Chapter 3: Tips and Tricks

The orange-skinned, green-haired woman poked her head out from behind one of the old candy-vats in the room. Hween stood far bigger now at a normal human’s size: in particular, the god stood a few inches shorter than Blair was back before she grew to her current amazonian height.

Blair took a few steps towards Hween. A bit of sugary water fell from her candy-flesh.

“You were watching this whole time Hween?”

“Yup!”

“From behind there?”

“No silly, I’m a god. I can see other ways when it suits me. I didn’t say anything earlier cause I didn't want to interfere with your personal stuff, ya’ know?”

Hween waltzed out from behind the cistern to lean against it. Her fingers drummed at the surface.

“So what do you want to know?”

“Why am I naked?”

Hween laughed. “Really, that’s your first question? Well, probably absorbed your clothes while you slept.”

Blair rubbed her hand against her stomach and wiped off some of that sugary fluid coating it. “What’s this?”, she asked.

“Sugar water. Maybe syrup if some nerd wants to argue about what viscosity makes it qualify.”, said Hween. “Your body produced it while you were asleep. You could make more now if you wanted, or stop making it entirely to feel dry. Surely you realized your candy properties now, right?”

“Candy properties?” said Blair. She tried to dry her skin of the sugar water and managed it.

“D’uh.” said Hween. “Your flesh is taffy--mostly. You got all sorts of stuff on your insides. Caramel, marshmallow, syrup. Your body is your own candy clay to play with now! The only limit to the sugary horror you can make of yourself is your own imagination!”

Blair continued feeling herself. She focused and willed some taffy-flesh by her taut stomach to stretch out just a little. It did, before she snapped it back. Focusing again, she found she could alter the color of her flesh. She quickly became a mixture of dull pink, blue, purple and other pastel shades. Her fingers brushed through her black hair, and she realized it was now very thin licorice.

“Woah.”, she said. “...What’s the catch? Why’d you do this for me?”

Hween chuckled.

“What’s so funny?”

“Just the way you said it, ‘for me’ instead of ‘to me.’ You already recognize the value of my boon. None of that ‘argh I can’t go back to my old life’ cliche B.S. I like it!”

Hween laughed again.

“I have my reasons Blair, one of them is that it’s just so fun to watch! Plus, what’s Halloween without some tricks and treats? You treat yourself as my little trick to the world.”

Blair found the answer satisfying enough. Hween seemed to be quite the impish god, after all.

“What did I do to Lauren?”

“Well, you ate her. Again,” Hween tapped on that vat and made a rapping sound. “D’uh! Now, what happens when you normally eat food?”

Blair thought a moment, looking at her stomach. “It digests.”

“Sure, or gets absorbed. Semantics in most cases. Your body turned her to candy, your made of candy, so you just added her mass to yours. Makes sense?”

“So, that’s how I grew then?”

“Yup.”

“Then...” began Blair, continuing. “...why can I still ‘feel’ her alive inside me.”

“Ah!” said Hween. Her grin grew nice, wide, and toothy. “That’s just her soul. You absorbed that too. Feels nice having her stuck in there I bet.”

While Blair processed this, Hween moved from the vat to fetch a nearby ladder. She started climbing up it.

“So... I ate her soul?”

“What kind of powerful monster would you be if you couldn’t eat souls?” said Hween. She giggled again.

“A monster...”

“If the goddess of Halloween calls you a monster, you should take that as a high compliment, trust me.” Hween nudged the lid of the vat off, and the wide metal disc fell to the floor in a loud bang.

“Come take a look at this.” she said. Blair walked towards the vat. Her steps had a satisfying weight to them now. Each footfall sounded like a dull thud as opposed the lithe pattering when she walked shoe-less at her apartment home.

“W-woah!” said Hween as she fell over into the vat with a splash. Blair gasped and moved with haste now. She was tall enough to just lean over the lid. Inside the container, Hween lounged on her back on a hard-candy surface. Her legs and arms were crossed, and a foot of hers bobbed up and down. She grinned up at Blair.

“Tricked ya!” said Hween.

“Wait, its not fluid in here? Then how’d the splash-”

Hween contorted her cheek, twisted her tongue, and redid the sound effect. With a giggle, she stood up to her feet and lounged against the inside of the vat.

“It’s hard candy in the vat?”

“Yup. Way back when Wild Candy Co. was in business, they pioneered this neat method of making hard candy. They’d make the solid bits in a vat then melt it into whatever shape they wanted later on. Throw in some coloring, flavoring, and you had almost any hard candy you’d want.”

Blair and Hween saw full-color in the dark. Blair could see the almost clear solidified sugar within. Her mouth watered with thin syrup.

“Why are you showing me this?”

