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As you head down a very familiar route that you frequent one night, you come across someone giving away free candy corn. Whether you love it or hate it, free is free and you decide to take it home, shoving it in your pocket to be forgotten. Eventually you head to bed, only to be woken up but a soft, high - pitched snarling sound near the foot of your bed. You sit up and find that the candy corn is splayed out across the floor, and among it, in the center of what seems to be a sacrificial circle… Is a knee high gremlin shaped like a candy corn. It sees you and bites you, before scampering away. Before you can catch it, it's disappeared. Sans the strange little bite on your leg, there's no evidence this was anything more than a dream, and by morning the marks are almost completely gone. The only lingering effect is an extreme need to consume sugar for the next twenty four hours.
Had she not learned her lesson yet from a past Halloween? Izobel mulled this over as she sat in her room with various candy wrappers strewn about. Things that were free usually came at some personal cost. Two years ago she had been drawn, almost lured, into a new fab candy store with the promise of free candy. She had been suckered in then and while the candy had been delicious the results afterwards had left an extremely sour taste in Izobel's mouth. Phantom pains that seemed like the work of a cavity and yet nothing had been found when she had gone to the dentist.
Now it looked like she had been suckered in again; albeit in a more sinister setup. The proof lay in the debris around her and the most recent activity to her bank account flashing on her computer screen. How would she explain to her parents that she had essentially gone off on a lark and spent over one-hundred dollars on candy and sugar at various stores in the city. A shopping spree that seemed to be a hazy memory in her mind. What had brought this on? Try as she might Izobel was fairly confused on the details. What was it that had triggered her need to buy and consume sugary confections?
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Thirty-six hours before...---
Izobel could honestly say that she was not looking forward to Halloween this year. The very idea of the season was beginning to wear on the ginger with stories of horror that cropped up all over the place. Her own brushes with horror notwithstanding it was all that she could do to block out the tales that her classmates had been speaking of. Talk of rabid shadow dogs and shadows that clutched at you as you passed through them was enough to make the poor girl paranoid that something would ago be happening to jade her perception of the season. Just as she was bound to run afoul of something happening at the same time she was hoping that maybe staying powered down around this time of year and staying confined to her home would prove to be safer down the long stretch. If one was not out and about then one could not be affected by the strangeness of the season.There was no way to know that even before she could reach the illusion of normalcy that her house would have provided her that something would find her and make Halloween more miserable than it already could have been.
Really as soon as Izobel turned the corner and saw the table set up she should have found another route to take home. Yet, even as she cursed her curious streak, the teen found herself gravitating in the direction of a older woman that was pitching her wares. At reaching the table Izobel's lips curled downwards. Why would anyone even want this stuff? Her gaze settled on the packs of candy corn and she grimaced again. Having never been a fan of the confectionery treat the redhead wasn't keen on taking anything home. About to say as much to the woman hocking the product Izobel suddenly found her hands grasped by the woman and a bag of the product dropped into her cupped palms. Not even wanting to go a step further with the bag of candy the girl was about to drop it back to the table when the woman spoke softly; warning her that to refuse such a free and wondrous gift would be a sign of disrespect Izobel reluctantly pocketed the bag. There was no way she could even manage a 'thank you' in response to the woman before she was busy again having drawn in another curious individual. Izobel wasn't sure what she was going to do once she got home but for now it seemed as if she was stuck with the candy.
When she finally arrived home the bag of candy corn got tossed aside and promptly forgotten about. Izobel had more important things to worry about like setting the table for dinner with her parents and then studying for a test. All in all the evening progressed as normally as one could expect it too. Having taken due care to tend to her end of the night hygiene rituals Izobel had crawled under her covers to enjoy what she would come to believe as a restful nights sleep.
Even the most deepest of sleepers would have been startled out of sleep by a sound of high-pitched snarling. Izzy momentarily froze in panic - assuming the worst and reaching blindly for the item that could help her in an instant. But her hands froze as she took in the sight that met her eyes. The candy corn - which had been sealed tightly in a bag - now was splayed out on her floor. The pattern formed depicted something one might see in a ritual. Freaking out just a little bit more at this point Izobel once again began to reach for her henshin pen, rules be damned, when the appearance of a knee-high gremlin-like creature froze her in shock once more. Izobel looked at the creature and the creature looked at Izobel. It got over it's surprise first. Launching itself at the shocked red-head the gremlin sunk its teeth into her hand before dropping off to the side of her bed. The pain of the sudden bite snapped Izobel from her stupor and she glanced all around her room for any sign of whatever that had been. Her gaze locating nothing Izobel pulled back her covers to perform a more thorough search of her bedroom and was puzzled when she came up empty. Walking barefoot across her floor the teen glanced down at the spilled candy corn before brushing all the strewn about pieces and dumping them into her trashcan. Shaking her head and wincing at the small pain radiating from the bite wound Izobel crawled back under her covers in an attempt to shake off the weird encounter.
Morning light filtering through her curtains and into her barely-opened eyes was what woke Izobel the next day. Almost immediately did she sit up straight and examine her hand but there was nothing to indicate that what she assumed happened was real. There was no bite mark and even as she thought back on the whole scenario did Izobel start to chalk the whole thing up to being a dream. Gremlins didn't exist. Even cute little Gizmo was just a fictional character from a movie. Stretching Izobel shook off the nightmare as just that before committing herself to spending a Saturday studying for a Monday test. And that would have been fine...except for the oddest craving to consume sugar. It would have been a fine day to study if she'd not changed into casual clothes and spent the entire afternoon in downtown Destiny City ... buying all the sugary goodness that she could get her hands on. Trip after trip after trip was made to buy everything in sight and lug it back home before going back out again and again. How long this lasted even Izobel was unaware of. Finally when it seemed that her bedroom was overrun with sweets did Izobel begin to crack the books. Time took on new meaning as Izobel would always be reaching into a bag to withdraw and consume some of the treats that she'd spent her hard earned money on without a care in the world. All that mattered was enjoying the sugar rush and trying to focus on the details in her textbooks. How long she stayed locked in her room was unknown to the teen. She took a break for dinner but found that even her favorite dish held little in comparison to the treats that waited upstairs for her. Although she did take the time to finish what was on her plate Izobel could feel the compelling need to push things aside. Sugar was what her body was telling her that she needed and roast beef, mashed potatoes and gravy was not sugar. It was with some relief that Izobel made her excuse of needing to study more that allowed her the privacy to continue to sneakily consume what her body was telling her it needed. Her books suddenly lay forgotten to the side as Izobel focused just on the bags of treats around her. There was no rhyme or reason that could explain her irrational behaviour and try as she might to just stop had her hands shaking. It was almost like something or someone else had control over her thoughts and try as she might there was nothing she could do to stop rooting through the bags like a possessed thing. Her last rational thought was that she was going to suffer somewhat mightily the next day but as quickly as that thought passed through her mind did it vacate it just as quickly. For nothing was going to deter the teen from going through the entire stash of assorted sugary things that she'd purchased... nothing at all.
(1514 words)
