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Josua was hanging out with his best friend Mäskis-Gunnar when he suddenly realised the man in question had mysteriously disappeared while he was distracted by one of his contraptions. Mäskis-Gunnar’s stuff was still there, so Josua figured he couldn’t be far.
“Mäskis-Gunnar!” he hollered, to no reply. Josua bounced up to his feet and began his search. There was no way his one and only friend would leave without saying goodbye first.
It did not take Josua long to locate the man; he simply had to follow where his nose took him. Mäskis-Gunnar was squatting behind a nondescript building, hiding something in his hand. Bursting with curiosity, Josua hid behind the corner of a wall and watched him. On his hand, was a tiny bag of white powder. Mäskis-Gunnar glanced around suspiciously, failing to spot Josua. He dipped a finger in the bag to let some of the powder stick to his finger, then put the finger in his mouth, rubbing the substance on his gums.
Almost instantly, Mäskis-Gunnar performed a sharp inhale, eyes rolling to the back of his head. Then came a long, shaky sigh, as if all the tension in his body was released along with his breath. The frown on his forehead eased. Mäskis-Gunnar looked euphoric.
“What are you doing?’ Josua stepped out of his hiding spot and asked with great enthusiasm. Mäskis-Gunnar jumped out of his skin, letting out a whoop of shock.
“Um…just a quick snack!” he laughed nervously.
“Can I try some?” Josua beamed. He’s never seen such an interesting food in the village before. It had to be one of those outside snacks Mäskis-Gunnar smuggled in.
“No!” Mäskis-Gunnar hissed, eyes widened in alarm. “It’s…special rock candy for adults only. You’re too young to eat it.”
“Oh.” Josua deflated in disappointment. “Is it from outside?”
“The brilliant thing about this candy, boy,” Mäskis-Gunnar suddenly seemed very animated. “Is that I cooked it myself!”
“Really?” Josua squealed in wonder. He didn’t know his friend was an expert confectioner.
“Awesome, isn’t it! Cooking it myself means I can have as much as I want without having to smuggle it in”
Josua thought unlimited candy sounded amazing, but surely, Mäskis-Gunnar doesn’t eat all of it himself, right? He posed the question to his friend.
“Ah, I actually sell this stuff to outsiders.” Mäskis-Gunnar told him with glee, standing up on his twitching legs. “How else do you think I could afford the modifications to my moped, huh?”
“Do you sell it to the adults in the village?” Josua questioned. Kurt definitely wouldn’t approve, but he could imagine Gita really enjoying the candy.
“Oh goodness no. I’m smart enough to not shit where I eat!” Mäskis-Gunnar groaned, wagging a finger. “None of them have anything of value to trade, anyway.”
Mäskis-Gunnar stumbled closer to Josua. He could hear (and smell) his loud, rapid breathing, and a ring of bloodshot pink around his irises. His erratic movements didn’t help either…Josua felt a bit scared, but trusted his friend to not hurt him.
“Cooking isn’t easy, my boy.” Mäskis-Gunnar tapped a firm hand on Josua’s shoulder. “I think I’d like a pair of helping hands for my next cook.”
“You want me to help?” Josua grinned, flutters of joy tickling his chest. He loved seeing Mäskis-Gunnar work his wizardry. Mäskis-Gunnar nodded, sporting a crazed look on his face.
“If you help out, I’ll use the money to buy more Elovena biscuits for you.”
Mäskis-Gunnar staggered closer, his stinky breath flooding Josua’s nostrils.
“Tomorrow, after sundown. Come to my place. I’ll show you how it’s done”
Josua couldn't wait to cook rock candy with his best friend.
——
The boy made his way up the hill at the garbage dump clocked in the darkness of the night. Josua used to be unable to withstand the smell without retching, but he was used to it by now He didn’t even have to knock on the shabby wooden door before Mäskis-Gunnar opened it to welcome him inside.
Josua’s hung out at his friend’s house before, but this was the first time he’s heard anything about his candy-making operations. Turns out, there was a secret manhole in the corner of his shack, cleverly hidden by a fur rug. Mäskis-Gunnar pulled the wooden cover open, revealing a ladder, and gestured at him to follow him in, before disappearing down the hole.
Josua climbed down without a second thought, just as Mäskis-Gunnar turned on the lights. The sight that greeted him could only be described as…alien.
