I: Breathe
“What is it you want?” I whispered, hands hovering over the melted sugar, eyes fixated.
The first time I performed the spell, I burnt off the tips of my fingers with the prints singeing right off. Soot rested on the ground along with dead skin. The raw flesh sat exposed for a month before they healed and I could try again. Mother left only scrolls, no other instructions. I wished she were here to teach me, but memory would have to do. With eyes closed, I imagined my mother’s hands, her smooth movements as she tugged the sugar into shape, whisking it through the air in front of her. She molded the sugar without ever touching it, except as she blew soft breaths into the tip of a single thread held between her lips. The smell of burning sugar caused me to salivate, but she’d warned me it was no game. Sugar blowing spells were no small matter. And unlike regular sugar blowing, the heat buildup from the spell had to be handled with extreme care.
When she had finished, she placed a small sugar tiger in my palm. She had told me not to worry because this one was safe, but warned me that other sugar art may not be. Do you want to hear its roar? I had nodded—eager. With sugar melting on my tongue, the tiger’s roar sang in my mind before disappearing.
“How much does it cost?”
“It depends on what you’re looking for. An inanimate gift? An animate gift? A message? To achieve your greatest desire? To rid yourself of your most worrisome fears? To—”
“You.”
My eyes snapped open, breaking my concentration. I looked up, and there stood a man who I had noticed watching me from a distance the last two years. But I never thought much of it because he had never approached my stall, and there were others who had done similar things. His eyes held a feverish hunger that burned hotter than the sugar. I withdrew, losing my control over the sugar as my concentration honed in on my quaking limbs, shuddering heart.
The sugar caved into itself, the shape dissolving before my eyes but not quick enough. The stranger’s hand darted out, grabbing the sugar that had begun taking the form of my face on its own, my features only minor indentations. I was well acquainted with the volcanic heat of the sugar as it morphed during a spell, and though the stranger wasn’t, it didn’t seem like he felt any of it. The golden liquid, in the process of solidifying previously, melted in the stranger’s hands. He drank the sugar with greed until it cooled, sealing his mouth shut.
We stared at one another, and I felt a tremor building within me, boiling out of my body, rattling my entire frame. A breath escaped from each of my pores. The air from within me pushed outwards, drawn towards the unconsumed sugar that took the form of a bust with my face. A pinprick opening where the shut lips protruded on the sculpture pulled me in as my skin collapsed in on itself.
This had happened to my mother in the past. I had watched her being packed away in a box of antique goods, hoisted onto a ship to a land far away. I had willed the closed eyes of her sugar sculpture open, but it had never answered my pleas. From behind a large shipment box at the dock, I cursed the cunning merchant as he boarded the ship. Mother had warned me should this ever happen, it would be foolish to go after her. But really, I was foolish not to. Could the merchant be my father?
And though I knew this moment might come eventually, and feared each waking moment, I’d never thought it would happen. Even now as I lived her past, I couldn’t see it as the present, and I couldn’t imagine what it would be like as my future.
I took a breath, knowing it would be the last for a long while.
II: Blow
He took me—trapped within the bust—home and placed me in a display case among other miniature figures made of jade, copper, glass in shapes of animals of the Chinese zodiac, old dial telephones, horse-drawn wagons, towering temples. I was the only human. And the only one made out of sugar. I wondered if Mother was sitting on a shelf just like this.
He’d read the instructions cards I had laid on the table at my stall, a simple line in neat cursive: Whisper and Wait. The man took one out of his pocket and placed it in front of my sculpture. What would he wish for? Mother had blown sugar for the kindest of hearts and those who darted among the darker side of humanity. How many secondhand deaths had she caused? I could only attempt to imagine. The greed of magicless people—much like the merchant who had come back day after day.
Before closing the glass doors to the display case, he leaned towards me, lips closing in on mine. In this form, I felt as though his lips and words skittered over my formless body—crawling critters and slimy vines. Mouthless, I couldn’t scream; limbless, I couldn’t flail against the man.
I wish to be childless.
Everything sounded like a gurgle of slurred words, but recognizable nonetheless. His hand lingered on the brass knob before he closed the door. How could he be so cruel? But he didn’t look eager to consume me. That was the only way his wish would come to fruition. The image of a small, faceless child came to mind. I imagined what it would be like if Mother had wanted to get rid of me and for what reasons might cause such hatred.
Like sitting in a fishbowl, I watched the warped living room through an orange gold lens, everything either concave or convex depending on where it sat in the room—including the people as they moved in, out, and through. It reminded me of circus mirrors but without my reflections—shadow darting into and out of sight, misshapen ghosts. Each corner blurred, rounded, making the space feel claustrophobic. If there was such a thing as air within this sugar prison, it would have long since left my lungs.
He entered a home office and didn’t appear again until his wife returned home with their son in tow—who couldn’t have been more than twelve—telling him he could watch his favourite show—But only for half an hour!—so she could prepare dinner. The man gave his wife a kiss on the cheek before she headed to the kitchen. She paused with a lingering glance, a melancholic expression, before her eyes darted over to me. And I couldn’t look away. If I could sweat, my sugar would be melting. I wondered if she could see me within this prison. Did I want her to?
The man patted his son on the head, then ruffled the child’s hair, perhaps a little too hard. The boy scratched the spot where his father’s hand left. The man returned to his office without a second glance, his smile dropping as soon as he turned away. His son stared after him with a frown.
Such false affection, but why?
Gabriel.
I watched, wondering if the name was the man’s or the child’s because neither gave a reaction.
