Hey guys! Sorry I've been away so long. I had some severe writers block, so decided to just start on a new story. But don't worry, I'm still working on Tall Dark and Hamster, as well as another story that I'll post as soon as I finish the rough draft!
Also, I'm currently trying to revamp my blog to reflect who I am a bit more, so please excuse me if things look a little odd at the moment - This site should be looking way better soon enough!
Anyway, with no further ado......Candy Takes a Chance!
Chapter 1
It was her first day of work. Candy was so excited about her new job at the Christian Brothers Candy Factory in Oakland California. It had been world-renowned for its confections for the last 400 years, ever since it was founded by Spanish aristocrats looking for sweets to consume between missionary work in Colonial California, back in the days when it was called "New Spain."
Speaking of new Spain, her new boss was a true Spanishman, descended from generations of Spaniards living by the sunny west coast. His name was Chance Chavez. He had long dark hair with a premature streak of grey in it, wending its path from his scalp to his shoulder, and firey brown eyes. He was 32. He'd taken a big risk hiring Candy at his family's candy factory, since her background was mainly in veterinary medicine – a job she quit, when she realized her main function was to kill the cats and dogs she so desperately loved, for their humane euthanization – and his business was struggling to begin with. The girl had better pull her weight around here, he told himself.
Candy had long strawberry blonde hair, today neatly tucked up in a ponytail beneath her new bonnet that she wore as part of her uniform. It was an old-style uniform that showed the age of the candy shop – a large ruff-collar, corset, and leg-o-mutton sleeves, all in pristine, virginal white. Chance was donning a black doublet and a sword and flintlock pistol as decreed by the ancient candy-shop charter, hand-scrawled in Latin on a piece of ancient parchement. It hung framed in the front window, so customers could see it.
"Since today is your first day," said Chance in his deep tenor-saxaphone voice, "I shall give you a tour of my store!"
"Oh, that sounds wonderful," exclaimed Candy, her eyes unconsciously wandering to his codpiece made of chocolate.
"Come with me," he said, gesturing his manly muscled arm to have her come with him. Obediently, Candy obeyed. Together they walked into a big white-painted room,with concrete floors and wires across the ceiling. There were large machines in the room, used to manufacture the candy.
"These machines are used to manufacture the candy," said Chance. He paused like a notion just had stricken him. "Huh. How funny. Your name is Candy, and candy is what we sell here!"
"My full name is Candissima," Candy helpfully chirped, noticing the heat from the machines was causing the early signs of melting in Chance's codpiece.
"Candissima. It sounds Spanish?"
"I don't know, I think it's from a plant that attracts hummingbirds!"
"You know," said Chance, "Hummingbirds were believed by the ancient Indians of California to be the birds of love. Thank St. Jerome we good Catholic Spaniards beat that heathen bullshit out of them all and then killed them!"
Candy giggled. "Maybe it's fate that I came to work in your candy store!"
"Yes. Fate... do you... believe in fate?"
"I do."
Chance took a small comfort in the notion that perhaps, just perhaps, Candy was meant to work here. "This is the syrup-shooter" he said, pointing to a device that shot jets of hot liquid over chocolate bases. "And this here," he said while indicating a different machine, "is the chocolate making machine."
"Oooh," Candy said, delighted by the smell which arose from the gears.
"And this is the nut mixer. And this here is our taffy machine – we've been making taffy here at Christian Brothers since before it was even invented!"
"Wow!"
"Yes! See, it all happened when some monks at one of the old missions was boiling honey to make meade and cooked it for too long, so it got all hard and then he tried to squeeze it to wring the remaining liquid out."
"Oh, I would love to try that," said Candy, imagining the wringing, and the liquid squeezing motion in her hands, and how good it felt to squeeze out that sweetness.
"He wrung it and wrung it, and soon he made the sweetest toffee ever known to man."
"Someday," said Candy, breathless, "I will have to try it."
"Indeed," said Chance. "I encourage my employees to sample the candy here to familiarize themselves with our unique confections. Try some of the toffee."
Candy took a piece of the taffy from the machine and crunched it loudly in her teeth. "It is good," she said. But, in her heart, she knew she could never be satisfied by this. No, never by this alone.
"Too bad my customers don't think so. My sales have been on the decline ever since I took charge of this business! I should hate to see this factory, in my family for 400 years, be lost! Lost!"
"Don't worry," said Candy with a grin, "With my help, we'll be back on our feet in no time!"
"Yes – I enjoy the company of women who have minds of their own and can think independantly, so please don't hesitate to tell me any new ideas you might have for how to run my business!"
"Yay!" said Candy. She could tell this was the job of her dreams. Perhaps she had made the right decision to come here.
"Now excuse me," said Chance, "But my codpiece seems to have melted. I will go get a replacement. Feel free to wander around unsupervised – afterall, this is to be your job from now on!"
Candy screamed in delight and, waving her arms like a child, began to run back and forth around the production room floor. After about twenty minutes she grew bored with this, and decided to invstigate the rest of the building.
There was a long, straight corridor made of brick and adobe. She decided to enter it, even though she was not totally sure it was even part of the Christian Brothers Candy property.
At the end of the hall was a small office marked with the word OFFICE on the door in an Elizabethian font. A sigh of relief escaped her lips on entering, for she could tell by the manly decor and photographs that this was Chance's office. Photographs of him on vacations and with large torpedo sandwiches covered all the walls. He was out of his work uniform in the pictures, instead dressed casually in a speedo and Prada men's sandals. Candy couldn't help but think his figure much better flattered without the large yellow-starched ruff collar she'd always seen him in before.
Suddenly something caught her eye – a picture of Chance with a beautiful woman in his arms. A pang of jealousy shot through Candy's heart – But why? – and she imagined tackling the woman to the floor, ripping her intestines from her abdomen and running them through the syrup shooter to be filled with scalding liquid as they were still attached and full of feeling, and the pretty woman would just scream, and scream, and scream...
"What are you thinking about?" said that handsome throat of Chance's.
"Oh, holy fuck, you scared me!!!" cried Candy. "I was thinking of murdering this skanky whore in the photos with you!"
Chance laughed. "Ha ha. That girl is my sister."
"Oh," said Candy as she calmed some. She could see Chance had a new codpiece, and she remarked on it.
"Ah, yes. It's troublesome, these codpieces of chocolate, but the ancient charter demands a strict dress-code, and this includes the 'bragueta del cocoa.'"
"So you have a sister?" asked Candy, trying to steer the chat away from Chance's crotch.
"No."
"No!"
"She is dead."
"Oh!" Now Candy felt embarrassed for bringing up such a surely-painful memory into Chance's head.
"It is a fact, and, in tribute to her – I have sworn I shall never have another family, like having kids or getting married or those things. But nevermind, nevermind that! Let us tour further this confectionary place, and I shall show you how to operate the cash register."
Candy attempted to walk beside Chance, but the combined width of their collars could not bypass the narrow hall. And she considered his words about family with unease.
