Sour Candy by Kealan Patrick Burke

 

     
     
     
    Sour Candy
    Kealan Patrick Burke
     
    Copyright © 2015 by Kealan Patrick Burke
     
    All rights reserved.
     
    Cover Design by Elderlemon
Design
     
     
    License Notes
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author
     
     
     
    Visit the author at http://www.kealanpatrickburke.com
     
     
     
     

     
     
     
     
    Four months to the day he first
encountered the boy at Walmart, the last of Phil Pendleton’s teeth
fell out.
     
     
    1. The Scream
     
     
    When the child started screaming, Phil
Pendleton had his arms loaded with chocolate bars and his
girlfriend cooing in his ear. Later he would think of the moment
prior to that klaxon-like intrusion as one of utter bliss, a rare
occasion in which his customary concerns were in
absentia.
    It was a Saturday, so he was
off work and had woken up pleasurably late after a night of equally
pleasurable lovemaking. And while he had briefly considered doing
some much-delayed yardwork today (if only to stave off the
disapproving looks of his neighbors), Lori had convinced him
to actually take
the day off and join her in doing nothing more taxing than lounging
before the TV with a veritable stockpile of chocolate. As the
invitation had been extended while she stood in the bathroom
doorway wearing nothing but her pink silk underwear, and with the
memory of her uncharacteristic sexual abandon still fresh in his
mind, he hadn’t needed to be asked twice.
    His mission was a simple one: procure
as much chocolate as possible and return home, a task which saw him
standing in the candy aisle at Walmart, Lori doling out her
requests over the phone in between bouts of sexual innuendo as he
tried to focus on the overwhelming selection on the shelves before
him.
    Yes, he would have said the day was a
fine one indeed.
    Then the scream had come, so
abrupt and so unexpected, Phil’s whole body jerked as if someone
had punched him between the shoulder blades. Jamie Lee Curtis had
screamed like that in Halloween . Loons did too. A half
dozen or so chocolate bars rained from the cradle of his arm to the
floor, smacking against his feet. Only his quick reflexes kept his
cell phone from joining it. This last was a relief. As Lori was so
fond of reminding him, he’d had to replace the phone twice this
year already due to natural clumsiness.
    “ What in God’s name was
that? The fire alarm?” Lori asked. In the fright, the phone had
slipped down to his cheek. Only luck had kept it pinned there. Now,
hands unexpectedly free of candy, he grabbed it and put it back to
his ear.
    “ No. Someone’s kid.” As he
said this last, he looked to his right, to the source of the
sound.
    There were a half dozen or so shoppers
wandering the aisle. Many of them were making concentrated efforts
not to look at the thin woman standing midway down the aisle, or
the towheaded child currently tugging at the hem of her
unseasonably heavy coat. On the faces of the shoppers, Phil saw his
own emotions reflected back at him: irritation, pity, and
relief.
    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.
    This last was particularly relevant to
Phil. Infrequent paternal impulses notwithstanding, he had never
wanted children. Indeed his first and only marriage had ended for
that very reason. Despite the agreement that they remain childless
and therefore free to live their lives untethered by such
suffocating