of here he promises himself that he will get Crabcake back no matter what.
The marshmallow puppy sees Franklin crying and crawls into his lap. It looks at him with a panting tongue hanging out of the side of his mouth. When it barks it sounds more like a human impersonating a dog, like a voice actor who plays a dog in a cartoon.
“Circus Peanut likes you!” Jujy says, as she walks through the door carrying a blackened rabbit corpse.
“Circus Peanut?” Franklin says, looking at the puppy. He didn’t realize it before, but the puppy does look a little bit like a circus peanut. He has a subtle orange tint with peanut-like indentions on his back.
“He’s my little munchy,” she says.
She takes Circus Peanut from his lap and squishes him into her bosom. Franklin watches in repulsion while she speaks baby language to the animal, making kissing noises, and revealing her gory teeth as she smiles at it.
Franklin goes to the table to inspect his meal. Aside from skinning the animal, she did nothing to prepare the meat. The head is still on it, charred eyeballs looking at him. The outside is overcooked. The inside is still slightly raw. The peppermint stick melted while it was being cooked, giving the meat a minty center.
Although it is one of the worst things he has ever tasted, he eats as much of it as he can. Jujy went through a lot of trouble to make it and he knows she will be upset if he doesn’t eat it all. Halfway through, he asks himself why he cares whether he hurts her feelings or not. She is a monster and must be killed. But he continues to eat. He needs to stay on her good side, at least for now.
There is a knock at the door. It is Licorice. Jujy opens the front door a crack, but does not let him in.
“I saw smoke,” Licorice says. “Somebody built a fire behind your house. Was it you?”
“Yes,” she says. “It is not against the law to build fires.”
“Fire is dangerous,” he says. “If a fire is too close, you could melt your skin or even your house. You shouldn’t be starting fires.”
“You don’t have to tell me about fire,” she says. “I’ve worked closely with fire before, in the candy mill. I know how to use it without melting my skin.”
“There is no point in starting fires,” he says. “Why did you need it?”
“I was cooking some meat.”
“Cooking meat?” he says. “Why were you cooking meat?”
“I made it for Sour Apple,” she says. “He likes his meat cooked.”
“He likes his meat cooked?” Licorice rubs his black chin hair. “It is funny that he eats cooked meat in the way that humans eat cooked meat.”
“There isn’t a law against cooking meat,” she says.
“But it is suspicious,” he says. “Humans eat cooked meat. Perhaps your mate is really a human?”
“You saw him,” she says. “You know he is not human.”
“Perhaps he is a human in a candy disguise,” he says. “You know it is against the law to associate with humans?”
“Yes,” she says, “but I do not associate with humans. Did you know that it is against the law to interrupt a mating cycle?”
Licorice frowns and steps back.
“You have entered my nesting area,” she says. “If I report this you will be severely punished.”
“I only came because I thought it was an emergency,” he says.
“But as you see it is not,” she says.
“I’ll be back,” he says.
“If you come back I will be forced to defend my nest,” she says. “It is not against the law to kill one who invades a nest.”
“This won’t be a nest for much longer,” he says from the caramel road.
Franklin curls into a ball in his bed on the floor. He believes it is actually a doggy bed, because every night he shares it with the marshmallow puppy that sleeps against his armpit. His skinless chest beneath the candy coating burns with so much itchiness that he doesn’t want to be conscious anymore. He wants to rip off his candy skin and pour rubbing alcohol all over himself to kill the bacteria that is infesting his wounds. He smiles as he envisions laying his skinless body into a tub of hot water. The thought of the peaceful warmth calms his nerves and numbs his body a little. But before the pleasant dream pulls him into sleep, a thought jerks him back into awareness. He thinks about how painful it would be to remove his candy skin. His flesh has already grown together with his sour apple coating. If he were to rip the candy from his body he would also be tearing off a thick layer of his flesh.
Franklin hopes he will get used to the intense itchiness in time. For now, he just has to survive. Once he escapes he will be able to find a doctor who will remove the candy and make him human again. He wonders if it is possible for him to look human again. He is missing limbs and much of his skin. He’s not sure if doctors will be able to replace all of the parts of him that he has lost.
He wonders how he will be able to escape and bring the body of a candy person to the police. It will be difficult enough just trying to escape. If he has a body with him it will be next to impossible. If there was night in this place he might be able to escape under the cover of darkness, but the purple lights beaming down from the ceiling of the enormous cavern never dim.