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    Sour Candy
    Sour Candy
    Sour Candy
    Ebook107 pages1 hour

    Sour Candy

    By Kealan Patrick Burke

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    At first glance, Phil Pendleton and his son Adam are just an ordinary father and son, no different from any other. They take walks in the park together, visit county fairs, museums, and zoos, and eat overlooking the lake. Some might say the father is a little too accommodating given the lack of discipline when the child loses his temper in public. Some might say he spoils his son by allowing him to set his own bedtimes and eat candy whenever he wants. Some might say that such leniency is starting to take its toll on the father, given how his health has declined.

    What no one knows is that Phil is a prisoner, and that up until a few weeks ago and a chance encounter at a grocery store, he had never seen the child before in his life.

    A new novella from the Bram Stoker Award-winning author of THE TURTLE BOY and KIN.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKealan Patrick Burke
    Release dateNov 13, 2015
    ISBN9781519915214
    Sour Candy
    Author

    Kealan Patrick Burke

    Born and raised in a small harbor town in the south of Ireland, Kealan Patrick Burke knew from a very early age that he was going to be a horror writer. The combination of an ancient locale, a horror-loving mother, and a family full of storytellers, made it inevitable that he would end up telling stories for a living. Since those formative years, he has written five novels, over a hundred short stories, six collections, and edited four acclaimed anthologies. In 2004, he was honored with the Bram Stoker Award for his novella The Turtle Boy. Kealan has worked as a waiter, a drama teacher, a mapmaker, a security guard, an assembly-line worker at Apple Computers, a salesman (for a day), a bartender, landscape gardener, vocalist in a grunge band, curriculum content editor, fiction editor at Gothic.net, and, most recently, a fraud investigator. When not writing, Kealan designs book covers  through his company Elderlemon Design. A movie based on his short story "Peekers" is currently in development as a major motion picture.

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    Reviews for Sour Candy

    3.5/5

    389 ratings26 reviews

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    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      A well written fast paced horror mystery to pass the time.
    • 1/5
      I saw the movie Vivarium. This was the same concept. If I had not watched it first, then maybe I would have enjoyed it, but it was like watching a rerun.
    • 1/5
      This read like a crappy Creepypasta. The author LOVES run on sentences. He also loves focusing on women's attractiveness when it's completely irrelevant to the storyline. This book was so short even though he filled it up with unnecessary verbage. Boring, predictable, forgettable.
    • 4/5
      Cthulu vibes + pagan horrors + Twilight Zone = one unforgettable short-but-sour-candy-sweet read
    • 4/5
      I nice bite sized creepy read for a lazy day. There was enough fine detail in this short story to really pull you into the book's world, but not so much that it bogs down the entire piece. There's just enough left to the imagination.
      This story doesn't depend on gore or traditional murderous villains to fuel the story. Instead it shows you a unique type of terror that keeps you wondering.
      I didn't love the ending, but didn't hate it. I guess I expected a bit more of a shock at the end. Something that you don't see coming that makes you keep thinking of it long after the book has ended. Most the book fits that bill, but the end for me just fell a bit flat.
      Overall one of my favorite recent reads though and one I've recommended to many people.
    • 5/5
      Just my type of story! Classic man tortured by eldritch horror vibes, which I love, but also startling imagery which makes me want to see this on the big screen someday...
    • 2/5
      could have been worse i guess ? ? ? ?
    • 5/5
      Haunting story, creepy, feeling unsettled reading it...recommended to read in 1 sitting
    • 5/5
      OH MY GOSH! .... I am literally speechless ! I have recently gotten into reading like NEVER before and I came across this book this morning. I struggle to finish books when reading them and not listening to audiobooks due to getting stuck on a particular sentence and feeling my inflection is off just slightly, then continuing to re-read said sentence for an eternity and eventually throwing said book down to never pick it back up. However I have been getting better and mustering through, so when I saw this book being only a little over one hundred pages I thought I can do that! I am SO happy I did! I finished it in record time... for me haha. It was an off the rails rollercoaster of emotions! Just as I thought I knew what was going on and how the story may play out, WHAM!!! I was thrown into a triple barrel loop upside down and back over again into a completely unexpected series of events beginning to play out. Most definitely NOT predictable and I loved it! Cannot wait to read all of KPBs' work.
    • 5/5
      This was a quick read but wow! It was fantastic and chilling from beginning to end. In that short time the characters grew on me and you really root for Phil the whole time. It got me thinking about what I'd do in that situation and it's quite mind-bending! Give it a read, it won't disappoint you!
    • 5/5
      Definitely got me from the beginning and kept my attention to the end!
    • 2/5
      It was an interesting story to be honest. I wanted to give it a shot but it wasn't my forte I suppose which is fine but this was a very strange and unsettling story. I felt bad for Phil because his whole world was flipped and did a complete change on him.
    • 4/5
      A good book, kept me on the edge of my seat.
    • 1/5
      Didn't care for it at all. Not my thing I guess.
    • 4/5
      Great stuff, lots of twists and turns and some unexpected.
    • 4/5
      Good short story.
      Good pacing for a 100 page story.
    • 4/5
      An odd, unsettling thriller novel with an interesting and unique plot. It took me about forty minutes to read, a nice bitesized novella for those seeking a strange story to set themselves on edge about weird children (and have a weird craving sour candy.)

