Sweet Tooth

I was in the city today and I was trying to hide from the scorching sun, so I took this shortcut in between two tall buildings. It took me to this strange place I never knew existed. Let me tell you about it. Please sit down. Trust me, you want to hear it. I ate the glass! Can you imagine? I have the proof. But I will get to that. So…

Here is what happened. After taking the footpath, I mentioned earlier, I discovered a little quiet area with a pointy hut inside. It was a building, about two floors tall, made entirely out of the dark brown material I'd never seen before. Maybe a mix of clay and bright new plasticine? It was covered in colourful handles, windowsills, lamps on either corner and other ornamental features. I was stunned by the complexity of the imagery. Most importantly it was unique to any architecture around. Not just that, extraordinary to anything I have any lay my eye on. It was like the entire Late Gothic, Modernism or Art Nouveau combined in just the ornaments. On top of that, the rest of the building was made in bubbly cubism style mixed with surreal soft edges and shining hazel-hued monochrome. I froze there, admiring this entity, thinking what sort of a mind could have come up with this marvel and placed it in the shadowy spot, right in the centre of the busy town square of Berlin. I stopped questioning the origin of the humongous art project when I saw kids running right into the side of the building. I couldn't see if there was an entrance but once they crossed the right edge of the wall they disappeared. I had to follow them. I slowly walked around the side, keeping track of all the changes that I could see in the sun reflecting from the windows, covering this structure in the surrounding throwback. It was phenomenal. If I say it again, it's because it felt this way, crawling under my skin. I could feel it beyond goosebumps, there was something almost unnatural to the existence of this piece. The texture seemed imperfect, like gravel over the potholes on the road, but impressive somehow. Every cubic centimetre was different to the one before it and the one past its neighbour, yet they resonated together as one tiled mosaic. There were no seams on the three-meter walls as if it was constructed in a singular piece. Only the edges were connected. Where plasts of brown were coming in contact with one another. And then I saw it.

The kids were running in and out of the door. Not only the door but also the hole in the wall. They were standing right beside one another. The hole was the size of a large animal, on the right side of the wide-opened door. The floor was sprinkled with crumbs when the door was made. It seemed to me someone must have run through it, imagining itself a Kool Aid man. What impressed me even more, besides all the intricate details, was the different elements of this wall drawn with the white thin lines on the building. Every object had it as the comic book characters have black ink outlines around them. This door, plants on either side and a draining pipe were drawn in white. It felt like pure magic bringing this side to life. But it wasn't even the beginning of what left me speechless. Imagine me standing there, looking at the details, and thinking where the hole in the wall came from while the kids eat the brown chunk of the floor, the pieces that seemed to be part of this structure not long ago. My eyes must have popped out of their orbits because one of the kids looked at me, frowned and ran inside. I went in to see what else I am missing. And then it clicked. The mystery was waiting to be solved.

Inside I saw a dark small room space divided in two. On the left side, the bigger part of the house was the dining room with the bed in the corner. The ceiling was high even for me. The kids were grabbing anything and everything in the house. There were like 10 of them just in that room, munching on the furniture, household items and the walls. Nothing was left untouched. The garlic in the sock over the window was in the little girl's hands and she was sucking on it like it was a lollipop. By the look of it, it was actual garlic. I believed that it wasn’t when I saw the shoe in the boy's mouth. It used to be a solid object until he broke it in half and crunched on the sole. The bed was bitten from different sides by what I assume are 5 different people. At least one of the bitemarks looked different to the others.

The plates were scattered around, the forks were thrown chaotically over and under the table, and even the metal iron had a child spreading legs around it, dipping her hand into the iron’s guts, eating the coal out of it... I couldn't believe it. What an absurd situation. But that’s not the best part. The other room was a boiler/kitchen room with a huge seamless oven in the middle. That hearth must have taken 80-90% of the entire room. There was a kid crawling inside of it. My instincts kicked in and I pulled him out as he was about to fall into it. I had no idea where the kid even came from, he must have been around 4-5 years old. He just looked at me in disapprovement, ready to cry. I couldn't bear those eyes, so I picked up a broom from the corner and gave it to him. Without hesitation his lips were around the handle, he smiled at me, mouth full of polished wood. I was seeing normal objects, wasn’t I, except they were devoured by children. Did they know something I didn't? I had the most ludicrous idea. I had to try it too. I just couldn't resist. I had to know if I was imagining it. Or if it was a dream?

