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pinemotel · 21 days

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The Trick to Eating Chocolate

Part 1 of an ongoing story. See the index and content warnings here.

When Joe Piccoli had set out to grab a few things from the pantry that day, he had expected a journey that was identical to the last day’s journey, which had been identical to the journey of the day before that. What he had not expected to encounter was the brazen insult that now stood before him.

“Dear sneak-thief”, read the handwritten cursive on the folded note that stood as high as he was tall, “if you want something to eat, just ask!”

Sneak-thief. Sneak-thief! The audacity of it. Didn’t his new neighbour know that Joe was practically the landlord when squatter’s rights were taken into account? Oh, but that was not the end of it! That tall bastard was not only accusing him of being a thief for taking food from his pantry, but clearly attempting to murder him as well. The note had been set upon a small saucer, and on that plate was a brick of brown gold that the guys down at the docks would kill for: a piece of chocolate about the length of his forearm. Easily worth a fortune, deadly though it often was.

To top it all off, the offering had been placed next to the wall in the kitchen, directly outside of Joe’s favourite entry and exit hole where the pipe from the kitchen radiator entered the floor, as if this human whom he now regrettably had to share air with were saying, I know where you live.

Still, as he circled around the saucer and examined the delicate floral designs that, being hand painted by a giant, left much detail to be desired, he couldn’t help but think that this peace offering had some merit to it. If there were one thing it was almost impossible for a tiny like him to acquire, it was chocolate. Unlike the stray crumbs of chips or the half-eaten pieces of toast or even the stray spillings of sugar that lingered on countertops everywhere, the big people either devoured their chocolate down to the last atom, or kept it sealed away in boxes or wrappings that were a nightmare to get into.

So it was no secret to the borrowers who knew their stuff that, if a human ever wanted to get rid of a tiny infestation quickly and easily, all they had to do was offer up some chocolate that had been laced with rat poison. The poor fools of the world who ate it would be dead within the day. Many tinies who had a death wish would stubbornly partake knowing full well it could kill them; a delicacy was a delicacy after all. Joe was one such individual, and to date he had survived a total of three poisonings. There was a trick to eating chocolate and surviving, Joe had discovered, knowledge that had narrowly cost him his life to acquire.

He pulled out his boot knife and shaved off a piece about the size of his thumb and no larger – that was the first step. The second step was to take exactly one bite of it, and so he did. The third step was to wait for the nausea and the chills to set in. It was an inexact science. An act of playing chicken with death. Sometimes the sickness set in within minutes of the first bite depending on the amount of poison that had been used; other times it set in closer to the third. At most he had a half an hour before it doubled him over. Smarter borrowers than he would wonder why Joe would bother taste testing such a thing at all, but if there were any delicacy greater than poisoned chocolate down at the docks, it was unpoisoned chocolate – the white whale every career borrower dreamed of finding and reselling at least once in their lives.

As he sat on the edge of the saucer and waited, he tried not to let his hopes of finding that white whale get the best of him. There was not a single human in the world, he was certain, who didn’t have ulterior motives. His thoughts turned to the human who had invaded his home. What had given him away? Had the tall bastard found his footprints? Had he dropped something on his travels? Had - god forbid - he been spotted while roaming what had at one point been his house? If you want something to eat, just ask! As though that doctor was the boss of the place!

The clock in the parlour ticked away as the afternoon shadows crept along Victorian green wallpaper that had to be well over 50 years old by now. Motes of dust drifted lazily through the still air, as though they were only half-heartedly bound by the passage of time. Joe, who very much was bound by the passage of time, felt no chills. He took the second bite and continued to think.

A haunting realization hit him much too late: if this man were a doctor, perhaps the poison was more discreet than the average person’s. Maybe Joe was a dead man walking already. Maybe so much as touching the stuff with his bare hands had already marked him for death. His mind cycled back through every instance of cruelty from the big people he had witnessed in his young life, of which there were many: stompings, torchings, crushings, among countless other heinous crimes. If he were already good as dead, what would the doctor in all his humanity do with him afterwards? Would he be dissected? Put on display? Sold to some science museum? Grappling with the sudden regret of his decision, he started weighing his options. Should he induce vomiting? Would it help at all if he did?

