I've foreseen my death since the day my Mom named me: Candy. It will happen after I've binged on my gingerbread walls, eaten the frosted windowpanes, and chewed hunks off the peppermint fireplace. The cause: sweetheart attack, a.k.a. sugar overdose. It's a classic witch affliction. After all, a witch's house isn't solely built to lure starving children. We design them with our favorite treats, with tips from the Witches' Home Journal. They run a column called "Houses to Nibble At." Last month's winning house had the following caption beneath its photo: This devilishly delicious witch's house, with its broken candy glass path, cookie graveyard, licorice barbed-wire fence, and spooky hilltop shack with graham cracker roof, will delight a crowd of twenty. I took the graveyard suggestion and have been busy baking tombstones to give my family some recognition. Everyone I'm related to is out back, mostly in the form of scattered ashes.
promotion
Those who seek sweets find sweets. People wander the world's forests hunting for authentic witch shacks. Once you've delved deep enough into the wilderness to find a magnificent candy palace, you're already hooked. You visit me ready to learn witchcraft. Obsession makes the witch. If you want to meet me, knock. My knocker is chocolate. Some cannibalistic hags kidnap innocent kids, but I don't. I prefer to host willing guests. It's so rare that I meet anyone with similar cravings.
The last pleasant guest I had was a goat. Her long beard was tangled around a log, and I heard her whinnying outside. I took some shears and shaved her down, beard and all. I milked her, and made a gratin with her cheese and some potatoes I'd been saving for a special occasion. She ate some pound cake, then I sent her on her way.
Most men run when they meet me, even though I appear to them as their ideal beauty. Warning: I look however you want me to look.
Last time a man visited, I was out trimming geraniums. This guy stumbled into my yard. He looked about fifty; he was fat, sweaty, had on black shirt and black shorts, and had long, stringy hair. He was ugly, but I was happy for the company. He had a walking stick, a canteen strapped around his shoulder, and he wore one black glove. He froze when he saw my abode. I was naked except for my tall hat and long black hair covering my bust. Quickly, I wrapped a cloth around my waist and said hello.
"How far is it to the Ranger Station?" he asked. He said he was lost, but he was so preoccupied that I knew he had come intentionally to spy on my set-up. He was dripping sweat.
"I don't know," I said. "I've never been there."
"But we're still within park boundaries?"
"I don't know," I said. "I only know I live here. Want some lemonade?"
He stared at my house for a good fifteen minutes, hypnotized, mostly focusing on the lemon drops lining the roof. The sun was melting them, causing sticky yellow icicles to form. Sunbeams refracted off the icicles,
A witch's house is a mirror; you see what you desire, and then you either succumb or run away.
giving them a glittery, prismatic, yellow glow. I saw yellow, not as a color but as a chunky tangible object, bouncing off my house and into the man's eyes. His skin became golden and young. Suddenly, he looked healthy. His sweaty clothing dried as it flooded with light. It was late morning, and evaporating dew made the grass steamy.
Snapping out of it, he commented on the kittens running around, and I told him it was a new litter. He was unaware of how long he'd been standing there. Wiping his forehead with the back of his gloved hand, he didn't look scared until he spotted my broom on the porch. It's not an average broom; it has stiff twig bristles and a hand-carved pine handle.
"I'd better get back," he said, fumbling for his trail map.
"Nice glove," I said, while thinking: Where have I seen that glove before?
But he was already off.
A witch's house is a mirror; you see what you desire, and then you either succumb or run away. I didn't cast a spell on the Fat Man, he was enchanted by his own thoughts. He detested his own cowardly reflection; he wanted to lick those lemon icicles, but he chickened out. I didn't take it personally. People gawk at my house, but few are brave enough to come inside. My home is a physical incarnation of love and hate.
HATE. Only rarely do I use it, while casting cruel spells such as making needles grow inside someone's stomach. My mother is the only person I've ever hated, and I forgave her even before she died. I hated her for giving birth to me. Witchcraft is genetic; a witch who gives birth automatically hexes the child. My great great grandmother was burned at the stake, and my grandmother died while performing a ritual, so I didn't understand why my mother would willingly pass down this condition. I read my ancestor's diaries, about how aunts and cousins were pushed off cliffs, tied to racks and split in half, and wondered why all these women had children? Certain spells prevent pregnancy, and I felt that my family had suffered enough.
My mom was seventy-one when she had me, and I am her only child. She was the first witch in our family to die from old age at ninety-three, so it was a relatively happy occasion. I was with her when it happened. She was resting in bed, so we had time to say our goodbyes.
"Be a good witch, Candy," she said, while kissing me repeatedly.