I kicked the leg of the table, hard enough, apparently, that it just came off and flew under the bed. The table tipped and went crushing on the floor. I assumed someone munched at the other leg at some point. One chunk of the tabletop hit the sole of my Vans. That was a sign from above. I reached down and brought the piece closer to my nose. It smelled like gingerbread. You know the ones I love so much over Christmas. It wouldn't be the first time that I thought of eating the entire box, kilos, of those crunchy glazed cookies. This table was delicious. I put the whole piece in my mouth and went looking around for other bits. The coal bits in the iron were liquorish. The kid loved liquorish. Eating it with her eyes closed smooching her lips every now and then. I have to give her some respect. I left her to it. The broom bit was orange gingerbread and the mop bits sweet liquorice laces, the ones without the funny flavour. I must have tried like 20 different things before I reached for the glass. I thought it would be crazy to build a house made out of gingerbread with real glass in the windows. But then it wouldn’t be crazier than having it made out of candy. Because I’ve never done this before I put a lot of thought into it. I kept wondering how to do it, while I ate other things. Garlic by the way was a raspberry jaffa cake. It was strange looking at it one second, expecting a pungent, bitter taste, and getting a soft biscuit layered with a jelly-like marmalade. It stopped making sense the moment I entered the house and I couldn't rationalise its existence after the taste of the waffle curtains. So here I am standing next to the window, among tiny humans, chomping down the house. Thinking about tasting every single thing, collecting them all, let’s say. It was hard for me to imagine breaking this art piece, but it became way easier when I tried the floor panels. They were made out of layered butterscotch shortbreads. How could I give up hoping the glass was candy? Then I thought about the dirt from the shoes on the floor. Should have taken them off, what a waste of a perfectly delicious flooring. A bit later, I found out that even the grass around the house was pandan-flavoured chocolate straws. Before that, I found out that not every curiosity is rewarded.

I am standing next to the window. It takes me awfully long time to think about how to break it and what are the consequences. On the touch, the glass was solid, and I had a real chance of cutting my fist if I decided to punch it out. As I was about to give up, I remembered the table leg, lost under the bed with the marshmallow pillows and a fruit marzipan duvet covered in white chocolate praline. I reached into the darkness and grabbed the leg without looking. It felt strong enough to break a skull if needed and good enough to take it home for later. I bashed the window in one hit and it exploded with the sound of shattering glass flying like a firework of shards. It looked smashing in the golden hour. Luckily it went to the outer side of the wall. One large piece of glass was still hanging in the frameless window. I grabbed it and brought it closer to my mouth. I wasn’t about to be fooled into eating processed sand. So I licked it instead. You should have been there. It made me dizzy thinking how preposterous this will sound when I tell it to someone, yet here I am. It tasted like a vanilla custard pudding. So light and crunchy. After second thought I put it in the category of a perfectly made Crème Brûlée and was ready to call it a night. The sunset was bringing darkness with it. The swirling shadows around the house and inside of it were majestic to look at. Before I left I had the last idea. To get some of the floor and garlic to take home. And then I saw it again - the hearth. I had to try it too! What if that was the real deal. You know, like a chocolate brownie or just the best single-origin chocolate you’ve ever had mixed together under a thin layer of the pistachio nougat. So far everything was exquisite, even though you know I’m not a sweet tooth. Regardless, my craving became unstoppable.

I went to the large opening. I still had the last piece of cream glass or brûlée window, call it what you want, and I wanted my hands free to look into the oven. What if there were more things in it? Large chunks of solid candy could be hard to hold in the mouth without turning or swallowing it. So I bit into it, happy that it crushed so easily until it cut me in the left cheek. I went over it with my tongue and cut that too, it appeared a sugar fragment stuck in my soft tissues. I gently squeezed my cheek until the shard slipped out of the wound. It was actually small enough for me to just crinkle it into little pieces with my front teeth. At last, I was standing in the eye of the ancient cooking device, used for heating and sleeping, in the good old days. A black mouth that could swallow a child. I liked my lips, and they got covered in the metallic aftertaste. At that moment, I thought I heard laughter coming from the darkness. I must have eaten too much candy, because, I kid you not, the witch's head appeared out of the furthest end. I wanted to come closer to see if it was real. My head and shoulders went in the oven. I held myself to the sides with my hands. Even when I went as far as I could I couldn't see anything anymore the endless darkness swallowed the light. I thought I’ve imagined everything until I felt her breath. It was rotten sweet-sour like candied sauerkraut left in the sun. My eyes started to water. I pulled back. The toothless mouth followed, coming closer and closer, and the laughter resonated in my ears. If they would start bleeding I would be glad to block some of that horrid noise. Her hands started crawling at once. Rapidly scraping the surfaces inside, raising the ash, sticking under her blade-shaped nails. I stopped breathing. All I remember, before I found myself running toward the window, was the face I could feel the heat of at the length of my eyelashes blinking back at me. It whispered in a quick succession “sweet tooth blood”. For just a moment I lost control of my bursting bladder. I catch myself staring at the broken window. I have a split second to think if I should jump through it or run out of the door. When kids started crying in a screeching unison it downed on me, I wasn't imagining my terror. I jumped through the window at once. Landing with my face on the brightest, greenest grass lawn I have ever seen in my life. It was bursting with colour even at dusk. My hands slipped on it and I facepalmed into the grass. I felt something on my shoulder. It wasn't a time to think about it. I got up and ran, hearing laughter behind me. One of the kids squealed. I rushed through the same footpath I used to enter. I ran into the busy street, littered with hipster cafes and punk outfits rocking youth.

-What happened next?

Nothing, really. I had to pee so I ran home. Only when I finally sit down, let myself think and relax, did I see how you wouldn't believe any of this... But I can show you the cut if you want.