Paloma Sells Chocolates at the End of the World

A little red wagon skirted across the desert, sand floor, one wheel squeaking harshly in the unrelenting heat.

It was almost noon judging by the waves forming over the distant nothingness. Paloma, 10, a little chubby, with coffee-colored ringlets trudged along, slowly, wearily until she came across a Joshua tree and stumbled under what little shade it provided.

She’d stopped sweating hours ago, having had nothing to drink in two days and nothing to eat in five days – well, that is, nothing to eat but chocolate.

Paloma pushed her coils back from her forehead and marked 18 strikes in the sand – that was exactly how many days it had been since the meteorite had hit her corner of Southern California. Paloma was one of the lucky ones. She had spent the weekend with 9 other girls at their Falcon Scouts Base Camp retreat in Sky Valley, trying to earn her Firestarter badge, when the object collided with Earth.

On the first night, the entire Falcon scout troop cried and frantically tried to call home on their cell phones which they were not allowed to have – all, except for Paloma, who didn’t have a phone. The next morning, as the troop discovered Camp leader, Ms. Justine spotted at the bottom of a ravine and broke into an untethered panic, Paloma decided to steal the carefully divided Falcon Scout Chocolate Bars from the tents and make off towards the sunset.

Paloma reasoned that if she couldn’t have that Falcon Firestarter Badge, she might as well get a head start on the Entrepreneurial badge for selling the most chocolates. And at the end of the world, what could be better than chocolate.

The only problem was the sun. What was once an uncomfortable weather event had now become Paloma’s worst enemy. It had burned her skin pink and rubbery, melted her chocolate bars until they’d begun to seep out of there wrappers and made her forget why she’d gone westward into the desert instead of south, towards the Mexican border…at least Mexico had a beach and water.

In the past two weeks, Paloma had sold chocolates to Native American cowboys who claimed to be reclaiming the West, a New England family on a vacation, who thought the meteorite was an Earthquake and were none the wiser, and an 17-year-old boy who was desperate to bake a chocolate soufflé for his voluptuous, gluttonous neighborhood crush in the trailer park next to his house and film a video of her eating it on their first date.

All this went on alright, until Paloma came to a gas station for a bottle of water and some beef jerky sticks. But found that the store had been wiped almost entirely clean, save for some cigarettes and M&Ms without peanuts. She’d found the owner tied up in his underwear, crying.

“You wanna buy some chocolates?” Paloma asked him, apathetically.

The man stopped crying and looked up at her, perplexed. “What did you say to me?”

Paloma repeated herself more slowly. “You. Want to. Buy. Some. Chocolates. Mister?”

He shook his head. “I was just robbed.” Then he started to yell. “I don’t have any money.”

Paloma started to nibble on one of the bars from her wagon. “What else you got except money?”

No more than 10 minutes later. Paloma walked away from the now-freed man, with 8 fewer bars of chocolate, four boxes of cigarettes, a lighter and a tin of gasoline oil. Who needed money when almost everything money could buy, legally, was out of reach?

The next day, Paloma awoke to a circle of half-naked people standing around her, humming Marshmello’s Novacane.

“Am I dreaming," thought Paloma? As she tried to shake herself awake, then held tight to her wagon and screamed, “Go away, demons!”

The choir halted it’s humming and began to explain that they were there to invite Paloma to dinner.

Paloma made it clear that she was selling chocolates.

The leader among them and a woman with a thick, blonde mustache and waist-length hair told her she could trade her chocolates for anything they had at their compound, and if she didn’t find anything she was free to go.

Paloma reluctantly acquiesced, hoping they had water and air-conditioning.

The compound turned out to be an enclosed circle of yellow school busses. In the center was a kitchen area, a cleaning area, a lounging, area and a string of picnic tables pushed together. There were Indian tapestries and Tibetan flags strewn up all around.

Paloma mulled about with the new-found cult and was offered 3 gallons of water, sleeping pills, 10 oranges, a can of tuna, a goat, two chickens, a .22 pistol, and a pocket knife. Paloma walked away with 34 fewer chocolates.

Some of the people on cooking duty collected several of the traded chocolate bars to make a dessert for after dinner, while Paloma drank her fill of water and took her short off, after being encouraged to ‘get comfortable’ by some of the members.

As dinner approached everyone made their way to the table and sat down to eat.

Something smelled good, as a group of people helped the cooks lifted off some very large pieces of meat roasting over the communal fire pit in the center of the compound.