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Definitely different. Draws you in quite well. Not bad at all.

      2 people found this helpful

    • 2/5
      It was average, but everything was pretty surface level stuff.
    • 3/5
      Not bad for a quick read. It was clever enough, but suffers from the most strangely written women. Some story beats and elements I felt were over-explained, and too-quickly, while others felt underdeveloped and abandoned. It’s all a bit lopsided. Even so, many of the individual horror components were interesting enough to make it worth the low page investment follow-through.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      the beginning got me chills but in my opinion the ending is quite flat

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Really good! I enjoyed this book! It was weird and creepy!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Well that was an interesting and wild ride. ? I can't say that that I expected a single thing that happened. ? But what a fun little horror romp. Recommend!

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      It was so unsettling, dark and twisted. Finished it in a single sitting. Loved it

      1 person found this helpful

    • 2/5
      Started out to be a very promising storyline and sounded like something I thought I’d really like. Eerie and unusual but I didn’t the get the closure for the character I wanted.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This book freaks me out. I can imagine myself experiencing the life-turn like his.. Nah, I'll choose to ignore it and walk away in the first place. The lesson is don't take a candy from a stranger

      4 people found this helpful

    Book preview

    Sour Candy - Kealan Patrick Burke

    FOUR MONTHS TO THE day he first encountered the boy at Walmart, the last of Phil Pendleton’s teeth fell out.

    1. The Scream

    WHEN THE CHILD STARTED screaming, Phil Pendleton had his arms loaded with chocolate bars and his girlfriend cooing in his ear. Later he would think of the moment prior to that klaxon-like intrusion as one of utter bliss, a rare occasion in which his customary concerns were in absentia.

    It was a Saturday, so he was off work and had woken up pleasurably late after a night of equally pleasurable lovemaking. And while he had briefly considered doing some much-delayed yardwork today (if only to stave off the disapproving looks of his neighbors), Lori had convinced him to actually take the day off and join her in doing nothing more taxing than lounging before the TV with a veritable stockpile of chocolate. As the invitation had been extended while she stood in the bathroom doorway wearing nothing but her pink silk underwear, and with the memory of her uncharacteristic sexual abandon still fresh in his mind, he hadn’t needed to be asked twice.

    His mission was a simple one: procure as much chocolate as possible and return home, a task which saw him standing in the candy aisle at Walmart, Lori doling out her requests over the phone in between bouts of sexual innuendo as he tried to focus on the overwhelming selection on the shelves before him.

    Yes, he would have said the day was a fine one indeed.