“Well, you learned fast you could grow by absorbing stuff right? You can eat most anything now if you put your mind to it. You’ll quickly learn people are best, what with all their stored nutrients and such. Actual candy’s a close second though.”

“Wait, you want me to eat that? Hasn’t it been here for decades?”

Hween giggled. “Yes, in a moisture proof cistern. Hard-candy never spoils if protected from moisture. Each one of these vats holds thousands of liquid gallons of fluid so this candy syrup, when solid, translates to around that much.”

Blair looked around the room, there were at least half a dozen other vats. Some of her syrup-spittle fell from her lips onto the hard-candy mass. It almost splashed on Hween and she jumped up onto the edge of the vat. “Hey, watch your drool!” she chuckled. “But, I think you get the idea. Chow down and grow up.”

Blair didn’t need to be told what to do. She placed her hand onto that clear crystalline bounty. Her palm exuded a warm sugary syrup of its own that started melting and mixing with the contents of the vat. The sweet taste was overwhelming. Hween watched on for a bit, kicking her legs.

“Alright Blair, I’ll leave you to it. I’m sure you’ve got a lot of revenge to deal out. Some power trips to indulge...”

“Wait.” said Blair. “I still have more questions on how my body works? What can I do with a soul? How can I-”

“Blair.” said Hween as she hopped down to the floor. “You can figure out the rest yourself. What’s the fun if I just tell you everything? Be creative! I want your creativity to surprise me. Most good tricks have a bit of surprise to them, after all.” she said. Her smile was wide.

“Well, in that case I suppose I should say thank yo-”

Hween disappeared. The green-haired god had giggled and then poofed away in a puff of black-orange smoke.

Blair blinked, then got right back to consuming the candy in that vat. The more she took in, the more she grew. The ceiling of this place was pretty large: about 40ft or so. Not enough room if she ate everything in all the vats. Already, standing, she’d be more than 20 feet.

She remembered Hween’s words. “Be creative.” She wasn’t bound by human shape anymore. Blair let her body pool to the floor. From the waist down, her body went from a taffy-based human-shape to a marshmallowy blob. The less viscous nature of the substance let her move around in more of a crawl or a slither. She gooped towards the next vat and yanked off the lid. It clanked to the floor and just before she was about to dig in a noise startled her.

Lauren’s phone. She rushed her body towards it: her human-shaped pastel upper-body just sort of glided down her marshmallow bulk, which pooled out by the phone. She grabbed it with her hands and saw the caller ID. It was Deanna.

She let it go to voice mail, but it’s clear the other two would be coming soon. That’d be fine. She was far from concerned as to what they could to her. In fact, the thought of another buttery sweet meal like Lauren wet her appetite far more than the bounties in those vats.

Blair wondered if there was a way to lure the redheaded bully in here faster. The answer lied with Lauren, and she decide to explore that soul of her first victim: first of many, she was sure.

Lauren felt small: infinitely small. And, when Blair actually focused to find out where that sensation of ‘Lauren’ was coming form, she perceived it as an infinitesimal point at the very core of her body. Until she had focused though, she felt Lauren here, there, and everywhere in her candy flesh. The candy-woman thought it similar to a particle in physics that’s a wave until you look at it... or something. She wasn’t a physics major.

In any case Blair had what she wanted. Lauren felt a presence looking at her. The soul screamed out with her mind, but Blair ignored all that as she tried to see what use she could get out of this trapped spirit.

Blair found she could do most anything with Lauren’s essence: she could move it to her arm or nose or anywhere on her body. For fun, she moved Lauren towards a bit of her marshmallow goo on the floor and ‘expanded’ the soul a bit. The face of Lauren appeared as a raised relief on the fluffy white surface of her lower goop. The former bully’s agonized expression and meager attempts to ‘bubble’ out a few words got a chuckle out of Blair. It was amusing, but not useful, so she stuffed Lauren back down to a dot at her core.

Blair instead dug deep into Lauren’s ethereal being. She had never done anything like it, but it was easy nonetheless and she found herself having complete access to all Lauren’s thoughts, knowledge, and memories. The thoughts were useless, albeit amusing: ‘Let me out’. ‘It’s dark in here.’ and so on. The memories however...

Blair quickly learned that Deanna had confessed her love to Lauren over the last semester brake. Sadly, Lauren didn’t see other women the same way Deanna did. The two talked things out and remained friends. It was a very mature thing for them to do and Blair seethed at the thought! Her tormentors had the capacity to be normal adults to one another, so why were they such immature jerks to her? People were strange, she thought. No matter. They were beneath her now.

She dove deeper into Lauren’s mind. She learnt everything Lauren knew including the incommunicable: stuff her body and mind knew at fundamental levels. For example, how Lauren moved her arms and what they felt like. Also, the density and, most importantly, the makeup of the blonde-woman’s vocal chords.

The phone rang again. This time, Blair answered it.