Sweet Things

candy

By Allison M. Dickson

As the author herself puts it, this is a sinister little tale. Consider yourself warned.

It was Halloween night, so of course…razor blades. Also needles and wood splinters and rat poison. But just a dash. He didn’t want to kill anybody. He just wanted them to cry. Maybe they would never eat candy again. Maybe they wouldn’t turn into fat little slobs. Maybe they would live longer and have better teeth.

Maybe he was saving humanity.

Parents were crafty little inspectors, so he’d honed his skills over the years, each little candy bar a painstaking operation that would make a surgeon weep with envy. A singular puncture hole, a slightly imperfect seal, and all his hard work would be so much refuse for rats or other garbage bin carrion, and that would not do.

The right tools were essential. Fine tweezers for opening the ends of each package, a commercial heat sealer for closing them back up again so they looked fresh from the factory. A pair of tin snips for making the bits of needles and razor blades into devious silver confetti to be sprinkled carefully throughout each confection. A mortar and pestle to grind the rat poison into a fine powder so that he could combine it with a viscous mixture to be inserted with a hypodermic needle, undetectable particularly amid the caramel varieties.

He found a soldering iron to be useful for melting the chocolate back over the places he’d inserted his special ingredients. No one would detect his trickery—until it was too late. After his treatment, the candy looked just as it did before. Perhaps even better.

He was a maestro of the subtle. Continue reading