Cursed Ground Chocolate

Barb swung the heavy metal spade. It hit the slush with a wet, heavy thud, splashing brown water against the shins of her rubber boots.

The hundred-year winter had finally broken at eleven in the morning on a Tuesday. By noon, the temperature had climbed to an aggressive eighty-five degrees. The snowbanks, which had stood ten feet high since late October, were collapsing into rivers of thick, brown sludge. Oak Creek Estates, with its pristine cul-de-sacs and heavily regulated mailbox heights, was drowning in its own thaw.

Sweat pooled under the collar of Barb’s fleece jacket. She hadn't taken it off yet. Her brain simply refused to accept that it was hot. She jammed the spade down again, trying to clear a trench so the lake forming in her driveway would drain into the street gutter. Her shoulders ached. Her lower back burned with a dull, heavy heat. She was forty-four years old, the president of the Homeowners Association, and entirely too tired to deal with a flood.

The water rushing past her boots was opaque. It carried the detritus of a six-month freeze. Pine needles. Shredded Amazon boxes. A single, waterlogged left mitten.

Then, she saw the flash of color.

It was a metallic gleam, buried in a clump of dark earth and melting ice. Barb stopped digging. She leaned on the handle of the spade, breathing hard through her nose. The air smelled wrong. It smelled like wet copper, rotting grass, and something distinctly artificial. Like a chemical plant making artificial vanilla extract.

She stepped forward, her boots sucking at the mud. She reached down with a gloved hand and dug the object out of the sludge.

It was an egg.

Not a real egg. A chocolate egg, wrapped in cheap, faded pink and gold foil. It was roughly the size of a golf ball. The foil was dirty, but the colors were aggressively bright against the drab brown of the driveway. It looked vintage. It looked like the kind of cheap candy they sold in plastic bins at the pharmacy twenty years ago.

Barb rubbed the dirt off the top with her thumb.

The egg vibrated.

Barb froze. The sensation buzzed right through the thick leather of her gardening glove. It wasn't a roll or a shift in weight. It was a rapid, mechanical vibration, like a cell phone receiving a call.

Her stomach dropped. She threw the egg into the mud.

It landed with a wet smack. For a second, nothing happened. Then, the pink foil tore open from the inside.

Barb took a step back, her heel catching on a chunk of ice. She stumbled, barely keeping her balance.

A tiny, misshapen lump of brown sugar and hardened chocolate pulled itself out of the wrapper. It didn't have legs. It didn't have arms. It was just a jagged, lumpy oval of old chocolate. But it had a mouth. A horizontal split opened in the center of the mass, revealing rows of needle-sharp shards of white rock candy.

The thing snapped its jaws together. The sound was a sharp, brittle crack, like someone stepping on a glass ornament.

Barb stared at it. Her brain stalled. There was no category in her mind for what she was looking at. The thing turned toward her. It had no eyes, but it seemed to sense her heat. It launched itself forward, a blind, sugary leap aimed directly at her knee.

Barb swung the flat of the spade like a golf club.

The metal connected with the creature. It shattered on impact. Fragments of stale chocolate and sharp rock candy exploded across the driveway, leaving a dusting of cheap cocoa powder on the melting snow.

Barb stood perfectly still. The only sound was the rushing of the water and her own jagged breathing.

She dropped the spade. She pulled her phone out of her pocket. The screen was cracked diagonally across the middle, distorting the light. She opened the Oak Creek Estates HOA group chat.

Her thumbs shook as she typed.

do not eat the cursed ground chocolate, literally touch grass instead. stay inside.

She hit send.

"Touch grass?" a voice said. "A bit aggressive for a Tuesday morning, Barb."

Barb spun around. Tyler was walking down the center of the street, flanked by Lucy. They were both seventeen, lived three houses down, and possessed the specific kind of teenage apathy that made Barb want to scream on a good day.

Tyler was wearing unlaced combat boots, shorts, and a heavy winter parka left open. He held a half-empty bag of sour cream and onion chips. Lucy was wearing sweatpants and carrying a yellow plastic lacrosse stick, dragging the net along the wet asphalt.

