The Candy Imps

The Candy Imps
(294 words)

“So, ya got a lot of candy there, huh?”  Gina hung in the doorway, eyeing the huge pile of Halloween candy on her five-year old sister’s bed.

“Yup!  And you didn’t get any, ‘cause you were sick,” Mary teased.

“I’m too old to go trick-or-treating with you little kids,” Gina condescended in a voice hoarse from her cold.  There was a Snickers bar on the bed, her favorite.  “Besides, I wouldn’t want to get a visit from the Candy Imps.”  Gina turned to leave, but paused a few steps away, waiting for the response she knew would come.

“Candy Imps?  What are they?”

Gina wiped the triumphant smile off her lips before turning back.  “Candy Imps come to get you if you have too much candy.  They creep out from under the bed,” she watched Mary jerk her feet off the floor and tuck them up beneath her, “and they sniff out the candy.  But they don’t just take the candy.”

“They don’t?” Mary squeaked, her eyes fearful.

“They take the candy and the kid.  So if I were you,” Gina advised, “I’d get rid of some of it.”  She let that prediction of doom sink in and got juice from the kitchen. 

As Gina returned, she noticed Mary gazing at her candy with unhappy suspicion.  She planned to tell more lurid details and take half the candy, but Mary looked so scared.

“If ya give me the Snickers, I’ll tell ya more.”

A moment later, Gina confided between bites of chocolaty goodness, “Candy Imps can only come on Halloween, and since it’s past midnight – you’re safe!”  She smiled as she watched Mary’s face light up with relief.

Gina returned to her room thinking half of Mary’s candy would’ve added pounds to the scale, anyway.