    Then the scream had come, so abrupt and so unexpected, Phil’s whole body jerked as if someone had punched him between the shoulder blades. Jamie Lee Curtis had screamed like that in Halloween. Loons did too. A half dozen or so chocolate bars rained from the cradle of his arm to the floor, smacking against his feet. Only his quick reflexes kept his cell phone from joining it. This last was a relief. As Lori was so fond of reminding him, he’d had to replace the phone twice this year already due to natural clumsiness.

    What in God’s name was that? The fire alarm? Lori asked. In the fright, the phone had slipped down to his cheek. Only luck had kept it pinned there. Now, hands unexpectedly free of candy, he grabbed it and put it back to his ear.

    No. Someone’s kid. As he said this last, he looked to his right, to the source of the sound.

    There were a half dozen or so shoppers wandering the aisle. Many of them were making concentrated efforts not to look at the thin woman standing midway down the aisle, or the towheaded child currently tugging at the hem of her unseasonably heavy coat. On the faces of the shoppers, Phil saw his own emotions reflected back at him: irritation, pity, and relief.

    Irritation at the obnoxious introduction of such a hostile and unwelcome sound into the general lazy-Saturday ambience of the store.

    Pity at the sight of the browbeaten woman forced to accept responsibility for her child’s misbehavior.

    And relief that the child belonged to someone else.

    This last was particularly relevant to Phil. Infrequent paternal impulses notwithstanding, he had never wanted children. Indeed his first and only marriage had ended for that very reason. Despite the agreement that they remain childless and therefore free to live their lives untethered by such suffocating obligations, over time his ex-wife’s position morphed into mourning that she would never be a mother. Seeing the naked sadness in her eyes whenever they were around the sons and daughters of their friends, Phil had agreed to consider altering his own stance on the subject. But his heart had never been in it. His own childhood had been a train wreck, and rather than emerge from that endurance test better prepared for parenthood, he suspected it had probably ruined such prospects for life. Whatever the case, he wasn’t in any great hurry to find out. His hope had been that, given time, Stacey would realize the limitations a child would impose upon their lives and bury her maternal need. She hadn’t. Instead, her impulses bred anger and resentment toward him, rendering him little more than an obstruction to the natural course of her life. Even so he might have stood a chance of pleading his case if not for the unwavering, and often openly hostile support of her friends, few of whom had cared for him from the beginning. Their dissolution had been a cold one, and despite halfhearted efforts to stay in touch, they never did unless the topic was a practical one, such as ownership of certain items discovered in the basement of the house they’d once shared.

    Now, as Phil looked at the child with the runny nose and puffy eyes, his clothes remarkably pristine and oddly old-fashioned, he wished Stacey were here if only so he could use the kid as an example of why he had never conceded to her wishes. This, he would tell her, is just a taste of what we’d have been forced to put up with.

    Aware that he was staring but unable to stop, drawn to the sad tableau as one might be to the interaction of animals in an enclosure, Phil moved his gaze back to the mother and immediately felt a pulse of guilt for his uncharitable thoughts.

    Honey?

    Yeah, babe, he said into the phone.

    What’s going on?

    I think you can guess.

    The woman might once have been beautiful. All the elements were there, but appeared to have been sullied by hardship and filtered by distress so that to find them, one had to look harder than her appearance invited. Her dirty blonde hair was in disarray, as if she hadn’t bothered to brush it after getting out of bed, or had, in some fit of rage or desperation, tried to pull it out. Or perhaps that was the child’s doing, for in his eyes, behind the shimmering tears, Phil thought he detected a glimmer of glee, as if nothing gave the kid greater pleasure than the reaction his histrionics wrought from his suffering mother. Indeed there appeared to be the slightest upward curve at the corners of the child’s bow-shaped lips.

    In contrast to her son’s rosy complexion, the woman was pallid and drawn, cheekbones pushing against her waxy skin like hangers beneath a sheet. The cold fluorescents did her no favors either. She looked lost, her focus not on the child yanking at her threadbare

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