The Bitter Side of Sugar

4th Place 10-13 Category Junior Authors Short Story Contest 2009
 
by Noa Wang
   
Sophie was leaning against a walnut tree, hiding in the dark blue shade. She watched the pond in front of her glimmer and laugh in the mid morning sun. A chickadee sang out loud to the clear bright sky. She turned her head around to see her sister lying down on her stomach in the yellowing grass, drawing. Sophie sighed, and said, “I’m bored.”

“Uh-huh.”

Sophie chewed her lower lip and looked up at the thick leafy branches above her. Sunlight streamed through the leaves like water, making the leaves look unnaturally bright. “Why’d you want to come here anyways?” Sophie asked. “There’s nothing to do here.”

“I can draw.”

Sophie frowned darkly. “What about me?” Her sister shrugged. Sophie watched a caterpillar work its way across a yellowing leaf on the ground, and then tried again. “I’m still really, really bored.” Her sister sighed, and put down her pencil. She turned her head towards Sophie. “Okay, look. This is a park. Mean anything to you?” Sophie said nothing. “There’s bound to be a playground somewhere.” Her sister continued, “So run off, explore, make a lemonade stand, I seriously don’t care. Just leave me alone.”

Sophie scowled. Playground? She was not five anymore! But, she decided, her sister had a point. This was a park. There had to be something that Sophie can do.
She stood up, and looked around. But there wasn’t much to see, only old wooden benches, and walnut trees, and a grey stone fountain. She wandered over to a hill by a cracked tree stump, and climbed to the top of it and sat down. She turned herself around so she was facing away from the park. There was a dried up ditch between the hill she was sitting on and the sidewalk. It wasn’t too deep, and it was full of rotting cardboard boxes and broken plastic and wires, and old newspaper.

Sophie lay down on her back, and slowly observed a cloud shaped like an airplane, before she realised it actually was an airplane. Then she rolled around onto her stomach, and counted the cars passing by on the road on the other side of the ditch. After the thirtieth van rumbled by, Sophie’s eyelids started to droop, and she soon fell asleep with the hot sun on the back and the whispering grass tickling her face.

Sophie woke up to the delicate smell of chocolate. She opened up her eyes, blinking in the light. As she turned her head this way and that to take in her surroundings, she noticed a tunnel dug into the ground not far in front of her. It was very narrow. That’s strange. She thought. I don’t remember seeing that before. Wary, she crawled towards it. As she got closer to the tunnel, the smell of chocolate became stronger. The sweet scent was coming from the hole. She craned her neck to see down the passageway in the ground. It was dark, and she couldn’t see anything beyond the hole. But she could tell that it led straight down. The mouth-watering aroma of candy was real, and heavy in her nose.

Sophie swayed a little, and tried to keep her balance. It was hard to look at the hole; it was like gazing into the sun on a hot summer’s day. But looking away was even harder. Then she lost her balance and tumbled head-first into the depths of the tunnel. She screamed, but no sound came out. She squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the crash of her plummeting into…What? Dirt? Stone? Water? Whatever she was going to land on, she hoped that it was soft. Her question was immediately answered when she fell and sank into something slightly squishy, poofy, and sticky. She kept her eyes closed. She didn’t want to know what she was lying on; she didn’t want to know what was sticking to her back at all.

Minutes passed. Then, when curiosity got the best of her, she snapped her eyes open, sat up, and looked down. It took a minute for Sophie to realise that she was sitting on cotton candy. The pink treat stuck to her skin, and clung to her hair like cobwebs. This can’t be real, Sophie thought, awed. But as she dipped a finger into the pink softness and let some of the sugar melt on her tongue, she realised that yes, it was true. Somebody, someone who had been in this tunnel before her, had dumped out a lifetime’s supply of cotton candy into the bottom of hole to break her fall.