"What are you two doing outside?" Barb asked. Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat.

"Walking," Tyler said. "It's eighty degrees. I'm sweating through my jacket."

"Take it off, then," Barb snapped.

"It ties the outfit together," Tyler said. He looked down at his phone. "What does cursed ground chocolate mean? Did someone drop a brownie?"

"Go back inside," Barb said. She stepped toward them. "Right now. Both of you."

Lucy stopped dragging the lacrosse stick. She looked at Barb's face. The casual boredom vanished from her eyes, replaced by a sudden, sharp focus. "Barb. You look like you're going to throw up."

"I am entirely fine," Barb said. "Just go inside."

Tyler took a step toward Barb's driveway. "Is that mud? It looks like a swamp. You're going to get fined by your own HOA for that lawn, Barb."

"Tyler, don't step on the grass," Barb yelled.

Tyler stepped onto the edge of the lawn. His heavy boot sank an inch into the wet, spongy earth.

Three feet to his left, the mud bubbled.

A flash of bright blue foil breached the surface. Then a yellow one. Then a green one. Within seconds, the front lawn looked like a terrible, neon acne breakout. Dozens of brightly colored eggs were pushing themselves up through the dirt.

"Whoa," Tyler said. "Easter egg hunt?"

"Tyler, move," Lucy said. She gripped the lacrosse stick with both hands.

The blue egg closest to Tyler ripped open. A lump of white chocolate with a jagged, pink fondant mouth threw itself at Tyler's leg. It clamped its rock-candy teeth onto the exposed skin between his boot and his shorts.

Tyler screamed. It wasn't a tough, cool scream. It was a high-pitched, panicked shriek. He dropped his bag of chips. He kicked his leg wildly.

"Get it off!" Tyler yelled.

The creature held on, its teeth sinking deeper. A drop of dark red blood ran down Tyler's shin, mixing with the white chocolate.

Lucy moved. She swung the head of the lacrosse stick down in a brutal, chopping arc. The hard plastic edge caught the creature right in the center. It crushed the candy against Tyler's leg, snapping the teeth and turning the body into a smear of sticky white paste.

Tyler fell backward onto the asphalt, clutching his leg. "It bit me. The candy bit me!"

"I told you not to touch it," Barb said. Her heart hammered against her ribs.

"I didn't touch it!" Tyler yelled. "It touched me!"

"Shut up," Lucy said. She was staring at the lawn.

Barb looked. The entire front yard was vibrating. The tearing sound of cheap foil ripping open filled the air. It sounded like a massive flock of birds taking flight, but metallic and wrong. Hundreds of the candy creatures were pulling themselves free. They came in all colors. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate. Some had jellybean eyes that stared blankly. Others were just mouths.

They hit the mud and turned toward the street. Toward the heat. Toward them.

"Garage," Barb said. "Now."

She grabbed Tyler by the collar of his parka and hauled him to his feet. He stumbled, leaning heavily on his good leg. The three of them backed up the driveway, slipping in the slush.

The swarm reached the edge of the asphalt. They didn't walk. They moved in a strange, undulating wave, hopping and sliding over each other. The bright spring sunlight hit their glossy chocolate backs. It was horrifyingly colorful.

Barb hit the keypad on the outside of her garage. The heavy wooden door began to slowly grind upward.

"Faster," Tyler said, watching the wave of candy cross the driveway.

"It's a garage door, Tyler, it doesn't have a sprint mode," Barb said.

Lucy stepped in front of them. She swung the lacrosse stick back and forth, smashing the first few creatures that got too close. A green one leaped at her face. She caught it in the net of the stick and whipped it directly into the brick wall of the house. It shattered into green dust.

"Nice shot," Tyler muttered.

"Shut up and get under the door," Lucy said.

The door cleared three feet. Barb shoved Tyler under it. Lucy ducked under next. Barb threw herself onto the concrete floor of the garage and rolled inside just as the leading edge of the swarm reached the threshold.