In spite of all his worrying, the chills still hadn’t set in. He felt no pain. No tingling. The half hour had passed unceremoniously; if he were going to drop dead, it was taking an awful long time to happen.

That hope rose within him once again, louder now and the hope – well, that was what killed you, Joe reasoned. Either that or it made you rich. In this case, the amount of chocolate he had been left with would easily be enough to buy himself a place on the housing list of his local Tiny Town, so that he could have the privilege of waiting three years to once again have a home all to himself... provided he could remain financially stable enough to pay the rent.

If this was the Canadian dream, he didn’t want to know what the American tinies were getting up to.

Dead man or not, as the time kept ticking by the point came where he had to know for certain: he had to take bite number three. Every borrower had their respective borrowing “style,” as those in the trade called it, and his style just happened to involve fucking around and finding out. They didn’t call him Cast-iron Joe for nothing, he supposed.

His frustration grew as the clock kept ticking, and the shadows kept creeping, and the motes kept drifting, and all the while he remained stubbornly alive after three bites of dubiously poisoned chocolate; an aliveness that raised a question that vexed him:

Why?

Why would this doctor be nice to him? Why would he offer him food? Why write to him? Why do any of this? He began to feel dirty, somehow. Disgusted with himself. He wanted to crawl out of his own skin and run far away from this house and this kind man who would call him a sneak-thief but feed him a delicacy nonetheless without even bothering to try to kill him with it. Joe knew that even eating the food that had been left out for him was the sort of thing the guys at the docks would call “pet behaviour” – but what they didn’t know wouldn’t kill them, and the less they knew, the richer he would be in the long run.

He took out his knife and carved off another piece, a larger one this time, taking bite number four, then five, until he was passively munching on it as if it were any other afternoon snack. With each bite and each passing minute the looming threat of death grew weaker and weaker, until-

-the porch steps creaked under the human’s heavy footsteps and a key scraped the lock from down the hallway, snapping Joe back to attention. Fear paralyzed him, as though he were a boy about to be caught misbehaving by his father. The chime of the clock striking six rang in his ears as if the house itself had issued its condemnation, causing all thought to leave him. Then a newer, larger shadow crept along the house’s walls, closer and closer to where Joe stood. Even the motes seemed to scatter in a frenzy as the human, with all his thumping and bumping and banging and clunking, disturbed the quiet peace of what had once been Joe’s sanctuary. Joe scattered along with them, skidding into the space between the floor and the pipe – but not before taking the brick of chocolate along with him.

In the safety of the floorboards, clutching his prize as it slowly melted into the sleeves of his jacket, he dared not move a muscle as the footsteps drew closer and closer, until they shook the wood above and hammered in his very head. He could faintly see the wooden slats shift under the human’s weight as the doctor knelt down to inspect what remained of his offering.

Through the floorboards, Joe could hear the incredulous doctor let out a low chuckle that somehow only managed to add further insult, for it was not unlike the way an adult would chuckle at a small child. Against his better judgment, Joe crept closer to the light above, pulled by that morbid curiosity, that lingering why. He only ever saw the doctor in glimpses, and each time it had been involuntary, but now he couldn’t help but find himself drawn back to the light above like a man in search of forbidden knowledge.

As he craned his neck up from his place in the darkness, Joe could just make out the blur of the human’s hands before he was blinded by the spark-and-burn of a struck match and the darkness was no more. His dumbstruck gaze was met with a single, gigantic eyeball peering at him from behind the flame, the orange light dancing across its bands of amber-brown colour. The eye blinked and narrowed, then widened into a shocked expression that matched Joe’s own.

Primordial fear overtook him at the sight. He fell back in shock, scrambled to his feet, and sprinted into the darkness. As he ran, the voice of the doctor, omnipresent as the voice of a god rang through him:

“Wait, don’t run! Come back!”

The floorboards shook again in what Joe could only imagine were the doctor’s attempts to pull the floor open and grab him. He didn’t know for certain what the man’s motives were and he didn’t care: he had escaped with his life and five thousand scraps’ worth of unpoisoned chocolate. The rest, Joe decided, as exhaustion forced him to come to a halt all the way across the other side of the house, he would figure out tomorrow.

Oh, how he wished this day had been a normal day like any other. Something told him tomorrow would be even worse.

If you've read this far, you may want to check out the next part here! Thank you so much for taking interest in my work.

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