Hey, Hivers, this time I did not feel inspired to the weekly prompt, so I went for #117 Chocolate instead. Hope you like my short story!
In the midst of what had happened, no one wanted to be interviewed, until almost by serendipity, the reporter bumped into a young man who seemed to be giving orders to the chocolate scattered everywhere.
"Excuse me, excuse me, young man, can you tell us what happened in Cocoaland?"
"Can't you see I'm on a rescue duty?" questioned the teenager.
"I just saw you talking to the chocolate. Did you want to propose? I would, too," replied the reporter abruptly.
"What are you talking about?" asked the guy open-mouthed.
"Listen! If you help us with the story, Crazy News will donate to the re-building of Cocoaland," said the reporter, extending his right hand as if enticing the teen to make a deal.
He looked around for a while, until he suddenly saw the reporter and shook his hand lightly.
"Good! Looks like we'll finally know the story behind this mess," the reporter said smiling at the camera.
"My name is Reese, I've been an inhabitant of Cocoaland for 17 years, or what's left of it. Everything you see now is the fault of a witch who arrived here a month ago. At first she pretended to be a pastry chef, but I just happened to find out it was all a lie," the young man began.
"How did that happen? Did you see her mix spider leg potions with white Hershey's?" asked the reporter in the best Crazy News style.
"Not at all!" frowned Reese to the sarcastic interviewer. One night my friends and I were bored and decided to go visit the new bakery in Cocoaland."
For a moment Reese stopped talking and gave orders to the chocolate as before. Euphorically he was saying "eat, eat more!"
The reporter couldn't help but laugh at this and almost sticking the microphone to his face, asked:
"Who are you talking to?" Chocolate can't make people go crazy, can it?"
"I'm trying to coordinate the efforts of my ants," Reese replied with a thumbs up.
"Ants? Are there ants among us?"
"Sure. They're mine and they're heroes in all of this," the young man declared with puffed out chest.
"How is that possible?"
"As I was telling you, when I visited this new bakery I noticed that the supposed baker, Mirta, worked alone. It was unheard of for someone who made hundreds of dozens of sweets that night. She looked fresh," Reese detailed.
"Maybe her assistants were asleep after all that work," suggested the shrug-shouldered interviewer.
"My friends mentioned it too when I told them about it, but then I confessed to them that I had seen how the gingermen at the counter flexed their torsos and laughed at us as we left the place.
"That's impossible," said Milton, the interviewer, grabbing his head.
At that instant Reese turned to look at the camera closely and very steadily before continuing the bakery story.
"People didn't believe at first like those watching this now, but the next night we were in the vicinity of Mirta's bakery when it was already closed, and not only watched in horror as she doused the freshly baked gingermen in a disgusting mixture, but also told them between raspy guffaws 'soon Cocoaland will be all ours, my children!'
"This looks a lot like what one sees on Tumblr. Isn't it, Bright?" said Milton with a thoughtful gesture looking at the cameraman.
He wanted to nod, but out of nowhere, he got a scare and his camera went 10 yards away from him. It had been the gluttonous Bruce, who, out of the sea of chocolate, emerged with a thunderous belch and said, 'Iwannawannamore!'
"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Crazy News, and we are witnessing the first fat, hairy gingerman," shouted Milton extremely excited, putting the microphone near the boy's muddy mouth.
Meanwhile, Bright and Reese were trying to rescue the camera from being lost forever in the sea of chocolate. After a struggle, they succeeded, and with their energies now greatly diminished, Bright focused on the 'gingerman'.
He finished sucking his fingers, as if nothing else in the world mattered, and finally said:
"I'm Mayor McTaste's son, and I can just sayyyy—he rumbled another burp before continuing, that it all got out of hand because ma dad wanted millions of dollars and I wanted all this chocolate."
"What the hell are you talking about, you idiot?!" inquired Reese before pouncing on the glutton who was still guzzling chocolate without remorse.
"Don't hit him, Reese, this is our golden ticket to the ultimate truth," suggested Milton before shoving the teenager away and focusing on the boy again with total anxiety.
"So, Bruce, is Mirta your friend or not?" asked the reporter trying to wake up the chubby boy by microphoning his head.
"Ah, yeah, Mirta offered a lot of money to my dad for the unmatched cocoa here, but since I'm in charge ova him, I told Mirta to be lots of money fo' him, and unlimited chocolate fo' me," Bruce said barely moving his mouth.
Milton motioned for Bruce to continue. He also motioned for the cameraman to zoom in.
"Then ma dad, as mayor of Cocoaland, agreed. But soon all the businessmen started complaining because they said Mirta had done this before in other places and it all ended badly. Dad never listened to them," the boy said before indulging in the chocolate again.
Reese could no longer contain his fury and tried, also dipping into the chocolate, to capture the chubby 'gingerman', but with no result. He was never seen again.
To end the interview, before the chocolate bring them down instead, Milton and Bright helped Reese to come back to the surface.
They lasted several minutes at this, but once Reese, now the chocolate man, was calm, he stepped up to the microphone and confessed:
"The mayor, or should I say former mayor McTaste is in jail. That problem is solved."
"Who could have done such a thing?" asked Milton right away.
"The whole community made it possible by learning of his plans," replied Reese.
"Both the capture of McTaste, and the attack on Cocoaland happened last night," continued Reese trying to shake chocolate off his chest, "the witch's evil spawn were lighting houses on fire and destroying chocolate factories."
"The gingermen?"
"That's right, they made all the chocolate overflow into the streets, and that's when I thought of my ants," said Reese.
"With my friends—continued the young man, not letting the reporter intervene, we went to my house and started breaking all the ant hills I had so that my dear friends would eat the gingermen one by one.
"Are we talking about the sweetest war of all time?" asked Milton in a joking tone, as he looked into the camera.
"Milton, that was the most unsavory joke I've ever heard in my entire life," stammered Bright with ass face.
Milton didn't think so, and as if it was a late effect, he started laughing his head off without pause at his own joke. Bright wanted to lift him out of the chocolate he was sinking into, but he was having none of it.
Bright pushed his partner aside and focused on Reese to continue the interview.
"Could you tell us what happened to the evil woman at the end?" asked the unscripted reporter.
"Yes! She was waiting for her gingermen outside Cocoaland, but since they never arrived, Mirta went back to see what had happened, and that's when my ants attacked her too," Reese finished by clarifying.
"What about that smell?" asked Bright suddenly.
"It's insecticide," Reese replied.
"How?"
"The businessmen had to calm down a lot of ants with insecticide before they ate us, as well. I've only talked to the few that are left," the teen confessed sadly.
"Will Cocoaland go back to what it was before?" asked Bright pityingly.
"Not only will it come back, it will be better!" shouted Reese to the camera as in the background his friends were seen approaching gesturing in triumph.
"Well, this was Willy Milton reporting for Crazy News from Cocoaland. Until next madness, folks!" concluded the journalist who, in keeping with his rare personality, had already stopped laughing and was stood solemnly in the last image.