"What should I do with my life?" I asked.
"Make candy, practice magic, and do something great every day," she said.
"How can I make friends?" I asked.
And her last words were, "Candy, this house is your best friend."
I used to think of a candy house as a tomb. Life as a witch is so specific. Avoidance and denial are impossible. You're a witch, so deal with it. As a child, I'd invite kids over and revel in their jealousy as we were treated to batch after batch of caramel. Feeling superior was my only relief from self-hatred. I remember when Nathan used to visit; he was my classmate in fourth grade. He got so fat, then one day he just stopped showing up.
"My mom never lets me eat this much," Nathan mumbled, shoveling caramels into his mouth. He must have eaten a thousand caramels this time, it took him six hours. I got bored watching.
"Doughboy!" I teased, poking him with a fork.
"Stop it," my mom said, stirring a pot of brown sugar on the stove. "He can have as much as he wants."
"I get candy every day," I whispered to him.
When we went behind the house to dig for mice, and finally caught one, Nathan barfed. He was bent over holding a shovel, and brown paste exploded out of his mouth right into the roses. I called inside to mom. She came out, hosed down the mess, and told me she'd walk Nathan home. When Mom returned, I got in trouble for teasing him.
"But kids only like me because of my house," I said.
"Then they aren't true friends, are they?" Mom asked.
"Then who cares if they get sick?" I asked. "I hate this stupid house." My mother knew I was right. She grew up in this house too.
"Sweetie," she said.
"Don't call me that!" I said. "I'm not a piece of candy."
"If kids get sick when they come over, I'll walk them home," she said. "One day you'll love this house."
We used to spend days naked in makeout forest.
I hated the house, but I loved its sugar. I'd run away for days, sometimes weeks, but always came back with a craving. I was raised on lollipops, after all. The house was my marionette, or vice versa. Sugary strings attached us — I couldn't see the house as anything other than something that deserved annihilation.
I dated a vampire once, when I was twenty-one. Following my mom's death, I went out with some strange men. I'd lived in the house alone for a little under a year, at times inviting guys to sleep over. Vlad didn't live with me since he had certain sleeping requirements. We only lasted for six months.
Vlad was handsome. He looked exactly how you'd expect a vampire to look, with dark, blue-black hair, intense eyes, and pale skin. He looked like he never went in the sun, but we did a fair amount of sunbathing together. We used to spend days naked in Makeout Forest. He must have been over a hundred, but he looked thirty-five. His skin didn't have a wrinkle, and he had an insatiable appetite in every regard. Twenty years later, he's still trying to win me back. I haven't seen him at all, but recently, he mailed me this sentimental story he wrote about the woods.
Makeout Forest was the best place for making out. It had big, green oak trees, lots of benches and soft, dry places to lie down, and streams running through it, making it more private. These were the Privacy Streams. They muffled your sounds and made little boundaries that separated you from all the other people making out. You could drain someone completely bloodless if you wanted to. Little acorns and larch pinecones decorated the dirt. Sometimes a pine needle would poke you, but that was okay. Almost always you'd leave having had the best makeout session of your life. Deers necked. Birds fornicated in mid-air. We headed straight to Makeout Forest if we had something to forget and we wanted to get happy.
Someone carved this saying into our favorite rock to make out on: Life is very easy if you quietly analyze everything you dream about. The stone was like a king's throne, with a tall back and two arms sticking out. We could sit on it and climb around on each other for easy makeout access. Remember? Think back to how occasionally you get to sit on someone's lap. Isn't it romantic to recall sitting either on top of or below another human being? I get fangs just thinking about it.
Vlad and I bonded because we both had special talents, and I knew he didn't see me as a novelty. I liked that he drank blood, and sometimes I'd let him bite the back of my arm or my neck and have as much as he wanted. He never took too much. It hurt but I was fascinated. The sucking didn't hurt as much as his fangs poking into me as he sucked. They were like glass shards digging into my open wound. But I liked the way his fangs looked, and they only came out of his gums when he got hungry. They just emerged. Once they were full-fledged, it was fun to watch Vlad drain juice from unpeeled oranges.
Vlad's smile made him look slightly goofy, because his fangs would stick over his bottom lip. He hated this, and tended not to smile too much. But it was nice when he did. Usually his fangs made him look mean, and he went around with his mouth a little open, letting his fangs show. His fangs looked like porcelain. Dating someone with fangs is a unique experience. I wouldn't do it again — it's too painful. It's no fun being bitten when you're bruised and sore. You start feeling like a cadaver.
