Sour Candy

by Kealan Patrick Burke

His car was still gone and likely would stay that way, just like the phone and Internet had died. The child had cut him off from outside communication,

Everything he wanted to say to her—the explanation, the begging, the anger, the pleading, the love—came bubbling up his throat and became tears that almost choked him.

Phil was fine with the first part. He longed for death now. The second part? No. With the last ounce of his energy, he was going to do everything in his power to make sure this never happened to anyone again.

no towheaded Amish-clad spawn of Satan,

Maybe they’d even have a child.

He’d managed to make it out of the house and down the driveway, this time in the dead of night, when his legs abruptly quit working and he dropped like a stone to the pavement,

“You’re not doing so good, and I know that’s no fun, but it’ll all be over soon.” “Like it was for Mrs. Bennings?” “Oh no, not like that. You’re going to make it all the way. She was too broken for that.”

The boy smiled. “Tomorrow’s the day you try to kill me.”

There was no bed, no drawings, no toys, no crayons, nothing to suggest a child lived up here. But of course, a child didn’t live up here. Something else did.

“But there is a reason,” the boy told him. “And what’s that?” “Mora.”

“You ate the candy,” the boy said. “You ate of her, and so her you will become.”

Instead the child choked as dark red blood, real blood, normal blood spurted out around the ragged, gaping hole in the side of his neck, and then he slowly slid down the wall until he was sitting with his hands in his lap and his eyes on Phil, who stood over him in sudden disbelief.

Had he been so mad that he’d been seeing everything backwards? Had he been the monster and the poor child his victim?

In a situation in which every rational person is telling you a fact and you’re the one who denies it, doesn’t that make you the one most likely wrong?

done? How much more reasonable did it seem that something had snapped deep within him and he’d been living a nightmare of his own creation?

People tend to distance themselves from the insane, as if to inquire is to request an invitation to the same dance.

think I’ve killed my son.” The old man stared at him for a long moment before adjusting his glasses again. He cleared his throat. “But…Phil…you don’t have a son.”

It was not candy at all, of course, he knew that now, but a seed, a seed which had taken root inside him and would soon give birth to new life, a life that would, once old enough, find another nest, another life to poison, and the process would carry on again until the time came for the attendant child to give itself up in blood sacrifice.

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.

In truth, it had bothered him since the first time he’d met Pendleton that day at the scene of the accident. For one thing, parts of their exchange were missing, both from his own mind and the notes he was customarily vigilant in taking,

It didn’t sit well with him at all and he knew he’d be tonguing the fucking thing like a hole in his tooth until he found some kind of closure to it.

she stormed out, leaving with a parting shot that made no sense to him at all. “Maybe when you stop bringing your fucking infant son to bars, we can talk about my problems, but for now, you’re better off dealing with your own.”