Sophie stood up, picking the cotton candy off her skin and clothes the best she could, and looked around at her surroundings. The bottom of the tunnel was bigger than she expected. It almost seemed like she had landed in the middle of a forgotten ghost town beneath the rocky floor of the earth. The pink cloud-like ground stretched out into the magenta horizon, giving away to colourful mountains and small rainbow squares that might’ve been houses. Alright, maybe more than just a lifetime’s supply of cotton candy. She looked up at the tunnel above her that she had fallen through. To her dismay, the tunnel was gone. In its place was a sugary lavender coloured sky, with turquoise cotton candy clouds bobbing up and down in an invisible breeze. The small lightless sun behind Sophie looked like it was made out of orange and yellow candy corn. Seeing no way out of the unfamiliar, strange candy world, Sophie sighed and pointed her feet towards the bright coloured houses in the distance. She hoped that people lived in those houses, and if they did, she hoped that they would help her.
Sophie found walking through candy harder than she’d imagined. The pink stuff grabbed onto her shoes and ankles like a giant sticky leech, and refused to let go. And wherever Sophie dragged her candy-covered sneakers she would leave a long ugly tear in the sugary floor, creating a large empty trail.

It was cold in the candy world, and not long after, Sophie started shivering. She hoped that the people in the rainbow houses would lend her a sweater. And the animals that she saw in the candy world were none like she’d ever seen before. There were white marshmallow bears with golden honey eyes like little drops of sun, and red liquorice eagles with blue beaks and talons. They always ran away from her when she got drew near to them.

Sophie arrived at the candy town surprisingly fast. Then as she observed the houses, she realised that they were made of gingerbread, like the ones people made at Christmas, except a lot bigger. Candy apple trees grew in the gardens, and delicate clouds of white powdered sugar floated out from the striped icing chimneys.
Sophie wandered over to the nearest house, and knocked on the cinnamon brown door. But the first knock made the door swing open, and she walked in. The inside of the house was completely made of white and brown sugar cubes. Sugar chairs surrounded a sparkling brown dinner table, and a little square clock hung on the sweet white wall, ticking quietly. There was also a sugar bed, which held a little brown man, who was fast asleep. Recoiling in fright, Sophie saw that he was entirely made of dark chocolate. She started to hurry back out the front door before a sweet aroma wafted over to her.

She stopped in her tracks, and turned around. The door of the little brown fridge was slightly open, just a crack. Without asking, she knew that the wonderful smell was coming from it. She turned around slowly, and, step by step, walked towards the fridge and pulled the door open wider. There wasn’t much in there, only a large block of white chocolate. But it looked absolutely delicious, and to Sophie, was a thing of beauty. She was hungrier than she’d thought. The sharp chocolaty scent caressed her face, and twisted itself around her hair. She shut her eyes. She knew that one tiny bite would lead to another, and another, until the candy would disappear completely. But she couldn’t resist. She was starving.

She was smiling contently, lying down on the white sugar cube floor. She was full of wonderful, warm, white chocolate. Chocolate was smeared all across her lips and hands; she knew that all too well. But she was too sleepy to lick them clean. At least before she heard the candy man on the bed stir, and wake up. She had forgotten all about him while she had been indulging herself with sweets. She had emptied her mind of him completely. Horror-struck and pale with guilt, she watched the little man sit up, yawn, and stretch, then open up his black little eyes widen at the dark-haired girl sitting on the floor of his home, full of food. His food.

His black face contorted with fury, he stood up, and pointed a smooth dark finger at Sophie. He opened his mouth to say something, but Sophie didn’t hear him. She was already darting out the gingerbread door, running as fast as she can away from the chocolate man’s house. She could hear him thundering after her, hot on her heels. She stumbled, and fell face-first into the cotton candy ground. She jumped up as quickly as she could, and ran harder. The cotton candy was slowing her down, she realised, as she pulled her foot out of a particularly sticky spot in the ground. The man would catch up to her any second, and then she would be trapped in this horrible candy world forever, and never see grass or blue sky ever again…

Dark sticky hands grasped her shoulders, and shook her vigorously. She squeezed her eyes shut, and covered her head in her hands. “Let me go!” She cried out. “Please! Leave me alone!”

And then the tight firm grip of the chocolate man became the warm hands of her sister, gently shaking her awake. "C'mon, wake up," her sister said impatiently. "I've been looking for you everywhere."

Sophie opened her eyes. "Hm?"

"C'mon, I said," continued her sister. "You've been sleeping for a whole hour. We need to go back home now." Her sister hesitated and then said, "Anyways, there's a concession stand down the hill. Do you want to buy some candy?"

Noa writes...

When I finished my two stories and entered them in the Junior Authors Writing Contest, I thought that ‘The Bitter Side of Sugar’ would win the higher place. I guess I was wrong. I got the idea for the story from my sister who once wrote a fairytale parody. I was empty of ideas during the time, so I thought that a fairytale based story sounded great.

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