by Griffin Frerichs, Staff Writer
As if manufactured only days ago and promptly thrown in the back of a truck, I awoke in a bag full of my brothers and sisters. With an irk and a squeak my whole world stopped. All I’d ever known was momentum, now this. Engulfed in light, a figure entered, knocked me unconscious, and displaced me. Still bagged, still among the family I did not know and that did not speak, I found myself on a shelf. Something told me this, too, was only a liminal space.
A rather shabby and frankly dilapidated man walked by and peered right at us.
“Ooo Butterfinger—my favorite!” he said. “Kiddos’ll be lining up for this stuff, don’t you think?” His wife was not impressed.
“Mark, did you even look at all that’s in there? I would rather you end our marriage by murder-suicide than have a poor innocent child knock on our door Halloween night and receive a damn Tootsie Roll. Have you half a brain? Nah, prolly not. It prolly looks all smooth and dookie-like, just like a Tootsie Roll. Go out and wait in the car, you no-good degenerate.”
“I like Tootsie Rolls.” His wife grabbed hold of the cart and turned the corner. From first glance, I could tell Mark has nothing in life. He knows his wife is right about him and the only autonomy he can muster is going against her best wishes. He grabbed hold of me—us—and went on his way.
Again, a superior force had decided I was best stored in darkness. This “Halloween” came and we were thrown into what may as well have been a mass grave.
“Mark, I’m going out for drinks with some friends. You’re in charge of handing out candy. And don’t worry, you don’t need a costume. Your ass already looks decrepit enough.”
Mark took us and placed us on a yard chair in front of his house. “The first kid to walk up can take it all for all I care.” He scribbled something down on a sign, gruffed a remark, and went back inside.
You will not believe it. Not minutes later, Spiderman came and adopted everyone in my family except me. For hours, I sat there imagining what it would be like to have the brain capacity to at least imagine I was crying. Several kids came by, each dissatisfied by my mere appearance and emitting a uniquely guttural gagging noise. One even spit on me—fuck you, Harry Potter.
I’d lost hope. The dark was as black as I’d ever known it to be. But then, I heard giggling and the slam of a car door.
“You should call me! We can go for another romp in the…Jeep Wrangler parked behind the abandoned Burger King,” said the only man ever to dress as the Joker and still manage to get lucky.
Footsteps approached. Mark’s wife now hovering over me, she sighed.
“Damn kids took everything but the Tootsie Roll. Fuck it—guess I am a bit of a masochist.”
She unraveled me, considered me, and, finally, placed me in her mouth. She smacked and gobbed and—no, what is this? “Marr…Marrrk! Mark stood agrin, watching his wife from the window of their master bedroom. She twitched and spat until becoming overtaken by full body compulsions. Her body collapsed to the dewy grass and the Tootsie Roll rocketed out of her esophagus.
He wanted to be the first Tootsie Roll to experience the digestive tract. Maybe next Halloween.
