Sour Candy

by Kealan Patrick Burke

Irritation at the obnoxious introduction of such a hostile and unwelcome sound into the general lazy-Saturday ambience of the store. Pity at the sight of the browbeaten woman forced to accept responsibility for her child’s misbehavior. And relief that the child belonged to someone else.

Foreshadowing anyone?

Or perhaps that was the child’s doing, for in his eyes, behind the shimmering tears, Phil thought he detected a glimmer of glee, as if nothing gave the kid greater pleasure than the reaction his histrionics wrought from his suffering mother.

Somewhere along the line his life had jumped the tracks and he had found himself in a nightmare, and like the worst kind of nightmare, he could not move,

A line from a book he’d read in high school popped into his mind: The nameless are easier to bury.

Maybe the candy was her way of transferring the responsibility for him, some messed up ritual that only made sense to them.

“You know what else, Detective Cortez? The worst thing of all?” “What?” “I think I know all of this because the boy is allowing me to.”

The child wanted him aware of the game he was playing so that the effect would not be diluted by self-doubt or fear of madness.

He felt trapped in a bizarre otherworld in which everything was crooked, but the harder he fought to extricate himself, the more tangled he became. So, in the absence of better options, he stopped struggling.

Like a fly caught in a spider’s web. 😖

And I’m guessing if you conceded to that nagging whisper in the back of your mind that persists in telling you that you’re being manipulated, the boy would probably make you take out that gun of yours, stick it in your mouth and pull the trigger.

“It means she was my Mommy before and she isn’t anymore.” “And why isn’t she?” The kid tilted his head and regarded his drawing. “Because I let her go.”

She was too sick to keep going until we were done. I felt bad because her mind stopped working properly, so I let her go.”

And too late he realized that what he had put into his mouth was not candy at all, but a key.

“Tomorrow’s the day you try to kill me.” Phil was only startled for a moment. It had not come as a surprise that the boy was aware of his plans. The boy apparently knew everything. No, the shock came from having him finally drop the pretense and admit that he knew. He smiled back at the boy as he headed back upstairs. “That’s right. Tomorrow’s the day I try to kill you.” “Goodnight Daddy.” “Goodnight, son.”

Because the child he had feared, the child he had killed had not been a monster at all but a guardian, assigned to watch over Phil and the life he was carrying inside him. And in killing the boy, he had not escaped at all, but completed the last step of their ritual.