Candy House

It was just one of those days; hotter ‘an hell with no more than the occasional whisper of a breeze. Summer in Savannah was a sticky affair most days, and it had not gotten any better since the Great Fire. But this was something else. Anna would just as well spend the day indoors with a moldy, broken-spined paperback as muck about in the swamps to check her traps. The snakes weren’t biting anyway. What was biting was every God-forsaken mosquito south of the Tennessee line, all come out at once to torment the poor old hermit woman in her shack.

Anna rolled a decade-old newspaper into a club and swatted at her bare shoulder. Whap. A dead one. The woman regarded her kill, smashed against her leathery skin, and for just a moment she thought about having a taste. A silly thought, something that might come across the mind of a foolish child. Anna knew better. Thoughts like that are a product of what hunger will do to you, and the snakes just aren’t taking the bait, and the ground’s no good for harvest anymore, and the sky is as dry as Anna’s scabby knees.

Swamp water made her tired. Sometimes made her see things that weren’t there.

Things like that brown spaniel trotting through the tall grass like a gazelle, just a few yards down from Anna’s porch. It’s tongue flopped about in time with the huff of its panting. Anna rose up out of her rocking chair like a swan unfurling its wings, teetering to the railing of the porch and squinting through the sunlight. Sure enough, right in her own front yard, was a dog. The dog’s ears perked up like antenna. It twisted its head around in the direction of the shack and Anna could swear that those jowls curled up into a grin when it saw her. And, naturally, she grinned right back, all razed gums and teeth like broken coals.

Desperate times called for desperate measures. Anna hobbled inside on her walking stick with abandon, retrieving the longest, juiciest strip of jerky she could find. She had been saving it for a rainy day, which would never come anyways because rain was practically a myth now. The dog was still waiting for her when she came back out onto the porch. it must have smelled the jerky because it came bounding up to the porch immediately, tail wagging.

Anna heard her bones pop and crack as she knelt over the stoop of the porch. With one hand outstretched, she offered the dog her very last rations. It came right up, friendly as can be, and Anna noticed that there was something around the dog’s neck: a heart-shaped locket made of tarnished silver, its surface elegantly engraved. After a sniff that was more a gesture of excitement than caution, the dog opened its jaws and nabbed the stretch of snake flesh from Anna’s hands before trotting away. This gave Anna just a moment of panic, as she feared it would not come back, but the dog reassured her by settling down in the grass to feast.

Anna cocked her head in amazement. This was the first living creature she had seen in a long time, other than the occasional swamp rat or cottonmouth. Canines were ancient relics of a bygone era, a bitter casualty of the Great Fire alongside most other living creatures. By the sheen of its coat and the shimmer of the locket around its neck, it was clear that someone had been taking good care of this antique. Anna tapped her chin and sighed, wondering if the presence of this dog meant that someone was moving in on her territory. She sure hoped not, for their sake.

The next few weeks passed by. Life was typical for Anna, other than the presence of her new canine companion, who she had learned was female. Anna had named the spaniel “Gretel” after one of her favorite children’s books. The dog ate well those few weeks, much better than Anna ever had. It had charmed its way into her life and weaseled through every one of her defenses, chewing past the hardness she had equipped herself with to survive life in the swamps of Savannah. The majority of the food Anna was able to forage or hunt went to Gretel, who accepted Anna’s gifts with bright-eyed excitement. Gretel was not a particularly good hunter or guard dog, judging by the ease with which Anna was able sneak up on her and goose her. It didn’t matter much anyway. No one was coming for her. Gretel’s former owner had probably succumbed to hunger or thirst like everyone else. Not Anna though. Anna had a new reason to live.

She mused that, with their final breath, Gretel’s former owner had unclasped that locket from their own neck and given it to the mutt as a farewell. And now it was Anna’s. She flashed a toothy grin down at the mutt laying at her feet, chewing away at the gristle of a rat’s spine.