Sometimes, we'd set things on fire. All I had to do was point my broom and flick a match to spark something off. The match was just for fun — I could do it without one. And if Vlad stared at one spot long enough, it would smoulder, then ignite. We had contests to see who could start a fire the fastest. Usually, we'd burn old logs or stacks of leaves, nothing major.
One afternoon, in Makeout Forest, I accidentally set a mouse on fire. I saw it dart out like a smokebomb from underneath this piece of tree bark I torched. Its rank smell reminded me of the mouse I saw with
"Lay back for a minute," Vlad said. "I want to kiss you."
Nathan years ago, and how Nathan barfed in our rose garden. I hate roses on top of the fact that my friends used to constantly barf on them from overeating at my house. That day turned into an especially destructive day. "Candy, see that spot across the hill, where that pine tree sticks up higher than the others?" Vlad asked. "That one?" I pointed out with my broom, setting the tree on fire before I even knew if it was the intended victim. "No, the one right next to it," he said. "Yeah, I see it." "Watch," he said, as it started smoking, then flaming.
We'd been doing this all afternoon, and each time when I'd point my broom a second time, the fire would cease. I could stop the oxygen flow so the fire would die out after a half-hour or so. Since these two trees were next to each other, though, their fire turned into one large fire, fast. The hill's horizon turned dark with soot as I kept failing to put the fire out.
"My favorite color," Vlad said, referring to the charcoal ash filling the sky. Birds were panicking and flying in all directions, making things really chaotic.
"What should we do?" I asked him. "I can't put it out."
"Let's sit down for a minute, it's such a view," Vlad said.
The fire was still only taking up a section of sky, and the smoke wasn't making us cough, so we sat down.
"I shouldn't sit long," I said, crouching instead. "I should watch where it spreads."
"Lay back for a minute," Vlad said. "I want to kiss you."
"Not now," I said. "Not while my house burns down." The hill my house was on was a ways away, but it was in the direction that the fire was heading. I felt like I should do something, but I didn't know what. I couldn't decide whether or not I wanted it to burn. On one hand, I wanted to personally flick a flame directly onto the house. On the other hand, I was terrified. I was picking my brain for some way to conjure up rain, a hurricane, anything wet. But I wasn't that advanced. I'd blown off most of my magic studies up to this point, and I needed reference books in front of me to do most things related to the four elements.
The mouse popped into my mind. This fire wouldn't have started if I hadn't of seen it and been reminded of barf and roses. I re-smelled the burning rodent again, in my mind, and I thought again of the roses, but I also now remembered another smell: the smell Nathan's clothes had, when I found them out behind my house years after his disappearance. It was a meaty smell, the smell I hate the most.
It never occurred to me that Mom was fattening Nathan up. It never crossed my mind that Mom didn't walk Nathan home following that last vomit incident. I was twenty, walking around in the woods, and I found buried under some leaves a small pair of blue pants and a green-striped tee shirt crumpled up into a crusty pile. Staring awhile at the clothes, I first remembered to whom the clothing belonged. Then, I realized Nathan was killed. It took longer, still, to figure out that Mom had attacked him. I just instinctively knew: all the kids coming to the house, devouring candy, and Mom walking them home. I stared at Nathan's outfit all day. It was a day of delayed reactions. The realizations came instantly, but took a long time to process. Finally, I decided Mom had undressed Nathan before she ate him, but his clothing was still bloody, and that's what made it reek. It smelled like rotten meat, not fresh rot but rancid jerky.
Mom was dying when I found out. She'd been spending her days lying in bed, only getting up every few hours to check her latest baked goods in the oven or to stir the cauldron. I walked directly home and found her in the kitchen.
"You must've liked it when I egged Nathan on," I started in calmly. "Telling him to eat more and more, day after day, so then you could take him out back and EAT HIM!"
She looked at me for a minute, then started to cry, hard.
"I couldn't help it," she said. "I was so . . . hungry!" The word "hungry" came out in a deeper voice. She was sobbing by now, barely able to speak.
"Why did you even have me?" I yelled. "Just to torture me? You think it's cool to give birth to a witch then eat all her friends? How many did you eat, Mom? Six? Ten? A hundred?"
She was sitting at the table, crying too hard to talk. She was weak, all the way around, she was a weak person who had no self-control. She lived in our house because she couldn't survive outside of it. She was the neediest person alive. I didn't want to be related to her anymore. Will I need the
The fire didn't magically vanish like I'd hoped.
same things? I wondered. Wondering this was nothing new — I thought needing sugar and a broom was bad. I thought being a total social outcast was bad. But how I would one day reconcile eating another person? This was something I wasn't willing to wonder.
