Sucker
A young girl learns the bitter taste of a sweet indulgence.
By Jennifer Peaslee
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Young Janie foraged the candy shop: ogled shelves of handcrafted chocolate creations next to hearty blocks of fudge, scampered between bins filled with gummy chews and hard candies. Her dad had instructed her to only pick out one treat, be it a gigantic jawbreaker or a bag of jelly beans.
A display next to the checkout counter caught her eye with its colorful candies of various sizes that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Willy Wonka's factory. At the center stood a beautiful, rainbow-swirl lollipop, roughly the circumference of the girl’s own head.
Janie called her dad's attention to the oversized candy. Doubt twisted his features as he surveyed the large treat in front of his small daughter.
“You said anything,” Janie reminded her woebegone father, who had indeed promised a special treat if she was a very good girl.
He asked, “Are you sure you don't want a smaller one?” Janie shook her head. He continued, “Or, look, you can get a big bag of gumdrops. These will last you a long time.”
Janie shook her head again, glaring with all the force that an eight-year-old can convey.
“I can finish. And you promised.”
A few minutes later, Janie accepted the mouthwatering invitation of rainbow swirls, unwrapping and diving in as soon as they were in the car. It was a saccharine wellspring; she knew she had made the right choice.
Janie continued slurping away when they arrived home. The flavor remained as vivid as the lollipop’s coloring, and it held plenty of remaining licks. The lollipop looked bigger here in her home than it had when surrounded by piles of candy. Soon her tongue had grown thick from the sugary film, and she swept it over the insides of her cheeks to find that ridges had sprouted. They made her mouth feel uncomfortably full.
“Dad?” Janie called thickly.
“In the living room,” he replied.
“Can I… um… never mind!” she sang, then went upstairs to her room, licking all the while. Her dad had warned her that she wouldn't be able to finish; she would not give him the satisfaction of being right.
She sat on her bed and yanked the lollipop from her mouth. She considered biting it into a few pieces and being done with this monotony, but that tasted of defeat.
After some time, her dad knocked and announced through the door that dinner was ready.
“I'm not hungry!” Janie shrieked, licking all the more fervently, her tongue thick and heavy. The ridges in her cheeks had resolved themselves into painful sores.
Janie’s dad chuckled. “That candy filled you up, eh? I guess missing one meal can't hurt. We don't need to tell Mom, kiddo. Our secret.”
A tendril of fear lurked at the edge of Janie’s mind, nibbling on a worry too dark to name. Any prior thoughts about “defeat” or saving the lollipop for later were overshadowed by a sudden and overwhelming need to finish the thing.
She bit down—CRUNCH.
“Ow!”
Instead of her tooth cracking the lollipop, the lollipop cracked her tooth. Blood pooled and flowed over the sores inside Janie’s mouth, salt contrasting sharply against the sugar.
She spat out the broken tooth, crying. Within her mind, she strove to stop consuming the candy, but found that she was unable to resist the siren song of sugar.
She wanted to call out for help, but the syrup had saturated her tongue and was forcing its way down her throat. Too late, Janie tried to open her hand and let go, but her palm had been glued to the stick by a mixture of sugar, blood, and saliva that had dripped and hardened.
Her body betrayed her frightened mind. Janie could do nothing; she could only keep licking. Blood flowed past her lips and glazed the swirls of the lollipop, even as unrelenting sweetness surged into her mouth.
She sensed that the lollipop tasted her blood, as she had tasted its sugar. Worse, she felt that it deemed her blood to be as sweet.
With her arm shaking from the effort, Janie wrestled the lollipop from her mouth and held it at arm’s length. Immediately she felt compelled to resume licking; instead, she backed up—she could escape no further than the reach of her arm. Her back hit a wall, and with nowhere else to go, and nothing to do but look, she watched her traitorous hand draw the lollipop closer. The cheerfully lethal swirls appeared to swell, pulsating with anticipation.
When Janie's dad came to say goodnight, he found no lollipop, no daughter—only some blood, and a cracked baby tooth.
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Jennifer Peaslee (she/her) is an emerging writer with an affinity for fairy tales and folklore. Her work is slated to appear in BarBar and on the Kaidankai Podcast. She lives in Atlanta with her mischievous cat, Trouble, and runs The Bleeding Typewriter, a creative writing advice blog.
