The Candy Apple Man
Saul Gordon had earned the nickname “The Candy Apple Man” because every Halloween he would hand out the best candy apples the neighborhood children had ever tasted. They were even better than the ones you could buy at the fair. His house was a favorite on the trick or treat track.
The only drawback to collecting your own precious apple was his wife’s snarly little dog, Lulu. The ancient and nasty animal, half-blind and bald in places, would try to escape the house and ravage all “intruders” with her tiny teeth. Not that she could have done much damage; the aged beast’s mouth had more gummy gaps than fangs, but the children still left almost as startled as they were happy.
One Halloween, much to the children’s dismay, Saul was not at the door dispersing the anticipated apples. Instead, his wife, Annette, was handing out generic store-bought candies. Her offering was sparse – one ordinary lollipop and one meager wrapped piece of bubblegum per child. The only consolation for not receiving the prized treat was that Lulu was not there to threaten anyone. More than one child walked away with a glum expression hidden beneath their mask that day.
At one point, Annette ran out of candy and asked the children waiting at the door to hold on while she fetched more. She headed for the storage room in her basement, the unimpressed trick-or-treaters watching her go.
As she descended the stairs into the dim light, Annette tried not to think of her return from the weekend shopping trip with her sister, and how upset she was when Lulu had not greeted her at the door. The dog may have been old, and the vet may have recommended putting her down because her health was failing, but how had Saul dared to do it without consulting with her first? Lulu had been her dog – her baby. If he hadn’t been working on his damnable candy apples when he told her, or if he had just lied about what happened to Lulu, maybe things would have turned out differently. She would have still lost her temper, but she wouldn’t have snapped enough to toss that giant pot of boiling caramel over Saul’s head.
Reaching for a new bag of candy, she tried her best to ignore the shape she could see out of the corner of her eye. When she realized Saul was dead, she hadn’t known what to do with him. In a panic, she somehow found the strength to drag him down into the basement and laid him out in the storage room on the wax paper he had set out for the apples.
With a shiver, Annette tucked the candy under her arm and rushed up the stairs, anxious to get away from the place where she had left him. Saul lay there still, his caramel covering solidified, trapping him for good in his candy-coated death grimace.
