“Outside?”
“Under your house.”
Jujy looks at him curiously as she wraps the egg in a blanket.
Franklin carries the egg out of the house, his cane hooked to his arm. It is difficult for him to walk without his cane, but he manages. In the back of the house, Franklin calls down to the boy.
“Troy,” he says. “Come out. I’d like you to meet somebody.”
The boy does not move.
“It’s okay,” Franklin says. “Come out.”
The boy creeps out of the hole, hesitant at first. When he sees the candy woman, he cowers behind Franklin’s legs.
Jujy approaches the boy and bends down to him, staring him in the face.
“This is Jujy,” Franklin says.
Troy reaches out to her, timidly, to shake her hand. Jujy takes his hand, pulls him towards her and bites into his wrist. The boy shrieks as she rips a tendon out of his arm and thrashes her head like a shark.
“No!” Franklin screams, unable to stop her with the egg in his hands. “Stop!”
Jujy releases the crying child. “Why?”
“I didn’t want you to eat him!”
“I thought you were giving it to me,” she says. “I thought it was a present.”
Franklin puts down the egg and grabs the boy’s wrist. He applies pressure to the wound as he tears a strip of cloth from his apple red suit and uses it as a tourniquet.
“No, I want to take him back to the surface,” Franklin says.
“It’s only food,” she says, reclaiming the egg from the ground. “We can’t let food live after they’ve seen us. That’s the law.”
“Forget about the law,” he says. “Just let this one live.”
“I kill children all the time. Why do you care if this one lives or dies?”
“I know him,” Franklin says. “I promised him I would take him home. Let him come with us. Please.”
Jujy stares at him with an angry face. Not because he wants to save the boy, but because he is being disobedient. Then she gives up.
“I will allow this,” she says, handing Franklin the egg. “But you are never to argue with me ever again. You do what I say when I say it.”
Franklin nods at her and looks down to the boy.
“Keep quiet and do exactly as I say,” Franklin says to him.
The boy just holds his wound, crying.
“Quiet,” Jujy says, smacking the kid across the face. She turns to Franklin. “If it cries my people will hear it.”
When the boy stops crying, Jujy grabs him by his wounded arm and pulls him through the yard towards the cavern exit.
On the way out of the cave, Franklin scans the area and stores everything he sees inside of his brain. Troy whimpers at Jujy as she tugs on his wounded arm, splashing blood onto the white chocolate ground as they flee. It doesn’t take them long to get to the exit.
As they go around the bend, they run into a group of candy people. The boy screams. Jujy stops so quickly that Franklin runs into her. He stumbles, but catches himself on his false leg. Though he doesn’t drop the egg, the blanket falls off.
There are five candy people there. One is rainbow-colored, one is fat and red, one has a big green cotton candy beard, one is gumball blue, and one looks like he’s wearing a giant wedding cake for a hat. They all stare at Jujy. They see her pulling the boy towards the exit. They see Franklin carrying the egg. It doesn’t take them long to figure out what is going on.
“Run!” Jujy cries, then she takes off, going back the way they came.
Green Beard looks at his fellow candy people and they nod their heads.
Franklin runs after her as fast as he can with the egg in his arms. The candy people climb like spiders up the side of the hill towards them, trying to cut them off. The boy shrieks as Jujy rips him through the chocolate mud. Even pulling the boy, she moves three times as fast as Franklin.
“Jujy,” Franklin calls, so that she knows he’s falling behind.
She turns and comes back for him. Instead of running, she grabs Franklin and pulls him off of the path into the lollipop trees. They zigzag through the forest. When they get to a ditch, Jujy pulls them down to the ground.
“We have to hide,” she whispers.
The candy men scurry through the forest, looking for them. Troy’s cries become louder as he sees them across the pond of watermelon soda.
“Quiet,” Franklin tells Troy as he holds the egg securely between his legs.
Troy continues to cry.
“You have to be quiet or they will hear us,” Franklin says.
Troy continues to cry.
Jujy grabs Troy by the hair and pulls him towards her. She bites into his neck and rips muscle tissue from his throat. The boy shrieks louder.
“Jujy!” Franklin screams.
“He won’t stop crying,” she says. Then she bites into his throat again.
Troy stops crying. He holds his neck as he tries to push her away from him.
“Let him go,” Franklin whispers. “He’s stopped.”
Jujy releases him. She looks at Franklin, chewing on a large piece of the boy’s flesh like bubblegum.
“I’m not willing to risk our baby for it,” she says.
Franklin gives Jujy the egg and goes to the boy. Blood is gushing out of him, but his jugular has not been cut. He tears another strip of cloth from his apple suit and wraps it around the boy’s throat.
“Keep pressure on it,” he tells the boy. “If the bleeding is stopped you will survive.”
The boy puts pressure on the wound but he does not respond.
“Let’s go,” Jujy says.
With only one candy person in sight, they make a run for it. The fat red jawbreaker candy man is on the other side of the pond. He sees them as they run towards the exit, but he is too slow to get around the pond to cut them off. He yells for the others in a deep guttural voice.
They run into a pack of gum-goblins in the sugar grass field near the exit. The ferocious fruity-colored blobs bounce up and down at the wounded child. Carrying the egg under her arm like a big football, Jujy pulls out her red vine whip and cracks it at the creatures as they run through the field. The gum-goblins chase after them, snapping at their heels like gummy sharks.
The rainbow candy man cuts them off before they get to the exit. Jujy strikes at him with her whip, but Rainbow catches it in his purple jaws and rips it out of her hands. A gum-goblin lunges at Troy and Franklin. They duck and the blob flies over their heads at Rainbow. The candy man yells as the blob bites into his face.
“Come on,” Jujy cries to the others.
As Rainbow falls to the ground, the gum-goblins swarm him like piranha. They take bites out of his candy flesh as they bounce up and down at him. Franklin looks back to see Rainbow’s head disappearing into a yellow blob’s stomach. The severed head still screams within the gelatinous goo.
They make it through the maze of sewers to the streets above. Hiding in a park, underneath the slide, they watch as the other candy people crawl out of the manhole after them. They gurgle at the moon and then separate, hunting the streets for the traitorous candy woman.
“Now what are we going to do?” Jujy says, almost ready to cry.
“We need to get out of the streets,” Franklin says. “We can go back to my place until they give up their hunt.”
“Is that far?”
“No,” Franklin says.
When it looks safe, they crawl out of the playground into the shadows. Then they creep out of the neighborhood towards Franklin’s apartment.
On the way, Jujy says, “I can never go back. If I return home they will kill me.”
“Then you won’t go back,” Franklin says.