All his life, he’s been surrounded by the warm browns of the village, but Mäskis-Gunnar’s basement looked like it hailed from a different world – dark grey wall paint, ceiling snaked with pipes, strange looking equipment stashed in every nook and cranny, and the pièce de résistance: a large table in the center, housing an amalgamation of glassware on top, and colourful barrels below. This must be a glimpse into what the outside world looked like.
Mäskis-Gunnar hopped towards the candy-making setup and wiped a reverent hand across the body of a very large boiling flask.
“Leonardo, meet Josua. Josua, Leonardo.” he grinned, gesturing at Josua’s awestruck self. He figured Mäskis-Gunnar talked to his equipment the same way he talked to his stuffed chicken.
Mäskis-Gunnar gave him some protective gear that resembled the white plastic coverings Klas and Kenneth would sometimes wear at Kurt’s request while dealing with outside goods. They both threw it on, together with pairs of goggles. As Josua struggled to strap the oversized goggles over his eyes, his protective gear making loud rustling noises the whole time, he realised cooking candy must be more hazardous than he thought.
He watched Mäskis-Gunnar connect the apparatus with clear tubes and plug in the heating element with rapt attention, the colourful chemicals flowing, dripping, and boiling to life. The loud whirr of an overhead fan caught his eye. The ceiling vent was sucking in the resulting fumes, preventing the toxic gases from filling up the basement.
It dawned on Josua that Mäskis-Gunnar couldn’t have done all this recently, no, by the way he moved confidently across his masterpiece, he’s perfected his technique over years of practise.
“Um, Mister Gunnar, how can I help?” Josua offered, eager to be useful.
“Get the pipettes for me, would you?” Mäskis-Gunnar requested, pointing at a nearby tray of glassware, but his eyes were deeply concentrated on the bubbling liquid in the flask.
It was like time did not exist in the basement. Mäskis-Gunnar’s patient instructions, interspersed by energetic ramblings filled with funny sounding words Josua could not make sense of, put him in an hours long trance – until all he could think about was assisting this wizard to complete the next step of his magic spell.
But Mäskis-Gunnar insisted none of this was magic. “It’s all science, baby!” he laughed maniacally.
Finally, all their hard work resulted in a single, wide metal tray of thick transparent fluid.
“Wooh yeah!” Mäskis-Gunnar seemed very pleased with how the candy turned out, bouncing his knees to the disco music in his head, and giving Josua an overjoyed high-five. Josua beamed with pride. The sense of accomplishment that bloomed in his heart felt better than any talko.
“How long does it take until it’s hardened?” Josua asked, barely resisting the urge to stick a finger into the viscous glob.
“A full day, at least. I haven’t found a way to speed up the crystallisation yet.” Mäskis-Gunnar whined. “Meanwhile, you can help powder up yesterday’s cook. I think that’s the most fun part!”
He took out an identical tray from a metal shelf-looking thing and set it in front of Josua. Evenly hardened in the tray was the almost finished product of fully crystallized candy. Mäskis-Gunnar handed Josua a hammer and told him to go ham on the crystals until they turn into fine powder.
“Woah, that’s so cool! It’s such a pretty shade of pink as well…” Josua gasped, eyes sparkling. He thought it would be a shame to smash such a beautiful creation up like that.
“Yeah, one of the chemicals got a little oxidized on the way here. It shouldn’t affect the purity at all though, so the pink is just a nice bonus.” Mäskis-Gunnar explained, busying himself with the cleanup.
Josua started grinding up the candy with the hammer, cautiously at first, then becoming more and more confident in his movements. The glass-like shards cracking into smaller pieces with each strike felt so satisfying.
Suddenly, he heard a knocking sound, not made by himself or by Mäskis-Gunnar. He twisted his head up in alarm.
“Mister Gunnar, I think someone’s at your door.”
Mäskis-Gunnar stiffened. The knocking came again with a vengeance – loud and threatening, probably hard enough to shake the entire shack down. It made both of them jump out of their skin in terror.
“Quick, hide in here!” Mäskis-Gunnar hissed, opening a large barrel and prompting Josua to jump inside. Not wanting to get into trouble, Josua squatted in and looked up as Mäskis-Gunnar closed the lid.
He was bathed in pitched darkness, loud sounds of Mäskis-Gunnar crashing around in the basement bleeding through the thick material of the barrel. Josua’s heart started racing from the claustrophobia. Was that his father trying to find him? Is he in big trouble? Josua prayed for his friend to be able to direct any suspicion away from him.
