Kaleb's Critters

Channel Promotion #9657#

-Edible-

“You’re eating them wrong.”

Robin looked to the girl sitting next to him. “S’that so?”

“Yeah, you’re doing it all wrong,” the child—a red-headed daughter, dressed in a dirty, indigo dress, sitting on his right with her father at the bus stop—frowned, looking at the scruffy student like he’d just crawled from the sewer. The father glanced at Robin and snorted, but otherwise ignored the two of them: sitting, waiting.

Fairweather shuffled the bag in his lap, thinking. “Would you show me how to eat them properly, then?” he finally asked, smirking at the pouting girl that fidgeted to his right. She held out a little, soot-stained hand, fingers twitching petulantly.

“Gimme!”

“What do you say?”

The girl glared, poutiness swallowing her whole upper lip and approaching her nose in a rather impressive display. “Please,” she grunted. The discontent in her voice prompted another snort from the father, wiping his nose on a sleeve, and Robin had to hold back a small bark of laughter at the scene.

“All right.” The engineer slid a hand into the plastic sack, retracting with a single, green candy: a gummy bear. “Show me.”

Green, squishy candy was snatched from his hand.

“First, you bite off his legs—so he can’t get away,” she squeaked, eyes screwed up in concentration as she nipped the nubby, green legs from the bear. “Then you bite off his arms, so he can’t hug his momma goodbye.” Limbs gone, the gummy candy was just a torso and a head, molded eyes bugged out—in pain?—like inverted dimples. “An’ then you bite the ears and the nose, so he can’t hear or say his farewells.”

The father was watching now, chuckling at his daughter’s antics as she explained why she bit off the bear’s head—“to make sure he’s dead.” Soon, the treat was finished, and there was nothing: only traces of green-tinged spittle on her fingers.

A breeze blew down the street, and Robin clutched his candy tighter, plastic crinkling in his hands. The girl and her father giggled, and Robin joined them. Looking to the father for permission—he received a nod—the young man passed the bag right.

“Here,” he said, “You eat them better than me.”

The child squeaked happily and carefully took the package, resting it in the pouched cloth of her dress. She reached inside, pulling out a blue bear, and looked at it for a moment, contemplating, before holding it out to him.

“Here! You try eating it now,” she suggested, smiling innocently. Gingerly, Robin took the bear from her, holding it up to the dim light of the rising sun.

He smiled and bit off its legs.