Ted
By: Fyodor Klubnikin
Tags: Fiction, Candy

Ted Richardson was a simple man. He worked as a C++ programmer for a cheese company, where he maintained their database, ensuring that the software that tracked the incoming and outgoing cheese wheels was processing orders correctly. When he went home, he watched TV because he didn’t know what else to do. Sometimes he would go to the local movie theater to watch the latest installment of his favorite franchise. He didn’t like movies with subtitles. What he did like was candy.

He considered himself a connoisseur. He could distinguish a Baby Ruth from a Snickers by smell alone. He knew the proper way to eat a Reese’s cup was to let the untempered chocolate melt slightly on his tongue before biting into the peanut butter core. Candy was his life, and he considered his day job as a middling programmer to be merely a way of supporting his passion for chocolate and nougat. For Christmas, he only ever asked for candy. One year, after his parents went to London for their anniversary, they brought him back candy available only in the UK, and he thought it was one of the best Christmases of his life. It was like he’d been gifted a rare, ephemeral glimpse into the wide world of sweets beyond Wisconsin, one he had never even imagined.

But one morning, Ted awoke to find that his breakfast Milky Way was missing. He’d misplaced bars before, so he wasn’t concerned. He walked over to the cupboard where he stored his stash of sugar in neat, ordered rows, and opened it. It was bare. Not even the cardboard boxes that once held Twizzlers were there. The cupboard looked like it hadn’t been used in years. It was dusty and a cobweb shook in the corner where he used to keep his sticks of Laffy Taffy.

He slammed the cupboard door shut and felt terror dripping down him like a sinister glaze. He must have been robbed. Someone must have come and taken his prized collection. It was personal, too, he realized, because this person hadn’t taken anything else. His large TV was still in the living room, and his gold cufflinks he’d inherited from his grandfather hadn’t been touched. This thief had known precisely where to attack, where it would hurt. His mind raced. Had he wronged anyone? Had his programs made some terrible error that would enrage someone enough to make them undertake such a precise, pointed revenge?

He looked at his watch. If he didn’t get in the shower and on the road, he’d be late for work. He quickly washed and dressed himself and, with only a few minutes to spare, made it to the office. After debugging for an hour, his stomach rumbled and he remembered he hadn’t had any breakfast. On the first floor of the main building of the Red River Industrial Park, the complex where he and the rest of the cheese company techies worked, there was a vending machine. He locked his computer and walked to the main building, but when he got to the waiting vending machine, it was barren of candy. No caramel, no toffee, no chocolate.

Was the thief following him here? Had the torturer been so thorough as to deny him his passion even at work? Ted resigned to missing his morning candy and bought himself a bag of mixed nuts. He returned to his building destitute, the natural sweetness of the pecans nothing in comparison to Twix. He stopped off at the break room to get some coffee to wash the nuts down and ran into his manager, Rob.

“Ted! How’s it goin’, bud?” asked Rob with false pep.

Ted raised his eyes and did his best to give Rob a brave face.

“Fine, just fine. Monday, you know,” said Ted, but his false stoicism didn’t fool Rob.

“Woah, hey, buddy, you okay? Let’s go to my office.”

Ted sighed and, without even making himself some coffee, followed his manager into his office.

“You look destroyed, Ted. What happened?”

“I’m just tired.”

“Yeah, I’ve been ‘just tired,’ too. I gotta know what’s going on with my techies. If you need some time off, just ask. Remember, I’m a person, too, I know what it’s like.”

Ted looked at his hands. How could he explain this?

“Ted, let me help.”

“I don’t know if you can,” Ted finally said quietly. “I was burgled this morning, and now I think whoever did it is following me.”

“Whoa that’s… I’d never expect that. Did you see him?”

“No.”

“How do you know he’s following you?”

“All the candy’s missing from the vending machine.”

“What?”

“In the main building — Red River One — there’s a vending machine. There’s no candy.”

“I’m sorry, I’m not following you,” Rob said, getting visibly concerned.

Ted braced himself. It was always hard to explain his passion and withstand the initial wave of judgment.

“My one true love is candy. Some people love music, some people love books, some people love fishing. I love candy. This morning, all of my candy was gone from my house, and now that there’s no candy in the main building, I think someone is targeting me where it hurts. I’m trying to figure out who’s doing it or why and I still have no idea. So… yeah…” Ted said, letting himself trail off.

“Wow um… okay, Ted. I hear you, I do, and you have my full attention. I respect your reality and your pain, but I do have one question: what exactly is candy? Is this… is this a drug? Because I can find some good rehab…”

“No, it’s not a drug. It’s… come on, candy. Halloween? Trick-or-treating? Snickers?”

Rob looked at Ted with nervous bewilderment.

“It’s sweet! Is this a joke?”

“I’m so sorry to say it’s not,” Rob muttered.

“Chocolate?”

“Like a cake?” Rob offered.

“Yes! But it’s not just a flavor! It’s also a thing like… solid and… melts…”

Rob suddenly stood up and ushered Ted out of his office.

“Bud, I’m going to give you the day off. No problem, I won’t force you to take unpaid leave. Just go home and rest up. You don’t seem to be doing so well. Come back tomorrow fresh and clear, all right?”

“But, Rob, please, I… this is a real thing. I’m so confused.”

“I know. Take it easy and come back tomorrow,” Rob said, closing his office door with a smart crack.

Ted collected his things — his travel mug, still without coffee, his headphones, and his phone charger — and threw them at his briefcase haphazardly. The mug landed inside the bag but the nervous force in the throw made the wires bend and swirl wildly out of control. Spitting out a minced oath, he collected the splayed cables and put them in his briefcase.