A few minutes later, Mäskis-Gunnar opened the lid. He quickly crawled out of the barrel. It was starting to get hard to breathe in there.
“That was Klas. Your father’s looking for you.” Mäskis-Gunnar told him, looking more haggard than he normally did, eyes comically wide. Josua’s heart sank.
“I’ll watch out for Klas through the upstairs window, okay? When he’s far away enough, I’ll yell at you to run.”
Veiny, greasy hands reached forward to grab Josua hard by the shoulders, neck craned down to stare at him with crazed eyes, beard almost ticking his forehead.
“And when I tell you to run, you will run and never look back. Understood?” Mäskis-Gunnar spoke, dead serious. Josua could only nob.
“One more thing…” Mäskis-Gunnar muttered, stopping halfway on his path towards the ladder. He picked up the hammer from the table and spun it around his deft fingers, once, twice, thrice, then slid the handle into tight a five-fingered grip.
Josua would dismiss the gesture as his friend’s typical fidgety mannerisms. If not for the way Mäskis-Gunnar was leering at him, eyes ominously shadowed by the goggles strung just above his eyebrows.
“...you wouldn’t snitch on me, would you?”
“Never!” Josua shook his head as vigorously as he could, curls bouncing from the momentum. Kurt would be the last person in the world to know about this, for he’d just broken every rule in the rulebook in a fit of rebellion.
“Clever boy.” Mäskis-Gunnar snickered. He turned around and climbed up the ladder, while Josua removed his sweaty gear.
At Mäskis-Gunnar’s high-pitched ‘Go!’, Josua scrambled up the ladder and burst through the door, shoes meeting earth at long last. He ran as fast as his legs would carry him – down the hill, past the rolling grassfields, and through the little wooden houses clustering more densely with each step.
Josua let the cooling wind card through his hair. Under the warm expanse of the dawn sky, stars gracefully giving way to the first rays of the morning sun, the boy felt like he could finally breathe.
Eventually, the familiar rooftop of his house appeared over the horizon. His sprinting slowed to a stop. Josua hoped to sneak in without alarming Kurt.
Josua slowly creaked open the door.
His plan was thwarted by Kurt, who was sitting on the sofa, fingers clutching his hair. His neck snapped at a sharp, almost painful angle to stare at the shy figure peeking through the door.
“Josua?” Kurt cried. His face twisted with unadulterated relief. He lunged towards Josua, yanking the door open. Kurt pulled his only son into a tight, warm embrace, as if the boy would slip through his arms like an apparition if he were to let go.
“Where were you, son? I was so worried, I thought you’d –” Kurt’s voice was uncharacteristically shaky with emotion.
“I’m really sorry, I lost track of time and fell asleep against a tree near the…the outskirts of the berry farm. I promise I won’t do it again.” Josua whimpered. He truly did feel bad for getting his father worried sick like this.
“You better not give me another heart attack!” Kurt laughed. He seemed to be more relieved than angry, much to Josua’s own relief. Kurt pulled away and glanced at him with tired, watery eyes that illustrated a night of mounting anxiety and dread – flashes of his son lying injured in ditch, unable to scream for help, or his small body restrained and kidnapped by outsiders, or worst of all, Josua packing up the few possessions he had to leave Gamabämark by his own free will, leaving Kurt all alone, never once looking back.
Kurt’s nose wrinkled.
“What is that smell?”
Josua felt like a deer in headlights. There’s no way he didn’t smell like the garbage dump he was just in.
“Uh…I think I sat in some animal dung. Sorry.”
Kurt released a cackle of haughty laughter.
“As expected of a slob like you.” Kurt sneered, jerking his hands away. “Go bathe yourself before you get your filth all over the house. Shoo!”
Josua scuttled into his bedroom before his father could fling any more insults at him.
After he shut his door, Josua reached into his pants pocket to pull out his treasure:
A single crystal of rock candy, coloured a hue of pretty transparent pink. It took the shape of a rough prism, almost as big as two of his fingers. Josua’s never seen something so delicious in his young life. And so, he gave in to the urge to swipe it into his pocket when Mäskis-Gunnar wasn’t looking.
Josua couldn’t wait for Kurt to leave the house to take his place on his throne. He would have all the time in the world to thoroughly enjoy the candy he and his best friend cooked together.