"Hit the button!" Barb yelled.

Tyler slammed his hand against the wall console. The door reversed direction and started its agonizingly slow descent.

A dozen of the creatures slid under the gap before the door slammed shut. They bounced on the concrete, their rock-candy teeth clacking loudly.

Barb grabbed a heavy metal snow shovel from the wall rack. She didn't hesitate. She brought it down flat onto the closest cluster of creatures. The crunch was deeply satisfying.

Lucy used her boots. She stomped a milk chocolate one into a flat, sticky stain. Tyler grabbed a heavy wrench off the workbench and hurled it at a white chocolate creature, missing entirely and denting the side of Barb's Subaru.

"My car," Barb said, breathless.

"Sorry," Tyler said. He picked up a tire iron instead and crushed the last moving candy.

The garage was suddenly quiet, except for the hum of the refrigerator in the corner and the heavy breathing of the three people.

Barb looked at the bottom edge of the garage door. The rubber weather stripping was vibrating. She could hear them out there. Hundreds of tiny jaws biting at the wood and rubber.

"They are going to eat through the door," Lucy said. She was entirely calm. It unnerved Barb.

"They are candy," Tyler said. He was sitting on the hood of the Subaru, holding his bloody shin. "They can't eat wood."

"They just bit a chunk out of your leg, Tyler," Lucy said. "I think the rules of candy have changed."

Barb rubbed her face with her dirty glove. The smell of the crushed creatures was overpowering inside the closed garage. It was a cloying, suffocating sweetness. It made her throat itch.

She looked around the garage. She needed a plan. The HOA protocols did not cover sentient chocolate. She had a section in the binder for wild animals, a section for unapproved paint colors, and a section for noise complaints after 10:00 PM.

"Okay," Barb said. "We need to kill them."

"With what?" Tyler asked. "We have one shovel and a sports stick."

Barb’s eyes landed on the heavy metal shelving unit in the back corner. On the middle shelf, sitting next to the paint cans, were two bright yellow industrial heat guns. She had bought them three years ago when the neighborhood council voted to strip the lead paint off the old clubhouse doors. They were heavy-duty. They shot air heated to over a thousand degrees.

"Heat," Barb said. "They are chocolate. They melt."

Lucy followed her gaze. A slow, grim smile spread across her face. "I like that."

"Tyler, get the extension cords," Barb ordered. "The heavy orange ones. On the wall hook."

Tyler limped off the car. He pulled three massive coils of orange wire off the wall. Barb grabbed the heat guns.

"We need a backup," Lucy said. "If they swarm us, melting them might take too long. We need something that destroys them fast."

Barb looked at the floor. Stacked against the far wall were ten heavy bags of blue winter rock salt. The neighborhood had bought in bulk during the endless winter. The salt was highly corrosive to ice.

"Salt," Barb said. "When sugar gets wet and hot, it gets sticky. If we hit them with rock salt, it should act like an abrasive. It might dissolve them."

"Put the salt in the hopper," Tyler said, pointing to the manual broadcast spreader Barb used for the driveway.

"No, the other hopper," Barb said, pointing to a smaller, handheld seed spreader. "It's faster."

"I don't know what a hopper is, Barb," Tyler said.

"Just open the bag and fill the plastic bucket with the crank handle," Barb said, her patience thinning.

Tyler grabbed a utility knife and slashed open a bag of blue salt. He poured it into the handheld spreader.

Barb plugged the first heat gun into the extension cord. She handed it to Lucy. "You know how to use this?"

"It’s a hair dryer on steroids," Lucy said. "I'll manage."

Barb took the second heat gun. She plugged it in. The handles were thick, heavy plastic. The weight felt good in her hands. Grounding.

"We open the door," Barb said. "We blast the front line. Tyler, you crank the salt into the melted ones. We push them back to the street."

"What if they get past the heat?" Tyler asked.

"Don't let them," Lucy said.

