4Ever Friends

Since the #trickortweet2021 prompt of the day on Twitter is "candy" I'm going to cheat a bit and upload this old piece of flash fiction. This was actually one of the winning entrants for a competition back in 2018, and was, consequently, performed on stage by Cast Iron Theatre of Brighton, UK. Unfortunately, I couldn't get time off work to see the performance myself, something I regret to this day. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. The theme of the contest was "Bitter Sweets".

4EVA FRIENDS

By Jim Horlock

It was Friday, so we stopped at the shop on the walk home from school.

I wasn’t sure when the tradition had started; the four of us had been friends almost as long as I could remember and our ritual with the Love Bites seemed irrevocably interwoven into the landscape of that relationship. I couldn’t remember a time before it and I couldn’t imagine a time after it. It seemed to me that every Friday for the rest of time would feature the four of us walking down the hill, stopping at the shop and buying a pack of Love Bites.

It was Laurie’s turn to buy the pack, so the rest of us waited outside and continued catching up on the gossip of the day. Reagan was 80% sure she’d caught Paz looking at her during History again. Reagan was pretty open about being a lesbian but Paz had kept her dating preferences ambiguous. Reagan was taking this as another clue in the ongoing case.

Nancy, on the other hand, was far less optimistic about her love-life.

“I found another note today,” she said, folding her arms in premeditated crossness and leaning against the wall of the shop. Reagan and I supplied the necessary groans.

“What did it say?” I asked, trying to sound appropriately disdainful and not at all jealous. No boy had ever left notes on my locker. Sure, Fred was a weird kid and I wouldn’t have dated him, but it would be nice to feel like someone noticed me.

“Some creepy poem,” Nancy scoffed. “I threw it away.”

“Why won’t he just give up?” Reagan rolled her pretty blue eyes expertly.

“He keeps insisting I’m his ‘dream girl’, as if that means I’m obligated to him or something. It’s gross.”

“Here we go, guys!” Laurie emerged from the shop to the jingle of the bell above the door, the Love Bites packet held out for proof of her success.

We each held out a palm and closed our eyes, a practice that was purely reflexive by this point. It was the sacred right of the person who bought the pack to solemnly dole out a single sweet from within, face-down into the palm of the others, taking the fourth for themselves.

“Oooh!” said Reagan, opening her eyes and turning the small round candy over. “2 Become 1!” she read aloud and then held up the sweet to show us. We provided our own chorus of “Oooh”.

“Sounds like you and Paz are going to get pretty close,” Laurie nudged her with an elbow, easily rocking the shorter girl back a little and infecting her with a fit of giggles.

“My turn!” Laurie continued, flipping over her candy. “Obsessed? Well that seems a little…much.”

“Is anyone into you right now?” I asked.

“Not that I know of. Either way they sound more like a stalker than boyfriend material. What did you get, Nancy?”

Nancy made a face an held up her candy by way of reply. The words “Dream Gurl” were printed in crumbling pink letters on the yellow circle. It was enough to make all of us burst out laughing.

I flipped over my candy with a little skip of the heart. I knew this was a silly game really, that the Love Bites had no more true clairvoyance about our future romances than the paper fortune tellers we made in class or any of the other games we played. Still, there was a secret part of my soul that hoped I’d get a good prediction and it would come true.

U R NOT GUD ENUFF

I blinked down at the candy. The words stayed there, a little insult in pink and yellow.

“What did you get, Pam?” asked Laurie, catching my frown. Wordlessly I showed them.

“Weird,” Raegan mused. “I’ve never seen a nasty one.”

“Maybe some guy at the factory playing a joke?” Laurie suggested.

“Well it’s mean and I hope he gets fired,” said Nancy. “Don’t worry about it, Pam. It’s just candy.”

As if to prove it, she threw hers neatly into her mouth and started chewing.

“Yeah,” I said but I found it hard to shake the feeling that something was wrong. Part of me wanted to throw the candy away but eating it was part of the ritual, no matter what it said, and I didn’t want to show the others how much it had shaken me. It sat in my stomach like a lead weight.

I didn’t eat that night. I couldn’t. The single candy filled me up completely.

Its weight in my stomach had spread to my limbs. Its little pink letters burned in my mind. I could hear its words buzzing in my ears.

I lay in my dark room, thinking about my friends. Laurie with her pretty blonde hair. Nancy’s confidence. Raegan’s sparkling eyes. I didn’t have any of that. I was plain. Plain Pam. They were better than me, all of them. How I hope to coexist alongside them, a plant starved of the sun by the shade of taller trees? I kicked my feet on the bed. I clenched my jaw. My hands became crooked things, jagged claws with painted nails. Overhead my ceiling spun and rocked and I found myself gasping for breath. I couldn’t stand it. I wasn’t good enough.

Not while they were still around.

Raegan lived the closest – a five-minute walk.

Her parents were out, her back door unlocked.

Her pretty eyes widened with surprise to see me in her living room.

"Pam, what -!”

The knife interrupted her question. The light went out of those baby blues not long after.

My hand was covered in something warm and sticky. It still held the knife – it come from my house or Reagan’s? I didn’t know. I could feel the path under my feet. I’d forgotten to put shoes on before I left the house. It was hard to think. Everything was all wrong. I knew I had to make it right. I knew that I wouldn’t be good enough until they were gone.

The quickest way to Nancy’s was through the woods. U R NOT GUD ENUFF was carved on every tree and the night birds sang it as I passed.

Her parents were home. On my way up to her room I realised I’d lost the knife somewhere – inside her mother, I thought, caught awkwardly on ribs and broken off inside. The loud music on her headphones had kept her from hearing the commotion. It wasn’t difficult to strangle her with the cable but it took longer than I thought it would.

Almost there. Almost worthy. Everything seemed distant. It was hard to think clearly with the words so loud in my ears. The candy boiled and foamed in my stomach, fizzing in my blood.

Laurie was my oldest friend.

I’d known her since the very first day of school. We’d held hands together, facing the chaos of a playground full of strangers, drawing courage from each other.

She’d turned her dad’s old shed into a reading nook. His axe rested against the outside, next to a pile of logs. The night was warm, the door was open. In two strides I crossed through the doorway to where she sat and brought the axe down on her head. I didn’t quite match the parting of her beautiful blonde hair. Blood splattered on the lampshade, adding new shadows to the walls. Her mouth hung open, twitching. Her eyes met mine for a second, confused.

I couldn’t get the axe back out but I didn’t need it anymore anyway, so I left it wedged where it was.

I felt dizzy. I could hear screaming somewhere nearby. A woman’s voice. Anguished, hysterical. My stomach roiled and rebelled suddenly and I heaved on all fours, clenching the grass in my fists. When I was empty I wiped the foam from my mouth and saw the little round pebble of candy glistening in the dark.

The message had dissolved a little.

GUD ENUFF it said.

I started laughing. I lay in the grass and laughed and laughed until I cried.