Candy Randy and the Hollow Sweet Star
In a town where the gumdrops grew tall in the rain,
Where the sidewalks smelled softly of sugar and cane,
Where the children ate taffy till quarter past three,
Lived a candy-man creature named Randy McGlee.
Oh, Candy Randy!
With his peppermint grin!
His coat made of licorice,
Buttons of tin!
He’d skip down the roads with a cane made of glass,
And whisper strange songs to the children who passed.
“Come little dreamers,
Come wander with me…
There’s sweetness beyond what your eyes cannot see…”
The mothers said:
“Don’t go.”
The fathers said:
“Run.”
But Candy Randy smiled
Like he already won.
Now Randy sold candies no child understood.
Some wriggled.
Some breathed.
Some smelled faintly of wood.
Some clicked tiny teeth in their rainbow-filled jars.
Some glowed in the dark like impossible stars.
And under his wagon, chained tightly below,
Was a hole filled with something that moved very slow.
At nighttime the townsfolk would lock every blind,
For strange little sounds drifted in on the wind.
Scratch-scratch.
Tap-tap.
Chew-chew.
Gnaw-GNAW.
Like teeth made of needles
Dragged under the floor.
Then one rainy evening young Theodore Pike
Saw Randy arrive on a bicycle trike.
But the wheels did not turn.
No.
They hovered instead.
And the moon disappeared when he lifted his head.
Theodore stared.
And Randy bent low.
Too low.
Far lower than faces should go.
His smile stretched outward.
His jaw stretched apart.
And something like fingers crawled out from his heart.
Not blood.
Not bone.
Not organs inside.
But black twisting ribbons that hissed when they cried.
Theodore screamed.
Randy chuckled instead.
Then opened his stomach like lifting a lid.
Inside—
There were stars.
Not the kind up above.
Dead stars.
Cold stars.
Stars that did not know love.
And floating between them with far too many eyes
Was something enormous pretending its size.
Because Candy Randy was never a man.
He was something that fell
Before Earth began.
An inner-space hunger.
A thing without skin.
A smiling idea that wanted in.
The next morning Theodore’s house stood bare.
His parents were gone.
There was syrup everywhere.
The walls smelled of caramel.
The ceilings dripped black.
And tiny pink footprints led out through the back.
The sheriff searched forests.
The rivers.
The hills.
But found only candy wrappers nailed to the mills.
Each one had a message in curly red ink:
“THEY TASTED LIKE MEMORIES.”
Years passed.
The town changed.
The sweet shops all died.
Yet children still vanished near Halloween tide.
And sometimes at midnight on old Hollow Street,
You can hear little bicycle bells in the sleet.
Ding.
Ding.
Ding.
Then a voice smooth as cream:
“I can make your bad dreams sweeter than dreams…”
And if you look out your window that night—
You may see him beneath the streetlight.
Tall hat.
Long grin.
Eyes like spinning marbles.
Holding a paper sack that squirms.
Waiting.
Smiling.
Hungry.
Because Candy Randy still wanders out there.
And children taste best
When they think
Someone cares.