Barb walked to the wall console. She rested her hand over the button. "Ready?"

"Do it," Lucy said. She held the heat gun out like a pistol.

Barb hit the button.

The motor groaned. The door began to rise.

Instantly, a wave of brown and pink surged underneath. The creatures had piled up against the door.

Barb pulled the trigger on her heat gun. The machine roared to life. It sounded like a jet engine spinning up. A blast of shimmering, distorted air shot out of the metal nozzle.

She swept it across the front line of the candy.

The effect was instantaneous. The creatures didn't scream. They didn't have lungs. But they made a horrible, high-pitched hissing noise as the moisture inside them boiled. The chocolate turned glossy, then liquid. They collapsed into bubbling puddles of brown sludge.

Lucy fired her gun. She aimed higher, catching the creatures that were trying to jump over the melting front line. A pink foil egg caught the blast mid-air. The foil curled and blackened, and the candy inside turned to liquid sugar, splattering against the concrete.

"Push forward!" Barb yelled over the roar of the guns.

They stepped out into the bright sunlight. The heat of the day hit them, mixing with the intense radiation from the heat guns. Barb's face felt like it was sitting over an open grill. Sweat stung her eyes.

The driveway was a sea of moving candy. There were thousands of them.

"Tyler, salt!" Barb yelled.

Tyler stepped between them. He cranked the handle on the spreader. A spray of heavy blue rock salt rained down on the melting creatures.

When the salt hit the hot, liquid sugar, it reacted violently. The puddles foamed and spit, releasing thick plumes of white smoke that smelled heavily of burnt caramel and sulfur. The advancing creatures hit the salted, foaming puddles and stuck fast. Their little legs churned in the syrup, unable to move forward.

"It's working!" Tyler yelled.

"Keep cranking!" Lucy yelled back.

They moved down the driveway, an inch at a time. The physical exertion was immense. The heat guns were heavy. Barb's forearms burned. Her fingers cramped around the trigger. Every time they cleared a foot of concrete, more creatures poured out of the mud to fill the gap.

A dark chocolate creature, larger than the rest, managed to leap over the foaming barrier. It landed on Barb's forearm.

The heat from the gun had made the plastic handle slippery with her sweat. She nearly dropped it. The creature opened its mouth, aiming for her wrist.

Lucy swung the nozzle of her heat gun directly at Barb's arm. The blast of superheated air hit the creature. It melted instantly, turning into a scalding liquid that coated Barb's sleeve.

Barb hissed in pain, jerking her arm back. "Watch it!"

"You're welcome," Lucy said, not looking away from the swarm.

They reached the end of the driveway. The street was clear. The creatures seemed tied to the mud, refusing to step onto the dry asphalt.

Barb let go of the trigger. The heat gun spun down with a dying whine. Lucy did the same.

The silence that followed was heavy. The only sound was the bubbling of the burnt sugar on the concrete and the distant sound of melting snow.

Barb leaned over, resting her hands on her knees. Her lungs burned. Her jacket was ruined, covered in thick brown syrup and blue salt dust.

"We did it," Tyler said. He was leaning against the mailbox, panting. "We beat the candy."

Barb looked at the front lawn. It was totally destroyed. The grass was dead, replaced by a smoking, sticky crater of melted sugar and mud. She was definitely going to have to write herself a citation.

"Don't relax yet," Lucy said. She was pointing down the street.

Barb stood up straight. She wiped the sweat from her eyes and looked toward the entrance of Oak Creek Estates, about two hundred yards away.

The neighborhood entrance was flanked by two massive, decorative brick pillars. Every spring, the HOA hired a local artist to build a giant papier-mache display. This year, it was a twelve-foot-tall pastel rabbit, sitting on a bed of fake grass.

As Barb watched, the giant rabbit's head twitched.

The fake grass around it was churning. Not just bubbling. Churning.

The twelve-foot rabbit slowly turned its massive, painted head toward them, its jaw dropping open to reveal a cavernous mouth lined with jagged, wooden stakes.