Franklin looks at the large egg. He isn’t sure how he can sit on it without it breaking.
“Do it now,” she says. “Wrap your body around it while I make your food.”
Franklin sits on the mattress with the egg between his legs. As he wraps his arm around the egg, the marshmallow puppy licks at the side of it.
“Like this?” Franklin asks.
Jujy pulls the puppy away from the egg and picks it up into her arms. “Yes.”
Then she breaks the puppy’s neck.
Franklin’s jaw drops at her. “What did you do that for?”
“I’m making your food,” she says.
“You’re going to cook your dog?”
“It’ll be easier this way,” she says. “I don’t have to go hunting for you now.”
“But he was your pet,” he says. “I thought you loved Circus Peanut?”
“I needed to get rid of it anyway,” she says. “It’s not good to keep animals in the house during the incubation period. They try to eat the egg.”
Franklin just stares at her in shock as she walks to the kitchen, skinning her pet’s marshmallow hide with her bare teeth.
For the next couple of days, Franklin sits on the egg for Jujy. She doesn’t go on hunts during these days. She just watches him as he keeps her egg warm. When it is time for bed, she leaves him on the doggy mattress to sleep against the decorated shell. He’s not even allowed to leave to go to the bathroom. She just holds a candy dish under his buttocks and tells him to defecate in there.
The feeling in many parts of his body has disappeared. His flesh beneath the candy coating has become so rotten it’s black. He needs Jujy to leave the house so that he can sneak Troy back to the surface and get himself to a hospital. But she doesn’t seem like she is going to go on another hunt any day soon. He wonders what would happen if he told her the truth. He wonders if she would let him go if she knew about his condition.
“I have something to tell you,” Franklin says to Jujy.
When Jujy looks him in the eyes, she can tell how serious it is. She crawls across the floor to Franklin and presses her body against the other side of the egg.
“I have been waiting for you to tell me this.” Jujy puts Franklin’s hands into hers, staring at him across the egg. “I have to tell you that I feel completely the same way.”
“The same way?” Franklin says.
“Even though you are a human we can still have an emotional bonding,” she says. “We can still be soul mates.”
Franklin doesn’t know what to say to her.
“Go on,” she says. “Tell me.”
“Tell you what?” Franklin says.
“Weren’t you going to tell me that you submit your soul to me?” Her face becomes confused.
“No, I was going to ask . . .”
Jujy bares her teeth at him and scratches her claws along the top of his false hand. “I want you to submit your soul.”
“Submit my soul?”
“Yes,” she says. “I’ve been waiting every day for you to tell me this.”
“I don’t understand.”
Jujy groans at his ignorance. “A dominant shows a mate she loves him by capturing him and chaining him to her bedpost. The submissive usually does not love the dominant at first. It takes time for him to grow to love her. But eventually the submissive shows his love to the dominant by telling her that he submits himself completely to her. He submits his mind, body, and soul. He tells her that his entire being belongs to her and will obey her for the rest of his life. That’s what I want you to say.”
“But I . . .”
Jujy grinds her claws deep into his good hand.
Franklin stops. He takes a deep breath. He realizes his survival depends on his response to Jujy.
“Okay,” Franklin says. Jujy loosens her grip, then squeezes his hand lovingly. “Originally, I had something different to tell you. It is also important. But now that you have brought up this topic I will confess to you something that I have had on my mind ever since the first time we made love…”
He pauses to breathe, hoping Jujy is going to buy what he has to say. She smiles at him. Tears are welling up in her eyes even though he hasn’t said anything yet.
“You are the most important thing in my life. You are my whole universe. You are my only reason for living. For the rest of my life, all I want to do is serve you and make you happy. I want to raise your children. I want to obey your every command.” He pauses for a moment. As he notices that Jujy is buying it based on the tears rolling down her white cheek, Franklin tries to hold himself back from laughing at himself. “I submit to you entirely. I submit my mind, body, and soul. I will be yours, forever.”
Then Jujy leans across the egg and kisses Franklin deeply.
Her gummy lips wrap around his mouth, razor sharp teeth scraping against his teeth. He tastes dead child blood as she sucks his tongue down into her throat. Franklin has no choice but to kiss her with as much passion as he can manage.
After a while, Franklin discovers that it isn’t very difficult for him to feign his love for her. He realizes that it isn’t entirely an act. Although he hates everything about her as a candy person, he still has feelings for her somewhere inside of him. Whenever he looks at her, he doesn’t see the woman who killed his brother and sisters anymore. He only sees Jujy.
“So what were you originally going to tell me?” Jujy asks.
Franklin takes a deep breath and reveals the cracked section of his side to her.
“Smell that,” he says.
She smells his side and cringes at the foul odor issuing out of the hole. Then she licks it.
“Why do you taste so gross?” she says.
“I’m rotting,” he says. “My wounds have become seriously infected. If I don’t get help I am going to die.”
“Die?” she says. “You can’t die now.”
“I’m a human. We aren’t the same as you. Cutting off my skin and covering me with candy was not good for me. I need to go to a hospital. A human hospital.”
“You can’t go back to the humans,” she says.
“If I don’t go back I will die.”
“What if I heal you?” she says. “I can give you new candy skin.”
“There is nothing you can do. You have to let me go. Now. I will probably die within a few days if you don’t.”
“You submitted your soul to me. You said you would be with me forever.”
“I will come back,” he says. “I promise. If I don’t go I will die.”
“If I unchain you then you will no longer be my submissive . . . I would rather you die than not be my submissive.”
“Then you can come with me,” he says.
“To the humans?”
“I’ll even stay on the chain,” he says. “You can trust me. I have submitted my soul to you.”
“What about the egg?”
“We can bring that, too.”
“It is against the law to take eggs out of the cave. If anyone finds out they will feed us to the lemon hogs.”
“Then we will have to make sure they never find out,” he says. “So, will you take me to the hospital?”
Jujy stares down at the egg and scratches her kneecap.
“We’ll have to wrap it in the blanket,” she says. “And you will have to carry it.”
“Okay,” Franklin says. “I will keep it safe.”
“If I remove your chain you have to still obey me as if chained,” she says. “You submitted your soul to me so you must still do as I say.”
“Yes,” he says.
“We can’t keep you chained because if anyone sees you on the chain they will come to investigate. Submissives also aren’t allowed outside of the cavern.”
Franklin nods.
After she unhooks his chain, Franklin tells her, “There is something I want to show you. Outside.”