Sweeter than Sugar

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Laila Amado

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It begins when you turn sixteen. Two weeks after your birthday, mother signs you up for a beauty pageant. The cheap, polyester taffeta of that fishtail dress she bought for the event scroops and crumples, hiking up your hips with every step. Blue mascara clumps in your lashes. You climb up the steps leading to the stage, and she takes a seat in the high school canteen hastily converted into a show venue. She sits there following your every move with anxious eyes as if your success is her ticket out of this shabby neighborhood, this decaying town, this disappointing life, and you know she’s there without looking, her unwavering attention all but burning holes in your forehead.

You try to meet her expectations and make an effort, play nice and succeed, but all the while your gaze keeps drifting to the left where the show’s director stands hidden from the audience by the dusty stage curtain. A gray-and-blue tie spills down his magenta shirt, and his suntanned fingers flipping a crunchy Sweet-n-Low packet are infinitely more interesting than a chance of winning the plastic beauty crown.

*

Then there is that time you drop the whole bowl of white and pink sweetener packets at a corporate event, right when your boss gets up on stage to announce the winners of Best Employee award in every nomination. You go down on your knees to retrieve the bowl and the many scattered packets, bumping foreheads with the tall guy from accounting who made the same dive to help you out. His wedding ring is a plain band of gold, the cologne he’s wearing carries sharp notes of sandalwood and orange peel, and the collar of his shirt—fashionable blue—is so close you can see every thread in the fabric. You wonder what his skin would taste like after a spring thunderstorm.

*

And then there is today, when you wrap up your daughter into her snowflake costume for the school musical, and the sparkles from her bodice sprinkle your hands with sugary crystals. The glittering outfit squeaks and rasps as she climbs up onto the stage, while you drift towards one of the back rows, wishing for popcorn or free drinks or pretty much any other sweet thing to carry you through the next sixty minutes of embarrassing tediousness that are middle school performances.

When the corduroy pantleg of a man sitting next to you presses against your thigh, you turn to him, eyebrows raised. He smiles in response. A pack of cigarettes he’s holding up to show you has a health warning plastered across it—a grainy photo of purple viscera smeared black—and, as you follow him out into the parking lot, you wonder if you should have passed on the opportunity.

As the man opens the door of his car for you, you hesitate just a little. As he kisses you, you kiss him back. As he squeezes your breast, you squirm and moan. As he leans back in the seat unzipping his pants, you lean forward and open your mouth wide, letting your jaws unhinge and stretch. As he screams, you wrap yourself—joints, limbs, and suction cups—around his body. You hold him close, the whole pulsing, beating sweetness of him. Your hungry mouth drips viscous liquid. Stickier than black honey and sweeter than sugar, it covers him whole and as his flesh melts against your tongue, you wonder why these things keep happening to you, why some are called monstrous and others get a pass, and if it’s fair that you always end up in a dingy van or in the back seat of a car, sticky vinyl covers chafing your skin, when the winners go up on stage and bow and glitter in the floodlights, their smiles so sweet the audience gets a sugar rush just by watching.

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Laila Amado is a nomadic writer of short fiction. She writes in her second language, has recently exchanged her fourth country of residence for the fifth, and can now be found staring at the North Sea, instead of the Mediterranean. The sea, occasionally, stares back. Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Best Small Fictions 2022, Best Microfiction 2024, Lost Balloon, Cotton Xenomorph, Cheap Pop, Milk Candy Review, and other publications.

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