“Good. Let’s go.”
They carry Licorice over a few hills back the way Franklin came. When they feel safe enough, Franklin buries the body in a puddle of fudge. Then they head back to Jujy’s house.
“I’m going to have to bring you back with me,” Franklin tells him. “I will hide you in a place where they won’t find you.”
Troy stops. “I want to get out of here. Now.”
“Unless you know the way out, we can’t leave,” Franklin says.
“I don’t want to stay in this place,” Troy says.
Franklin stares down at him. Troy cowers. When he sees Franklin, he still sees a candy person. There’s not much of him left that resembles a human.
“I will make sure nothing happens to you,” Franklin says. “I promise.”
When Franklin arrives back at Jujy’s house, he has no idea where to hide the boy. The house only has two rooms. Jujy would find him if he hid anywhere inside. He has to find him a place to stay outside. Searching around the outside of Jujy’s house, he discovers a crawlspace that goes under the building.
“Climb down in there,” Franklin says.
Troy looks at the hole leading under the house and shakes his head.
“Fuck no,” Troy says. “I don’t like tight spaces.”
“You don’t have a choice.” Franklin pushes him towards the hole. “They will kill you if they find you.”
The kid reluctantly crawls under the house, turns around and looks out of the hole back at Franklin.
“Not many of them come around here,” Franklin says, “so you are probably safe. The one you have to worry about is the woman who lives in this house.”
As Franklin points up at the house, Troy looks up and inches back into the darkness.
“She’s not here now,” Franklin says and the boy stops. “But if you see her you stay hidden. She will kill you if she finds you.”
“Will you kill her like you killed the other one?” Troy asks.
“I don’t know,” Franklin says. “I need her for now. She is the one who put me in this disguise. She is keeping me safe. But I am her prisoner so I need to get back inside before she finds out I was gone.”
Troy nods.
“I’ll check on you when I can. If you get hungry there is chocolate and candy all around here. You can’t survive on candy alone but it will be enough to keep you going for a few days. We’ll get out of here soon, but I need you to stay here and keep quiet until then. Can you do it?”
Troy nods.
Franklin backs away from the hole and returns to Jujy’s house. To reattach the chain to the bed, he uses the hot air from the showerhead to melt the candy chain into something soft and pliable. When he’s back in the bedroom, he holds the link together until it cools down and hardens back into its original shape.
When Jujy returns home, her belly is stretched so large that the candy on her torso is beginning to crack. She is holding her stomach, digging into her skin with her long nails. Rivers of sweat flow down her taffy skin.
She looks at Franklin with a cringing face. Franklin asks her what is wrong.
“It’s coming out,” she says.
Franklin goes to her. “Already?”
As Franklin helps her into the bedroom, he’s able to feel her human muscles flexing beneath the sweat-drenched taffy skin. Her temperature has risen, causing her candy coating to become softer than usual. In the bedroom, she kicks the marshmallow puppy off of his doggy bed so that she can squat down over it.
“You’re going to have it on the dog’s bed?” Franklin asks.
“It’s not a dog bed,” she says. “It’s a baby bed.”
The candy woman spreads her legs and squats over the round mattress. She has Franklin hold her blue hand as she squeezes the baby out. Her claws cut into his wrist at the pain but she does not whimper. Franklin can tell she doesn’t want to appear weak in front of him.
Her vaginal lips separate with ease in their softened state. They stretch out. Just a few inches at first, but the opening soon stretches to be a foot wide, then two feet. Franklin looks down to see something brown emerging. It isn’t shaped like a baby.
“What is that?” Franklin cries.
Jujy just looks at him with an angry face.
“That’s not a baby!” he says.
Jujy squeezes his hand tightly, slicing through his wrist. As his blood trickles down her blue and white arm, she tells him, “It’s an egg. The baby is inside.”
Once the midsection of the egg passes through the opening, her vaginal muscles squirt the rest of it out onto the doggy bed in one push. Then Jujy plops down on the mattress and sighs. She wraps her legs around the egg and has Franklin wrap his arms around her body. She lies her head on his shoulder and closes her eyes. Franklin isn’t sure how such a large thing could have come out of Jujy. He also isn’t sure how a chocolate egg could have endured inside of her without melting.
As she breathes deeply against his shoulder, Franklin examines the egg. It is like a giant Cadbury crème egg. He isn’t sure if it is his imagination or not, but the egg seems to be pulsing. Somewhere, deep inside, is their child—A mutant offspring between himself and the candy woman who killed his siblings. Franklin doesn’t know if Heaven exists. But if it does, he hopes that his brother and sisters aren’t watching him right now.
After Jujy awakes from her nap, she goes into the kitchen and returns with a box of art supplies. A wide scary smile stretches across her face as she says, “I’ve been excited to do this ever since I was a kid.”
“What?” Franklin asks.
“Now we get to decorate the egg,” she says as she takes out brushes and containers of paint.
“Why decorate it?”
“It’s tradition,” she says.
For hours, Jujy decorates their child’s egg like an enormous Easter egg. Her face is lit up like a child’s as she paints pink and white swirls around the top. Franklin paints blue polka dots on top of the white swirls.
“Normally only submissives decorate the eggs,” Jujy says. “But I don’t see why you get to have all the fun without me.”
Franklin shrugs. He doesn’t paint very much of the egg because his hand is shaking. It is from withdrawal. Even though she is sitting right next to him with her legs spread apart, her intoxicating pheromones aren’t affecting him. Perhaps the act of giving birth has neutralized their effects. Perhaps her body is no longer producing the drug because she no longer needs to mate.
After they are finished with the egg, Jujy leans back and smiles at her craftsmanship.
“Beautiful,” she says.
Franklin feels things crawling inside of his chest. He’s not sure if there are ants still alive under the candy coating or if puss is dripping out of the infected wounds. He presses his hand against his chest and pushes hard on the candy, hoping to kill any ants that might be alive in there. The pressure against the itchy wounds is painful yet strangely satisfying.
“I’m hungry,” Jujy says. “Want to eat?”
Franklin shakes his head, but she disregards his response and pulls herself onto her feet. He sits there against the egg, holding his wounds. He needs to get back to the surface as soon as possible. If only he could get Jujy to show him the exit.
“Can we go on a walk today?” Franklin asks her.
“No,” she says. “You can’t go on walks anymore.”
“Why not?” he asks.
“We’re now in the incubation period of our coupling,” she says. “You have to stay here and keep the egg warm.”
“Keep the egg warm?”
“You are the submissive,” she says. “It is your job to sit on the egg and keep it warm until it is ready to hatch.”