Looking at my mother there, frail and gray, she looked like she was starving to death. She looked like she would snap in half and die right then. I was so disgusted, with her and with myself. I was nauseous. I conjured up a deep, painful pity for her, but I couldn't manage sympathy. I wanted to die. I wanted her to die, but then I didn't. When she died a couple months later, I was sad but also greatly relieved.
The fire didn't magically vanish like I'd hoped. I wanted the house to burn down, but then I didn't. But it did, and I sat there on the hill with Vlad watching the entire mountain across from us burn. We were too far away to see the house in particular, but the color of the smoke turned green while the fire ate it. The smoke must have smelled sweet and spicy, fuming from all the aromatic ingredients the house was made of: gingerbread, butterscotch, peppermints, all different frostings, chocolate, vanilla, cakes, fruit, taffy, licorice, caramel, honey, on and on. All that candy.
I felt a new kind of sickness, compounded by years of feeling hatred towards so many things. All the sicknesses I'd ever felt, in chronological order, reoccurred simultaneously at this moment. Sickness from eating too much candy, sickness from being made fun of at school, from watching friends be physically sick, from my identity and my inability to change it, from the house, from my mom, her weaknesses and her death, and sickness caused by Vlad's selfish desires. Finally, I felt sick for the future, because I was now homeless.
Vlad and I split up on the hill.
"Do you want to stay with me?" he asked, as we watched the green smoke come from where my house was situated.
"No," I said. "I can live in the forest for awhile."
"Out in the woods?"
"Yeah, I'll build a hut."
"Then what?" Vlad asked.
"Study," I said.
Vlad was a history scholar, so he understood the value of books.
"Well, call me if you need anything," he said.
But I knew he'd be the one calling me whenever he was in the mood for romance. And I wouldn't call him back, After feeling his lack of concern for me as I watched my only real possession turn to cinder, I'd witnessed a side of him that I wanted to permanently avoid.
I built a thatched-roof house out of birch and willow sticks to live in. It was dry and sufficiently lit at night by candles and lanterns, so I could spend evenings
Twig walls are nice, but rustic only goes so far.
hitting magic books up for tips. I'd blown off casting spells long enough. All my books had burned in the fire, but I hunted a few new ones down at a local library. Some of the more important tomes mysteriously appeared on my doorstep. I had infinite free time, and decided it worthwhile to pursue magic since I had no stove or oven to bake sweets in, and anyway, I was trying to kick the habit.
Night after night, I dreamed of a cheerful candy house, a colorful dwelling that radiated warmth. It made my drafty, brown house feel like a coffin. Twig walls are nice, but rustic only goes so far. The floor in my hut had a hooked-rug, but dirt still piled up on it. I was constantly stepping on pebbles. My makeshift kettle rusted on the dish rack outside, so I couldn't make soups or casseroles for fear of ingesting iron flakes from the bottom of the pot. Raccoons unlatched my front door each night, sneaking in to steal leftovers. They even munched toiletries like lotion, lip balm, and toothpaste. To them, my house was full of treats, but to me, it seemed the opposite.
On the porch of my dream house sat a doormat with my name inside a big red heart on it. WELCOME! CANDY. It could be read two ways: Welcome All! Love, Candy or Welcome Candy! Love, House. The mat was elaborately designed with Cherry Twizzlers, ribbon candy, Jordan Almonds (those nuts dipped in pastel coating), and other vibrantly colored items. It was less a boot cleaner than a snack that I could offer visitors.
This wasn't the house I grew up in; it was extra sweet; it was made of candies that my mom disliked. Lemon Drops, for example. Mom hated lemon, but I grew up making pitchers of lemonade that I'd stir with peppermint sticks for a minty twist. I drank lemonade until the acid ate the enamel off my teeth. I woke up from these dreams feverish with a toothache, caused from lack of sugar rather than from too much.
I'd spent my life hating sugar because it brought me false companionship and sickness. In the hut, I ruminated on how sugar was the gateway drug to cannibalism. I won't touch another grain! I told myself, as raccoons looted my place. Once again, I encountered the familiar sickness of withdrawals. My dreams provided relief, as the doormat illustrated some sweet aspect of myself, inherent in my heritage, as magical as sugar but separate from it. Life is flavorless without sweeteners. Danger is the allure of shiny lemons. Living in a dome made of sticks didn't motivate me to pursue what I loved most — to captivate. You can't experience true sweetness without first being shocked by its counterpart: misery.
n°
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Trinie Dalton is a writer and visual artist in Los Angeles. She coedited Dear New Girl or Whatever Your Name Is for McSweeney’s, and her short story collection Wide Eyed was recently published by Akashic Books.
