“No,” I said. “There’s nothing else like them.”
Mom tossed a bag of kisses in the shopping cart and moved down the aisle. I stared at the empty place as if I could make the missing candy corn appear. It didn’t, of course.
I had to do something. I loved candy corn. I loved the way it tasted, the way it smelled, and the way it looked. I even loved the clickety-tink sound it made when you grabbed a handful from the glass candy dish. While Mom was sifting through two dozen identical bags of salad greens, in search of the best one, I walked over to the customer service desk, in search of answers.
“Can I help you?” the man on the other side asked.
“There’s no candy corn,” I said. “It’s almost Thanksgiving, and we have to buy candy corn.”
The man gave me a sad smile. “I know how you feel. I love it myself. But the manufacturer is out of it. They had some sort of production problem at the factory. We have to wait for a new supply.”
“How long will that take?” I asked.
“It’s hard to guess,” the man said. “It could be next week. Or even next month?”
“Next month?” I said in a louder voice than I’d planned. “That will be Christmastime.”
The man shrugged. “Sorry. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
Well, if he couldn’t do anything, I decided it was up to me to fix things. When we got home from the market, I looked up the candy corn company, Sweet Tooth Confections. It was just outside of town. That was close enough for me to get there on my own. Right after breakfast the next morning, I hopped on my bike and headed out.
The factory was a small brick building down a side road. There were a couple of cars in the parking lot, so I figured it was open. I pedaled up to the door, hopped off my bike, and turned the knob. It opened.
“Hello?” I called. Nobody answered. I walked inside. There was a small room with a desk. Nobody was there, either. At the back of the room, I saw a door with PRODUCTION LINE written on it.
I went through it and found myself at one end of a short hallway. I walked along it. “Hello?”
Still no answer.
The hallway led to another small room with a hole in the middle of the floor. I walked up to the hole and bent over it. I saw what looked like a sliding board.
“Weird,” I said. But there was no other way to get anywhere. I had to use the slide, or give up and go home. I’m not a quitter. I stepped on the slide, then dropped to a sitting position.
“Whoa!” I shouted. I hadn’t planned to shout, but it was a slick slide. It was a lot more slippery than any slide I’d ever been on.
It was also a long, steep slide. By the time I reached the end, I was zooming so fast the wind was buzzing in my ears. There was a ramp at the end like on a ski jump. I got launched into the air, right toward a rope with a handle on the end. It looked like some sort of zip line. I grabbed the handle and zipped across the room. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or scream, so I let out a whoop that could have been either of those things.
That’s when I saw them.
And when they saw me.
They looked like large rocks, lined up all along the room, filling shelves on either side of me. That was really weird. It got weirder when the rocks opened their eyes.
They had huge eyes, the size of basketballs.
They had much huger mouths. They all opened their mouths. Thousands of white pointy teeth glistened at me. The monsters howled and leaped at me.
I hung on to the handle.
There was a terrifying, deafening crash right behind me. I looked over my shoulder. The monsters on either side all crashed into each other, each pair just missing me as I passed them. They bounced back, right to the spot where they’d leaped from. Their eyes spun like they were dizzy.
Something shot in the air and then showered down on me. I heard thousands of clinkey-clicks as they fell to the floor.
“Yay, it works again!” someone shouted as my wild ride came to an end at a ledge and I let go of the handle.
A door opened, and people ran into the room, carrying hoses. I guess the hoses were part of a vacuum system. The people sucked up all the monster teeth. I snatched one before it could be pulled away.
“Candy corn?” I asked, staring at it. It looked like candy corn. The white tips were what I’d seen in the monsters’ mouths. I sniffed it. It smelled like candy corn. I took a tiny nibble.
It was delicious!
“Thank you!” one of the workers yelled from below. “They’d been unproductive for weeks. We couldn’t get them to leap. Our old line-zipper retired, and nobody else seemed to have what it takes. Your scream is the perfect pitch.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. Even as I watched, new teeth were growing in the monsters’ mouths. “Doesn’t it hurt them to lose their teeth?” I asked.
“Nope. They enjoy it,” the man said. “Right?”
The monsters all nodded and grinned.
“Want a job?” the man asked.
“What do I have to do?” I asked.
“The same thing you just did,” the man said.
I thought about the frightening ride. I didn’t have to think for long. “Sure,” I said. “That would be fun.” And I was deliciously good at it.
STARSCAPE BOOKS BY DAVID LUBAR
Novels
Flip
Hidden Talents
True Talents
Monsterrific Tales
Hyde and Shriek
The Vanishing Vampire
The Unwilling Witch
The Wavering Werewolf
The Gloomy Ghost
The Bully Bug
Nathan Abercrombie, Accidental Zombie Series
My Rotten Life
Dead Guy Spy
Goop Soup
The Big Stink
Enter the Zombie
Story Collections
Attack of the Vampire Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
The Battle of the Red Hot Pepper Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
Beware the Ninja Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
Check out the Library Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
The Curse of the Campfire Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
In the Land of the Lawn Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
Invasion of the Road Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
Wipeout of the Wireless Weenies and Other Warped and Creepy Tales
Teeny Weenies: Freestyle Frenzy and Other Stories
Teeny Weenies: The Intergalactic Petting Zoo and Other Stories
Teeny Weenies: My Favorite President and Other Stories
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DAVID LUBAR credits his passion for short stories to his limited attention span and bad typing skills, though he has been known to sit still and peck at the keyboard long enough to write a novel or chapter book now and then, including Hidden Talents (an ALA Best Book for Young Adults) and My Rotten Life, which is currently under development for a cartoon series. He lives in Nazareth, Pennsylvania, with his amazing wife, and not too far from his amazing daughter. In his spare time, he takes naps on the couch. You can sign up for email updates here.
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
BILL MAYER is absolutely amazing. Bill’s crazy creatures, characters, and comic creations have been sought after for magazine covers, countless articles, and even stamps for the U.S. Postal Service. He has won almost every illustration award known to man and even some known to fish. Bill and his wife live in Decatur, Georgia. They have a son and three grandsons.. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
The Boy Who Cried, “Wool!”
All You Can Eat
Busting Pumpkins
The Sock Drawer
Leave It Be
Esther’s Sentence
The Horn of Plenty
Trick and Treat
Hammer It Out
The Silver ’Shroom
Candy Corn
Starscape Books by David Lubar
About the Author and Illustrator
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations,
and events portrayed in these stories are either products of the
author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
THE BOY WHO CRIED WOOL AND OTHER STORIES
Copyright © 2019 by David Lubar
Illustrations copyright © 2019 by Bill Mayer
All rights reserved.
A Starscape Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates
120 Broadway
New York, NY 10271
www.tor-forge.com
The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
is available upon request.
ISBN 978-1-250-17349-2 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-18776-5 (ebook)
eISBN 9781250187765
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or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and
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First Edition: September 2019