The Candy Store — Michele Poague

Is Destiny determined by the future or the past?

Ronald Reagan is President and the city of Denver is reeling from the 1970s Oil Boom when sixteen-year-old- Jett finds employment making confections for Watson's Candies. But when tragedy strikes, the hard-as-nails orphan wakes up in the psychiatric ward of a strangely altered word where her very words could spell doom.

     The Psychiatrist blinked at me, and just that fast, I knew I must have said  something wrong. The clothes, the old cars, the peculiar cadence of their speech; my skin danced with goose pimples and I shivered. I tried to ignore the fear creeping up my back. “What is today's date?”

    “October the twenty-ninth,” the nurse said.

     “And the year? What's the year?” My heart was pounding and I was starting to hyperventilate. Tears flooded my eyes, blurring the scene before me. I was being swept away by emotional forces so strong I couldn't stem the tide. I was so afraid of what they were going to say.

    “Why, it's 1927, my dear.”