Chapter 5: Lure

Karen thought Lauren’s idea to split up was great: at the time. Without her friends at her side she was quick to get lost and scared within the labyrinthine corridors of the old candy factory. She could just call Deanna or Lauren on her phone, sure, but then her friends would know she was a chicken idiot.

Seems she didn’t need to call them, though. She turned a corner and heard down that hallway, ever so faintly, the voice of the two.

“Karen!” said Deanna.

“Karen!” said Lauren.

“Get over here, we found something cool!” said Lauren.

‘What luck’ the brunette thought to herself. ‘Now I can meet up with them, get that dork Blair then get out of here. All on my own terms. Just in time too, wouldn’t want to be late for party at the warehouse.’

The 20-year old woman adjusted the overalls of her clown costume so they’d sag a bit less, then jogged down the hallway.

“I’m coming!” she shouted.

She followed the voices. They said the same thing over and over again with slight variations.

“It’s really cool, come check it out!”

“What’s taking so long?”

“Karen!”

It actually began to annoy her a bit: not that she had a high tolerance for annoyances anyways. Still, they lead her closer and closer to her destination. Karen had a good figure, but she wasn’t exactly athletic and so she transitioned to walking. Moving slower, that’s when she noticed a bit of stickiness on the floor of the hallway. She shined her phone-light down to the concrete floor of the corridor and noticed a light glaze of something. Syrup?

“What the...” she muttered to herself. A hint of trepidation ran over her but it dissolved once she heard those voices again.

“Karen, C’mon!” they said.

She was definitely closer.

“I’m coming you two jeez.”

Deeper still she went. A few more turns and twists. The voices of her friends grew louder the stickier the floor got. The next hallway she went in was lined with caramel which stuck at her shoes. She popped a piece of gum and chewed it to try and gnaw out some of her growing stress.

“Deanna, Lauren, what’s up with the hallway?” she shouted.

Silence for a bit, then a reply.

“One of the candy cisterns blew.” said Lauren’s voice.

“Yeah. And uh, Blair’s covered in the stuff. It’s hilarious! Come check it out.”, said Deanna.

Strange, but that did sound funny.

She kept going.

The walls were sticky now, and caramel threatened to yank off her red-painted sneakers with every step. Against her better judgment, she moved along till she neared the room they kept Blair in. The entire hallway leading there oozed with caramel dripping from the walls to the floor. Strands of marshmallow and licorice hanged from the ceiling. One of those red ropes brushed against Karen’s shoulder. It felt slimy with a thin syrup. She shuddered.

“Urgh, this is gonna ruin my costume. Lauren, Deanna, you in there?”

“Yeah!” said Deanna. She was nearby. “Come on in and check it out.”

Karen went through the door into the dark room and tripped on a thick licorice root inside. She fell to the ground into a puddle of syrup and her phone quickly fried from water damage once it slipped from her hands. At the same time, the door behind her slammed shut and locked. Blair had worked some of her marshmallow matter into the hinges, and a licorice rope was hanging on the ceiling outside, waiting for this exact moment to seal her in there.

Karen panicked immediately. She scrambled to her feet and yanked desperately on the door’s handle, but it wouldn’t budge. Squishy and slimy sounds filled her ears as stuff in this room moved around. Stuff moved outside, too. Filled with fear and dripping syrup, she started pounding on the door from the inside.

“Let me out!” she yelled

The clown stopped her pounding when white-green light filled the room. The entire room was filled up with its ghastly tint. It was white enough to not distort the surroundings too much. That was Blair’s design, she wanted Karen to take it all in.

“Karen, come check this out!” said Deanna’s voice. Trembling, the brunette turned around and her jaw nearly dropped.

Hard candy-clusters hung on the caramel-coated walls like barnacles to a ship’s hull. Those were the source of the light. The ceiling was mostly clean, but the floor was a pool of muted hue syrup and caramel roughly the height of Karen’s shoes. Old metal vats were in the distance, partially dissolved and decaying into the floor. The tables from before were gone now, melted into candy, but Karen never saw those.

The ground grew solid towards an ovaloid pod at the room’s center with licorice tentacles running to it from the floor and walls. Its egg-like shape was brown and orange. Something was in there. Deanna seemed to speak from it, but her voice was too clear. Karen didn’t know it, but Blair formed a mouth right behind that candy-construct to send out her lures and taunts.

