Page 66 of Hansel and Gerhardt
“I’ll keep you well fed,” said Herr Candy. “I’ll make you plump and healthy. Look how Gerhardt’s filling out already.”
Indeed he was. Still thin, still worn from the years of abuse, but with a new and youthful colour in his cheeks. With asmoothing of the skin, some softening about his cheekbones. With the smallest outward curve of his abdomen, disappearing beneath those tight leather shorts.
Feeling both sets of eyes on him, Gerhardt looked down bashfully.
“You’re beautiful,” Hansel said. “In my eyes. No matter what you look like. But I like it. Seeing you fed.”
His blush only deepened, but there was that smile again, accompanied by a tremble at the left of his lower lip.
“Sounds like you want to stay, then,” Herr Candy broke in, his words like shattered caramel.
“I do,” said Hansel. He dropped his head to assess that little ball of gold. He could almost feel it between his fingers, the way that gold would crackle when he picked it up, the way his fingertips would sink in. He knew what was inside. His mouth watered at the thought of the thick raspberry bursting over his tongue. And he blinked, a vision of beautiful Gerhardt slick with jam assailing him so his heart beat for that golden delight.
He reached down.
It was so delicate, yet so heavy in his hand. He could feel it, plump and full of promise. His body screamed for it, his hand shaking as he lifted it high.
Gerhardt watched him intently. As if he knew that whatever Hansel did now would seal both their fates. As if he understood, even deep in the haze of all Herr Candy’s treats.
“Gerhardt,” Herr Candy reprimanded him, a razor slicing into the tension.
“Oh.” Gerhardt smiled shyly, that curl of hair falling forward when his head bowed. “I’m sorry.”
He took up the offering, but even when it was in his hand, his attention remained almost wholly on Hansel.
Hansel wanted to yell at him, to ask him what he would have him do. But the last thing he could take in this life was forGerhardt to tell him again to eat—to take away that last belief Hansel had, that he was in there. That he still cared. That he, maybe, would have felt the way Hansel did, could he think clearly again.
“Hansel?” said Herr Candy.
And so Hansel lifted it, slowly, inching ever closer to his mouth. His lips parted, it touched his skin…
Hansel dropped it.
The golden truffle smashed onto his plate, breaking open, spilling a splatter of red across the table cloth, across Hansel’s stomach.
Everything went still. Hansel looked only to Gerhardt, who stared in open-mouthed silence, his own truffle held aloft, mid-air.
Herr Candy’s face snapped across to Gerhardt. “Eat!” he screamed.
Gerhardt’s hand opened, the ball rolling into his palm, and he slammed it into his mouth. He doubled over at once, two hands bracing him against the table as the pleasure swept over him.
Hansel didn’t wait. He knew what he’d done. This was last ditch.
He picked up the chair, raised it to attack Herr Candy, but it squeezed in his fingers, turning to marshmallow in a trice.
He flung it away, reaching instead for his plate, but on contact, his fingers sunk into jelly.
Hansel wasn’t about to give up. Whatever might happen next, whatever Herr Candy might try to turn him into, he would do his very best to kill him first.
He lunged forward, directly for him, but before his body could hit the table, he was caught at the throat and thrust back to standing, pinned in place by Herr Candy’s foully long arm. It extended, man at the shoulder, then black and demonic from the elbow, that same shiny and hard skin he’d seen the night before.Hansel felt the fingers at his neck, long and piercing, such as he’d witnessed stab into the ceiling. And how easily they could tear his throat out.
Gerhardt was on his forearms, leaning heavily over his plate, licking up every last crumb of his golden treat.
“Gerhardt!” Hansel tried, struggling to get the word past that clamp around his neck.
“He doesn’t hear you now,” hissed Herr Candy, his forked tongue sliding between his teeth. “He doesn’t care about you.”
But still Hansel tried, rasping for him as he ripped at the other-worldly appendage, hitting it, trying to dig his nails into that impenetrable flesh. But nothing he did made the smallest difference.
