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Across the table, the devil lifted up his first paper plate, rolling it up and using the tube to pour frogs into a mouth that seemed to expand. His jaw unhinged like a snake. He picked up a second plate.
Nikki swallowed frog after frog, sugar scraping her throat, racing to catch up.
Doug slid a new pile in front of Nikki and she started eating. She was in the zone. One frog, then another, then a sip of water. The cloying sweetness scraped her throat raw, but she kept eating.
The devil poured a third plate of candy down his throat, then a fourth. At the seventh plate, the devil paused with a groan. He untucked his shirt and undid the button on his dress pants to pat his engorged belly. He looked full.
Nikki stuffed candy in her mouth, suddenly filled with hope.
The devil chuckled and unsheathed a knife from the top of his cane.
“What are you doing?” Doug shouted.
“Just making room,” the devil said. Pressing the blade to his belly, he slit a line in his stomach. Dozens upon dozens of gooey half-chewed frogs tumbled into the dirt.
Nikki stared at him, paralyzed with dread. Her fingers still held a frog, but she didn’t bring it to her lips. She had no hope of wi
Doug looked away from the mess of partially digested candy. “That’s cheating!”
The devil tipped up the seventh plate into his widening mouth and swallowed ten frogs at once. “Nothing in the rules against it.”
Nikki wondered what it would be like to have no soul. Would she barely miss it? Could she still dream? Without one, would she have no more guilt or fear or fun? Maybe without a soul she wouldn’t even care that Boo was dead.
The devil cheated. If she wanted to win, she had to cheat too.
On her sixth plate, Nikki started sweating, but she knew she could finish. She just couldn’t finish before he did.
She had to beat him in quantity. She had to eat more sour gummy frogs than he did.
“I feel sick,” Nikki said.
“Don’t you know.” Doug shook his head vigorously. “Fight it.”
Nikki bent over, holding her stomach. While hidden by the table, she picked up one of the slimy, chewed-up frogs that had been in the devil’s stomach and popped it in her mouth. The frog tasted like sweetness and dirt and something rotten.
The nausea was real this time. She choked and forced herself to swallow around the sour taste of her own gorge.
Sitting up, she saw that the devil had finished all his frogs. She still had two more plates to go.
“I win,” the devil said. “No need to keep eating.”
Doug sunk fingers into his hair and tugged. “He’s right.”
“No way.” Nikki gulped down another mouthful of candy. “I’m finishing my plates.”
She ate and ate, ignoring how the rubbery frogs stuck in her throat. She kept eating. Swallowing the last sour gummy frog, she stood up. “Are you finished?”
“I’ve been finished for ages,” said the devil.
“Then I win.”
The devil yawned. “Impossible.”
“I ate one more frog than you did,” she said. “So I win.”
He pointed his cane at Doug. “If you cheated and gave her another frog, we’ll be doing this contest over and you’ll be joining us.”
Doug shook his head. “It took me an hour to count out those frogs. They were exactly even.”
“I ate one of the frogs from your gut,” Nikki said. “I picked it up off the ground and I ate it.”
“That’s disgusting!” Doug said.
“Five second rule,” Nikki said. “If it’s in the devil for less than five seconds, it’s still good.”
“That’s cheating,” said the devil. He sounded half-admiring and half-appalled, reminding her of her boss’s son at The Sweet Tooth.
She shook her head. “Nothing in the rules against it.”
The devil scowled for a moment, then bowed shallowly. “Well done, Nicole. Count on seeing me again soon.” With those words, he ambled toward the bus station. He paused in front of Trevor’s trailer, pulled out a handful of envelopes from the mailbox, and kept going.
Nikki’s mother’s car pulled into the lot, Boo’s head visible in the passenger side window. His tongue lolled despite the absurd cone-shaped collar around his neck.
Nikki hopped up on top of the picnic table and shrieked with joy, leaping around, the sugar and adrenaline and relief making her giddy.
She stopped jumping. “You know what?”
He looked up at her. “What?”
“I think my summer is starting not to suck so much.”
Doug sat down on a bench so hard that she heard the wood strain. The look he gave her was pure disbelief.
“So,” Nikki asked, “you want to get some lunch?”
Young Goodman Brown
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Young Goodman Brown came forth at sunset into the street at Salem village; but put his head back, after crossing the threshold, to exchange a parting kiss with his young wife. And Faith, as the wife was aptly named, thrust her own pretty head into the street, letting the wind play with the pink ribbons of her cap while she called to Goodman Brown.
“Dearest heart,” whispered she, softly and rather sadly, when her lips were close to his ear, “prithee put off your journey until sunrise and sleep in your own bed to-night. A lone woman is troubled with such dreams and such thoughts that she’s afeard of herself sometimes. Pray tarry with me this night, dear husband, of all nights in the year.”
“My love and my Faith,” replied young Goodman Brown, “of all nights in the year, this one night must I tarry away from thee. My journey, as thou callest it, forth and back again, must needs be done ’twixt now and sunrise. What, my sweet, pretty wife, dost thou doubt me already, and we but three months married?”
“Then God bless you!” said Faith, with the pink ribbons; “and may you find all well when you come back.”
“Amen!” cried Goodman Brown. “Say thy prayers, dear Faith, and go to bed at dusk, and no harm will come to thee.”
So they parted; and the young man pursued his way until, being about to turn the corner by the meeting-house, he looked back and saw the head of Faith still peeping after him with a melancholy air, in spite of her pink ribbons.
“Poor little Faith!” thought he, for his heart smote him. “What a wretch am I to leave her on such an errand! She talks of dreams, too. Methought as she spoke there was trouble in her face, as if a dream had warned her what work is to be done tonight. But no, no; ’t would kill her to think it. Well, she’s a blessed angel on earth; and after this one night I’ll cling to her skirts and follow her to heaven.”
With this excellent resolve for the future, Goodman Brown felt himself justified in making more haste on his present evil purpose. He had taken a dreary road, darkened by all the gloomiest trees of the forest, which barely stood aside to let the narrow path creep through, and closed immediately behind. It was all as lonely as could be; and there is this peculiarity in such a solitude, that the traveller knows not who may be concealed by the i
“There may be a devilish Indian behind every tree,” said Goodman Brown to himself; and he glanced fearfully behind him as he added, “What if the devil himself should be at my very elbow!”
His head being turned back, he passed a crook of the road, and, looking forward again, beheld the figure of a man, in grave and decent attire, seated at the foot of an old tree. He arose at Goodman Brown’s approach and walked onward side by side with him.
“You are late, Goodman Brown,” said he. “The clock of the Old South was striking as I came through Boston, and that is full fifteen minutes agone.”
“Faith kept me back a while,” replied the young man, with a tremor in his voice, caused by the sudden appearance of his companion, though not wholly unexpected.