Sour Candy by Kealan Patrick Burke

opposing forces at play in their world, the life of Phil
Pendleton and his son might have appeared typical of a single
father and his young son, but for a few curiosities.
    For one, the boy lived in the attic,
which by itself might not have been all that unusual, for children
often gravitate to the mysterious places in their domain with only
secondary thought to comfort and practicality. But the warping of
the wood on the attic door and the branding of symbols upon its
buckled surface would have suggested something more unusual afoot.
For another, there was no food in the house other than some foreign
brand of sour candy, upon which the father was forced to feed or
risk starvation. Any attempt to ingest other foods resulted in its
immediate expulsion. As a result, Phil Pendleton began to lose
weight at a rapid pace, his skin began to break out and develop a
waxy quality, his hair started to thin, and his teeth to rot, as
apparently the human body cannot sustain itself to any healthy
degree on a diet of citric acid, malic acid, dextrose, corn syrup,
maltodextrin, artificial flavors and coloring, sugar, beeswax, and
of course, the secret ingredient in GJØK that made visitation to
horrific realms possible.
    Outdoors, the father and son behaved
as expected, with the child propelled by youthful enthusiasm to
parks and stores and fairs and rides, and if the father appeared
browbeaten and defeated, well then, this made him no different than
many a single parent trying to juggle a job and a home life with a
hyperactive child, particularly one given to sporadic outbursts of
hysterics in public places.
     
     
    8. Escape
     
     
    Instinct told him that given the
awesome power the boy had demonstrated thus far, escape was not
going to be easy, if possible at all, so he started
small.
    Nine days after the boy had first
invaded his life, Phil rose from a turbulent sleep on the sofa
downstairs. This was where he slept now, as he’d deemed his own
room much too close to the child’s domain. The first and only night
he’d tried to sleep in his own bed, he fancied he heard awful
sounds coming through the ceiling, and quickly fled to the living
room.
    The morning sun muted by the shuttered
blinds, he sat up and rubbed a hand over his face and felt the skin
flake away and catch in his stubble. His body ached, his stomach
was in knots, in large part due to his new diet of sour candy and
water, but also from the dread of the task he’d set
himself.
    He’d spent the past few days
monitoring the child’s routine, and found that the boy never
emerged from the attic before eleven o’ clock and always went to
bed before nine. An odd schedule for a child his age, but then
everything about the boy was odd. To allay suspicion, Phil had
adopted the role of dutiful, if reluctant father, admiring the
boy’s handiwork when he set to arts and crafts, which he did every
day at the same time. The kitchen was now a museum of weird
pictures and a veritable shrine of crooked origami birds and
popsicle stick creatures, all of which had been painted black, and
none of which Phil could look at without it making his head hurt.
At Adam’s request, he took the boy for walks. They visited museums,
libraries, art galleries, parks, nature preserves, and science
centers. A normal parent would have been pleased at their child’s
eagerness to learn. To Phil, the boy’s hunger for knowledge was
unnerving and potentially dangerous because he didn’t know what the
child planned to do with all that information, or even where that information
would eventually end up. And all throughout these jaunts, the boy
spoke to him as any child would speak to their father, politely
requesting treats (always the fucking sour candy), alerting his
attention to wondrous things, and all the while the other more
fortunate and blissfully ignorant parents around him would smile
sweetly at the handsome, sweet little boy in his unusual
clothes.
    Until Adam screamed, as he did at
least once