Dinner was served on large silver platters in the form of roasted legs and giant steaks. Paloma, grabs a leg of meat almost as big as her own and placed it on her plate, when she noticed something shinny out of the corner of her eye, across the table on one of the platters is a hint of pink and blue material singed and almost stuck to one of the steaks of meat.

Paloma shrugged, looked towards her section of the table and began eating some roasted red potatoes and her leg of meat. It tasted funny. It wasn’t beef or pork or even lamb, which Paloma didn’t much care for anyway.

“Dessert’s almost ready,” whispered one of the cooks as she brought over a pot of gravy.

“Huh?” quizzed Paloma with her mouth full of the mystery meat.

“We just love falcon scouts…” said the cook, her large, blue eyes gleaming.

Paloma stared back.

“…chocolate. We love Falcon Scout Chocolate Bars, I mean,” stammered the woman.

Paloma stopped chewing, looked over at the other platter of meat.

Something clicked. She had seen those colors before. Brighter, more vibrant, pinned on Alison Murphy’s scout sash during their last official Falcon Scout meeting. Paloma had taken special note of it, because she’d been left out of the activity upon the snooty remark that ‘her involvement in the friendship activity – which involved a trust fall – might physically hurt another scout member.’

Paloma gulped hard, as she looked at all the meat around the table and began counting limbs which conveniently and disturbingly added up to 9 humans.

Paloma’s hands began to tremble. Had she just eaten one of her Falcon scout members?

Paloma excused herself to go to the bathroom, where she vomited several times before composing herself. After deep breaths and a bout of fear she decided that she would go grab her bags and make her way slowly towards the entrance of school busses where her red wagon was waiting, full of chocolates.

As Paloma came out of the bathroom and headed towards the entrance of the compound when the leader placed a cold hand on her shoulder, saying “we’ve got something special for you.”

Paloma turned and smiled nervously. “I can’t wait to see it!” Said Paloma trying to sound excited over her shaky voice. “But I thought I’d take a peek at what the cooks are making for dessert.”

The leader smiled and nodded. “Ok, don’t be too long.”

Paloma made b-line for fire in the center of the compound where a large pot of something thick and dark was brewing.

“What’s uh – What’s for dessert?” asked Paloma, hesitantly looking over her shoulder.

“Chocolate pudding cake,” said the cook as she stirred a wooden spoon. I’ve got to go get the date cakes from the storage, would you mind stirring for a bit, just til I get back?”

“Sure,” said Paloma with a feigned smile.

The cook handed her the spoon, then sped off, out of sight.

Paloma looked around. The chocolate pudding looked pretty good. Then she remembered that she was scared and was likely to become breakfast if she didn’t act fast. She slipped her hand into her pocket and pulled out an orange pill bottle. Quickly, on the ground she took a rock near the fire and crushed up about 20 small, white pills into powered and added them to the pot, stirring them in until they dissolved, just as the cook lugged a milkcrate full of Christmas date cakes wrapped in brown paper towards the fire.

Paloma handed the spoon over and walked briskly back to the dining table when everyone was chatting and tearing off large mouthfuls of meat with their teeth.

The cook with the blue eyes brought over three large, crystal, trifle dishes with hot chocolate pudding neatly poured over them. It certainly did look like any chocolate cake you might find in an LA bakery.

A few people began cutting out large pieces of the chocolate cake and serving themselves.

“Aren’t you having some?” asked a woman sitting next to her and she cut a large piece and plopped a piece of it onto Paloma’s plate.

“Mmm,” Paloma smiled weakly and took to eating the hard, fruit filled interior, crumb by crumb, making sure to avoid the chocolate topping.

As everyone finished, the tribe of bohemian hosts began to pass around a jar of strong white liquor and take swigs of the sapid stuff.

Paloma avoided the bottle as everyone began to drowsily slur their words and nod off, bit by bit at the table. Paloma watched as they all slowly fell into a deep sleep.

When she was sure that everyone was at least drowsy enough to prevent them from standing up straight, Paloma slipped away from the table - but not before taring off the friendship badge from that chard piece of meat and a lighter sitting on the table. She grabbed her bag and a Tupperware contained full of chocolate pudding left over in the pot, then she threw her things into her wagon and made her way out of the compound, into the desert, and towards the new end of the world, this time towards Mexico. It was time to start working on her fire starter badge.