When his wife had gone the next day, this time leaving their son, the man ambled over to the child and asked, Where did your mother take you yesterday?
To Aunt Meiqi’s house, the boy said, eyes glued to the TV.
Where did she go?
The boy shrugged. Didn’t say.
Gabriel.
So it was the son, after all. But what about the man?
The man’s fists balled. His fingers shifted, untrimmed nails digging into his palms. He returned to the office. Was my father a man like him? Mother never spoke of Father much. And perhaps I was glad—if he was indeed a horrible person. Poor Gabriel.
At night, when both his wife and child were asleep, he stalked towards me, ripping open the door without caring about the loud creaking sound. His breath reeking of alcohol and cigarettes drifted towards me, pressed, wet, against the surface of my sugar, just barely. I twitched, my essence curling to move away from the sugar’s surface, but failing.
I wish to be wifeless.
I know he’s not mine, the man said, holding up an envelope.
I squinted. First, I spotted Gabriel’s name, then his wife’s, Kunpan, then Ellew. I searched for Ellew’s features in Gabriel’s face. He had Kunpan’s wide eyes and slim nose, but his small lips resembled neither parents’, nor did his slim, sparse eyebrows.
Kunpan’s lips quivered, tears fell, but in here, it looked as though she was smiling. A chilling thought that her marriage would possibly end at this very moment, a hopeful desperation as she racked her mind for solutions. There were none. She raised a hand, but before her fingertips even met the fabric of her husband’s wrinkled dress shirt, he yanked his body away.
The man had no doubt sent off the hair he pulled from his son’s head. Kunpan fell to her knees, bones echoing against the wooden floor. Gabriel watched from the couch, expression indifferent, but I could tell he was afraid—the remote shook in his hand. And the man stood in the middle of the room with the envelope still waving in a hand, before he allowed his fingers to loosen, throwing the papers in Kunpan’s direction. The thin white sheets skimmed the side of Kunpan’s head before smacking against the ground. Did she have the affair before their marriage or after? Perhaps Mother had an affair, as well. Or perhaps it was Father. And maybe Father was the affair. The thought filled me with a sudden terror of not knowing who my true parents were. I wished I could draw Gabriel within the sugar. He might be safer in here.
I know.
With all their backs turned and the words so quiet, I wasn’t quite sure who said them. It couldn’t have been any of the three. It could’ve been all three.
At night, it wasn’t the man who floated across the living room towards me but his wife. She opened the display case with care and bent her head towards me. In the moonlight, her eyes were swollen, cheeks covered in pink blotches, lips chewed raw.
I wish to be dead.
I wasn’t sure how long it had been, but the furniture began disappearing, until only bare necessities remained: the long scroll of ink art featuring a crane with a child in a satchel dangling from its beak had been rolled and stored out of sight. The man spent longer and longer hours in his office. Kunpan was out of the house most of the time, but Gabriel appeared now and then—though not as routinely as he had before, spending nights watching cartoons, and when his parents weren’t paying attention, the news.
Kunpan entered one day when the man was out. She grabbed a packed box next to the shelf, took one look at me before turning. Gabriel ran to his room, carrying out a smaller box, but hurried towards me when his mother disappeared out the front door, leaving it open. The keys jingled in the boy’s hand.
He twisted the brass knob, opened the glass room, and leaned towards me. I leaned as far as I could towards the child, a person I found much of myself in.
I wish to have another family.
With his wife and child gone, the man returned to me every night. With each breath he blew, he showed me his greatest desires, his deepest fears. He told me how empty the house was without them, how quiet, how he loved it but also hated it. He mumbled about how though he had wished for them to disappear, he also wished for them to be safe, wished that he could stop loving them, wished they could be loved by anyone other than him—knowing they already were. He wished he was a better father; he wished he was an actual father. What I thought were wishes were also his greatest fears. They became so interwoven it was difficult to tell the difference. Suspended in this space, where his words and thoughts mingled with mine were everywhere, yet going nowhere.
But I didn’t make any of this happen. He never did consume me. His wishes, his fears, all came to life because of him. Yet this nameless man still blamed me.
Why did you make them leave?
Then:
I wish they would return.
III: Burn
The man rushed towards me in the middle of the next night, seeming to forget all that he had poured into me, how it had been likely warped, changed, because of my presence that shouldn’t have been inside this sugar entity. As though unsure of how to go about it, he took a toothpick and pierced the small prick between my lips where he had whispered all his secrets, chipped away at it until the lips disappeared, leaving the mouth a gaping hole. Why he had not simply shattered me, I wasn’t sure. But I cowered in a corner, wondering if this would be when I met my destruction. Mother never told me about this possibility, of being trapped within the sugar ourselves, and if the sugar was shattered, if we would survive.
But within an instant, my worries dissolved as I boiled. My physical form re-emerged. Blood burned, curdling in my veins, spreading like wildfire across my body as the skin and muscle returned in flakes, patching itself onto flowing streams of blood. The bust shattered, shards flew towards the man, splitting open wounds in the flesh of the arms he raised to shield himself with. One piece almost blinded his right eye—but not quite. The upper lid poured blood onto the lower, turning the whites of his eyes red as it dripped down his cheek.
I braced myself for a death that never came.
And when I fully emerged, he was down on his knees. His body shook with desire, with fear, with everything he thought he could let go of but could never, truly.
And I felt pity, as I leaned down to help him rise, but I found myself immobile.
He lifted his head. A smile stretched across his face. I had forgotten about his first wish among all the others.
You.
Originally published in Collage Macabre: An Exhibition of Art Horror, edited by the Future Dead Collective.