“C’mon, check it out. Blair’s in there and it’s hilarious how dumb she looks right now!”

Karen took a step closer, the syrup splashed by her ankles. It grew thicker as she went deeper in.

“C’mon” said the voice, distorting a bit from Deanna’s. “She looks so stupid and scared right now. A real clown, I’d say.”

Karen was halfway there. The syrup was super thick now, almost thicker than the corridor leading her.

The voice spoke again. The feminine tone sounded very familiar now. It was more dainty than Deanna’s timbre.

“You should see the look on her face!”, said the voice.

Karen almost lost her shoes again in the sticky fluid, but at last she reached that weird bulbous pod. Her hands pressed at its surface.

“Go on, open it.”

The voice was unmistakably Blair’s.

Karen hesitated. Her heart was beating miles a minute and she began to sweat. To steady her courage she chewed on her gum again, slowly.

“Don’t you wanna see your friend?”, said the voice.

Karen scraped at the surface of the pod. Whatever it was made of got caught in her nails. It smelled sweet and felt a little tough, but not so tough she couldn’t crack at it with her fists.

Blair spoke again. The voice was coming from somewhere else in the room now. The candy-woman kept her mouth on the move to keep Karen on-her-toes and scared.

“Do you like the outer layer? It’s a type of creamy sugar. It’s basically what they use to make candy corn. It has a soft, buttery taste with an ultra-sweet presence. I found a room in here with a bunch of it locked up and just binged on it.”

Karen ignored the voice and kept digging into the pod. She heard something move in there. It sounded slimy.

“Did I tell you Karen? I don’t need to worry about my blood sugar anymore. Hell, I don’t even have blood now. If I did, it’d probably be sugar. Kind of ironic, isn’t it?”

Blair laughed and Karen at last broke away the outer layer. Wet syrup spilled from the open pod like a cracked yolk. Under this strange light she saw Deanna inside completely naked and submerged up past her navel. The redhead’s skin was a deathly pale, but she was awake and alert enough to look at Karen with fear in her eyes. The interior of the pod was filled with caramel, some dripping out since the cocoon got cracked. Red licorice tendrils laid twisted through the caramel and dug into Deanna’s ‘flesh’ which bubbled and fluffed around their entry points.

Deanna coughed up some syrup over Karen’s front. Blair had slithered some down the redhead’s throat to ‘map’ out her vocal chords while she lived. Once finished, she tried to speak.

“P-please...” was all Deanna managed.

Karen gasped. She reached out at Deanna’s shoulders and hoisted her up. It’s then she saw Deanna’s legs were gone, and from her lower body dripped caramel fluid. Karen’s hands went right into that pale skin too with hardly any resistance. The redhead let out a painful screech. Karen quickly pulled her hands out and looked at them. She expected some ghastly sight of innards and giblets, but saw only marshmallow with faint red tints from Deanna’s blood.

The redhead spoke again through her new pains. She lacked the ability to right herself back up in the pod since getting dropped back into the gooey inside.

“P-please k-kill me.”, she said.

Karen moved backwards away from the horror at her front. Deanna reached out with a mushy marshmallow arm. “Wait. No please, please... the pain.”

Blair laughed as she resealed the pod. That creamy-candy coating reforming far easier than it was broken. Her voice spoke all around.

“I think I let you air her out too soon. I’m experimenting with turning people to candy while they are still living. It’s a practice of sorts.”

“Practice for what?” said Karen in a quivering tone.

“For you, of course.”

Karen’s breathing quickened. “I-I don’t what happened in here you little freak, but I’m not some candy for you to fucking suck on. I’m not gonna be podded up like some fucking snack.”

Blair’s chuckle trailed off.

“Oh Karen, you don’t understand. Just like Deanna, you’re already inside me.”

“What?” said Karen as if on reflex.

“I’ve been busy exploring this factory... spreading myself through the hall... Don’t you remember the sticky caramel at your feet on the way over? Don’t you remember the strand of licorice at your shoulder?”

Blair laughed while Karen’s eyes went wide in horror.

“There’s no where for you to run Karen. Don’t believe me? See for yourself!”

The door to the room swung open and light shined in from the hallway. Karen didn’t need to be told to bolt it out of there.