Empire of the Candy Cannibals
How many head do they have to kill each month so he can pay for his father’s nursing home? How many humans do they have to slaughter for him to forget how he laid Leo down in his cot, tucked him in, sang him a lullaby, and the next day saw he had died in his sleep? How many hearts need to be stored in boxes for the pain to be transformed into something else? But the pain, he intuits, is the only thing that keeps him breathing. Without the sadness, he has nothing left.
The world of Empire of the Candy Cannibals is one that, save for water, is almost made entirely of pastel colored, sugary sweets. If you’ve ever seen art from the Milton Bradley boardgame Candy Land, the Sugar Rush segments in Wreck-It-Ralph, or the Candy Kingdom ruled by Princess Bubblegum in Adventure Time, you’ll have a clear picture of this world’s aesthetic. Peppermint forests, vast plains of bright pink or fuchsia grasslands, rolling hills of chocolate chip cookie earth, tall trees grow in primeval and gnarled lolly forests, stones and mountains made of shiny, multicolored, and glassy rock candy mines – that’s all in here.
While no one culture is certain as why the world is made out of candy and is so inhospitable to human life, all cultures share a legend that the majority of reality was suddenly “cursed” into becoming made out of sweets – whether this was because humanity pissed off the gods, a mystic war was fought between the ancients, or because of sheer cosmic bad luck is anyone’s guess. All that is agreed upon is that the world was not always this terrifying and harsh a place to survive in.
Candy is not nutritious and meat and edible plant life are both rare and treasured above all else. While most animals have some protein on them, the majority of their bodies are inedible hunks of jelly that, if eaten for too long, can cause diabetic shock called “sweet sickness”.
The most meaty (and thus nutritious) beings in this world call themselves “humans”, but they are not humans like us.
I have reckoned upon a medium, that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, encreaseth to 28 pounds. I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.
These humans are a tall, bipedal, brightly colored hominid-esque species who are mostly made of meat save for their candied hair and a thin, flexible shell of hard candy over their skin that offers some basic protection from beasts and the elements. Though it is theoretically the most easy type of nutrition to come by, most of the ancient societies of these candied humans viewed eating each other as the greatest taboo and often found other sources of food to avoid this fate for their respective societies.
However, with the advent of industrialization in the island nation of Dulcem, the world is rapidly shifting towards becoming a place built upon the cannibalistic exploitation of other humans for the benefit of the rich.
This system cannot last.
When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.