Chocolate

There is a place not so far away. You can’t miss it - it’s hardly a hair breadth away, only the other side of the rain, just beyond the dark side of the sun. Yet feet will not take you there, not unless by a round about route, and an engine will only carry you miles in the other direction.
In this place, not so long ago, there lived a girl. She was about as remarkable as porridge and the immaculate conception, as fair as coal in snow, and as beautiful as an early morning walk in the grey. Her name, for all it’s worth, was Coraline and she wore it like a toad wears its skin. What other details are there? She was, I guess, born ten years old but there is nothing extraordinary about that, save that she had barely exited the womb when her mother fell sick and died. Poor Coraline. Poor Mother.

When the corpse had gone quite pale, and mourning eyes had bled all moisture, the family set the body upon a chair at the centre of the house. Save for the sniffling Aunties, who dabbed at their moist faces with handkerchiefs, there was a long moment of silence.
Then the corpse stirred.
Dropping its rolling jaw, a single monosyllabic exclamation fell from the dead mouth.
Death spoke.
“Chocolate.”
It said.
So from that day on the corpse sat and was fed. Chocolate, biscuits, turkish delight and bananas - Cereals, dried fish, rosy apples and succulent veal - Cogs and sand, sweat and tears. The corpse ate all these with the insatiable gluttony of the dead. Ate and grew, and grew, and grew so that soon the body drooped over the sides of the chair and tides of its flesh engulfed the room.
And still the corpse ate.

With the years it continued to grow – it grew and it grew and it grew. By the time Coraline was 12 the corpse was already pushing against the living room walls. At 15, the limp weeping flesh had rolled through the doors and crept into the corridors. Soon it spread to other rooms, until it had blacked out every window. In this way the rolls of fat invaded each corner of the house, marching to the resounding rhythm of chomping teeth, yet those slower and more ponderous than a chewing cow.

Where does our story start? The answer, I think, is at the top of the stairs, for it was there that Coraline sat. Inches from her toes the corpse’s sweaty flesh was creeping up the stairs, slowly, slowly.
Coraline herself was absorbed in a book of poetry, but occasionally she would extend one pert toe to jab the flab in idle insolence. Poke. Poke. Upstairs was Coraline’s territory. Poke. Poke. It was like jabbing jelly fish on the beach. Poke. Poke. After this continued harassment, the flab stirred unhappily and retreated in a gurgling surge.
Glancing up from the page, Coraline watched its withdraw. After a moment she placed a finger to mark her page and shifted her butt down a step. Having settled, she extended her leg once more. Poke. Poke.

Downstairs a flurry of servants bounced across the flesh, stumbling and tottering as their feet sunk into the damp meat. In their arms they bore all manner of foods. Back and forth they went, in a long line stretching from the kitchen to the living room, like a parade of frenzied ants.
In the living room a platform had been constructed. Reaching out from the far wall it swayed precariously until it reached the middle of the room, where, below, the corpse’s wide mouth gaped.
It was a huge cavernous maul that could have swallowed an ox whole. Jagged yellow teeth rimed its vast pit and a limp red tongue sprawled over their dulled points.
Yet if this visual imagery is the stuff of nightmares, what was more terrible was the sound that emerged from the mouth. It was a horrific sound, a sound that struck horror into the hearts of the brave and shook angels from their clouds. For the sound that came from that mouth was sobbing. Low and soft, the mouth cried piteously day and night.