Fiction
by Laura Benedict
by Laura BenedictThe back wall of The Treat Shoppe’s chocolate room looks like a big, brown splatter painting that you might see in an art museum’s contemporary wing. This is accidental art. Like moonlight through branches is art, or the crosshatched prints of bird feet in the snow. It’s a glorious collage of dark and milk chocolate and smashed red strawberries and tiny dashes of bright lemon crème. A chocolate lover’s lickable fantasy. Until you see that the smears and drips and dashes lead to Reg Price’s beaten body slumped against the foot of the wall. His bald head hardly looks bald anymore, as it’s coated with the same thick chocolate decorating the wall. Reg is nothing like proper art. Everything about Reg shouts that he’s just a dead old man: his glasses