“You’re a good one mutt, you know that?” Anna whispered, rubbing along Gretel’s backside with her bony foot. Gretel didn’t respond, too absorbed in her snacking, but Anna knew she was grateful for all that the old woman had done. Sometimes the two of them read together. Anna would crack open her favorite book, and the origin of Gretel’s name, Hansel and Gretel. It was one of those mass-produced picture books found in supermarkets, one that Anna had found at a convenience store-turned-junkyard twenty miles east. That was back when Anna was capable of travel, but she was glad she had made the effort all those years ago. Gretel loved it. Her favorite parts of the story were Anna’s favorite parts. The old woman could swear that, when she read aloud about the two children stumbling upon a magnificent house made of candy and pastries,Gretel immediately began salivating. Anna watched that tongue lolling about and felt her own gums moisten.

Three months passed. A monster storm swept through and tore up the swampland. It was one of the few Anna had witnessed since before the Fire fifty years back. Fortunately, Anna’s shack had remained untouched. Unfortunately, Anna’s food supply was rapidly dwindling. The four feet of water in the swamp, which had housed just enough wildlife to keep Anna thin but living, had completely dried up. The summer heat would not let up and the last of the wild berries, already a mile trek away, had congealed. It did not help that Gretel was getting hungrier too, and that she lacked the intelligence to understand the state of the world. She had become accustomed to a life of relative luxury and had begun snapping at Anna when she came close. The day finally came when Gretel bit Anna. That was when the old woman decided that it was finally time.

Late in the afternoon the next day, Anna sat on a squat stool out in her back yard. She was fiddling in the tall grass with a hand shovel, cursing at the weeds for getting in her way. The shovel splintered and bit her, a punishment. A penance. Anna could not handle much more than a few feet of digging before her old bones began to quake. Dripping with sweat, Anna threw down the shovel behind her and raised her sun-dried visage heavenward. It was another sweltering, wet, angry Savannah summer day. One like any other, but this one particularly miserable. Anna was afraid to look down. But she had to, eventually.

Thirty minutes was all it took. A long time for a healthy person to fill a hole with bones, but a short time for a woman like Anna, who had weathered the Great Fire, decades of drought, a lifetime of heartache and suffering, and the loss of her dear Gretel. Anna’s eyes watered as she smoothed the last layer of dirt over the makeshift grave. She gave it a final pat.

“Thank you darlin’,” she whispered, and bowed her head. But it was too much. She could not bear it anymore. A heat rose up in her chest. Her eyes bulged open and her hand flew to her neck, clawing at the locket strung about it. Anna coughed, a nasty, violent cough that rocked her whole body and forced her to pitch forward off the stool. She had barely enough time to brace herself with her wrists, white-hot stabs of pain arcing up her arms, and she suddenly found herself forced to stare down at the grave. Her stomach turned.

A chorus of revolt surged within her skull and she vomited, coating the earth in a wash of bile. It was like fertilizer. Half-digested flesh and sinew fell from her toothless maw. Her nose burned, acrid lava leaking like a broken spigot. A coughing fit overcame her, a good sixty seconds of regret and forced acknowledgement of her loss. The meal she had prepared for months, caked in dirt beneath her. All the time and love she poured into her sweet Gretel, all the food she had stashed away in Gretel’s body, gone.

Anna raised her head up from the dirt. Her ragged breaths clawed out of her with desperation and the sun beat down on her bare back, but she could not feel it anymore. Her leathery skin was beyond burning. If she did manage to burn, good on Mother Nature for keeping her humble. With a sob, Anna craned her neck left and right. She needed to get her bearings. Anna managed to pick up the hand-shovel and then used it to brace herself against the earth. The other hand remained firmly wrapped around the locket dangling from her throat. It was difficult one-handed, but she eventually heaved herself up off the ground. Anna turned solemnly and teetered back to her home. When she reached the porch, she threw herself against the railing and exhaled. The inflammation in her throat did not mix well with the wet air. Anna choked on her first breath, but the second was easier.

A sickly, sweet scent suddenly filled her nostrils. Her nose wrinkled and she stuck out her tongue. She had not smelled something this sweet in years. The odor agitated her weakened stomach. The ghost of a gag tickled her throat, but she managed to swallow it down. The heat was cooking the air, expunging everything but that smell, intensifying it. Tormenting her. It was everywhere, inescapable. Finally, desperation overcame exhaustion. Anna turned away from the yard, from the things she had lost and that horrible, horrible smell, and disappeared into the shade and security of her shack.