On the drive home, he desperately stopped off at a 7-Eleven. Not locking his car, he walked into the store in a panic and rushed to the candy section. It was full of veggie chips. He darted to the cashier, who started and leaned back when Ted approached him.

“Hershey’s Cookies ’n’ Creme.”

“I’m sorry?” the clerk responded timidly.

“Do you have it?”

“I don’t understand. There are Oreos next to the chips?” he suggested, scared of the crazed man in front of him.

“That’s not what I MEAN!” roared Ted. He slammed his hands on the counter and stormed off.

He sped home in a frightened rage, blowing past stop signs and missing a red light. When he finally arrived home, he dropped his bag and opened his laptop. Snickers.com was a dog vanity site. Twix.com was young gay dating. Skittles.com was all about skateboarding.

He gently closed the lid on his laptop and walked up the stairs to his bedroom in a daze. Maybe he was going insane. Maybe he’d hallucinated a previous life. He flopped into his bed still in his clothes.

His love was no more, if indeed it had existed at all and hadn’t been some fever dream. Maybe it wassome psychosis he had been using to placate himself to the banality of his existence. He had made no friends since third grade and hadn’t even spoken to his remaining friends very recently. His life was routine, or had been: a career in database programming that had supported a passion that had vanished overnight.

He rolled over and felt his eyelids getting heavy.

When he awoke the next morning, he called in sick and Rob gave him the day off without question.

Ted went to his kitchen and grabbed his sugar from the cupboard. Caramel is made from sugar and heat. He knew that much. Maybe water? Maybe cream? He googled the recipe but, of course, there was no information to be found.

He tried to make a dry caramel first. The sugar simply blackened and turned to bitter grains of charcoal. He added water to the sugar and it never concentrated and he was left with an empty pot after it all evaporated. The cream curdled.

He had hallucinated it all. He was sure of it now. His former reality was impossible. He went to his living room and lay down on the carpeted floor, convinced he was insane. He might as well commit himself now. There was nothing of worth in his life, so why not do his best to heal the psychic wounds that had obviously guided him for so long?

Rolling over, he saw a dusty copy of Anna Karenina on the bottom shelf of a bookcase that mostly held knickknacks and vases. It had been in the house when he moved in and he’d never gotten rid of it. He got up, picked up the book, and started reading at it absentmindedly. He had nothing better to do.

Three hours later, he was hooked. He felt a cool shiver move through his body as he realized his hallucinated love for a nonexistent food had been replaced. This was it. He’d found it.

He went to work the next day.

“Glad to see you back, Ted,” said Rob. “And look, I knew you just needed some time off. The color’s back in your cheeks and you look happier and healthier than I’ve seen you in years.”

Ted didn’t know what to do with the compliment, so he just nodded a confident assent. Over the next week and a half, he carefully meted out his reading time. It was like a treat: Tolstoy’s prose, even in translation, was delicious. Ted had to spend time remembering all the names, nicknames, and relationships, but it didn’t matter; the work was rewarding. He saw the world opening before him like never before. He found forums to discuss the book in, listened to audiobook sections in his car in the morning, and even found a woman who lived only a town south of him who also loved Russian literature. They had plans to meet in a few weeks once they’d both finished the novel.

He started reading outdoors; the natural light was better for his eyes. And then, as he found himself enjoying his time outside more and more, he started finding newer, more interesting places to read — parks, peaks, riversides. He felt his flabby frame becoming svelte, useful. Sometimes he even forgot his book and found himself exploring the wilderness alone. One day he met a couple of hikers on a trail he liked. They got along and he ended up having lunch with them. They agreed to go camping the next weekend, as Ted had never experienced camping.

They found a good nearby trail, where a chilly river slid by elegantly, camped nearby, and they stayed up late telling each other childhood stories. He fell asleep next to them in a large tent and it was a feeling of acceptance he’d never felt before.

He came into work braced, excited, hungry for the day. Sometimes his time of hallucination throbbed in the back of his mind with a pain of embarrassment. To think he spent so long obsessed with this false reality. It was something he wasn’t sure he’d ever share with anyone. Maybe when he had more distance, maybe then he could share it in whispers with some close friend. He had a few candidates now, after all.

Then one morning Ted awoke to find his candy cupboard refilled. It was just like he remembered — everything in the right positions, everything in the right quantities. He grabbed a stick of Necco wafers and held it like it was precious. That morning, he gorged himself. Wrappers accused Ted with numerous brands — Skor, AirHeads, Bounty, each one a condemnation shouted at Ted. He could feel his belly bloating, but he cleaned his face off, took a shower and drove to work anyway. Unsteadily, he wandered from his car to his office. A broad sharp in his gut pain doubled him over. He vomited sugared chyme onto the Red River Industrial Park entrance steps just as Rob was arriving.

“Nope, nope, nope, bud, you get yourself home,” said Rob, seeing Ted trying to go inside the main building.

Ted looked at his boss with shame and shuffled off. At the 7-Eleven on his way back, he bought every brand and every version of candy he could find. He bought M&Ms with peanuts, pretzels, peanut butter, dark chocolate, white chocolate. Any filling he could find, he took it. His stomach protesting, he started popping candy into his mouth as quickly as he could.

Either he hadn’t hallucinated and something strange had happened, or he was hallucinating again now. If this wasn’t real, that was fine with him. The taste he knew, the taste he knew he knew was back. It was glory, it was fate, it was delicious.

He arrived home and vomited once again onto the living room carpet. He didn’t care. He cleaned out his candy cupboard with an unstoppable hunger and went online to order his favorites in bulk, selecting next-day shipping.

He wasn’t seen on trails again. His body widened back out. Curious one night before going to bed, he read up on Anna Karenina on sparknotes.

It didn’t matter. His cupboard was never empty again, and as far as he was concerned, that was all he needed.