The Chocolate Lab

The back room was a secret place.

Well, it was an open secret. There was a window behind the counter, you could see straight in.

Sometimes, when her hands were comfortably occupied, she'd take the time and gaze off through it, smiling out across the tables, and everyone watching her work, they'd smile back. It was a secret thing they had between them, audience and performer, day after day.

It wasn't a cross-your-heart type of secret, not like that; this was a hidden back-and-forth, that special fleeting thing, that fragile moment of wonder you couldn't vocalise if you wanted, it's gone too fast, but everyone knows it happened, really. Some secrets are made just like that.

Obviously, the window itself was there for a reason, it wasn't as though she put that in accidentally—because that was all her too: she looked up the DIY guides online, she bought the materials, she even fitted it herself. All premeditated. Anyone could see that, you just had to think it through a little. Purely transparent.

And wasn't it all so worth the trouble?

With the window, everyone could look in, you could watch her folding each viscous sheet carefully over its immediate predecessor, and again, over, over, succeeding heel-toe steps in a sweetly rhythmic process. It was sugary hypnosis; cocoa mesmerism, luring volunteers in off the street.

People really did smell it walking by, that was no exaggeration—you could see them stop, spin around, sniff the air like wet-nosed animals, consider shortly, enter, and, from then on, they'd be hooked.

It was that easy—she was selling the real thing. The real thing could play the senses like a flute, just you let it.

You could understand it so much better once you realised how, well, the process, her process, it must really be something exactly like music—it tapped into some secret primal force, working you over in unconscious ways. It was the key to the lock, unsealing the magic aroma bound all throughout this mystery gloop. She'd perfected a secret technique, something hundreds and hundreds of years old, a really ancient thing—treasure from a whole other continent, a whole other world!

You could come in, you could order. Hot chocolate any time of day. Maybe you'd decide to sip with two trembling hands, make sure not spill any; you could lap it out of your mug like a trough, that's perfectly allowed too. Whatever. She'd keep working and you could look up and watch through the specially put-in window and wonder how exactly it was she managed it, even though it's all right there in front of you, vats of melted chocolate and stainless metal instruments.

She was an atom scientist, this was fission; it was unleashing such real, tangible energies—the evidence was everywhere. No one else could hope to understand it.

Sometimes, not often, she had to take the day off. Sometimes a special occasion came along, or maybe it was a family thing, and it would just be the apprentices in the back room instead.

The cosy collection of apprentices would often include her nephew, who worked there part-time. He was a teenager—an especially teenagery one too, it was written all over his face.

His days, and it's painful to say it, the whole process simply wasn't worth watching. It wasn't even worth visiting. Nobody would ever say it was his fault. Not even close!—but you couldn't help but pick up on it. The atmosphere was different, the rhythm less complete—there were all these little hitches and hesitations, the way he worked, it was just, just enough. It was enough to drive any attentive patron mad.

Once you thought about it, once you really exercised just a little empathic muscle, you could see the poor boy was clearly an amoeba on the wrong end of the microscope.

Really, nothing against him, but the way he moved around behind that window, it was plainly obvious he wasn't up to the challenge. Nobody was saying that was his fault, sure, but you still had to watch out for it.

That's why nobody saw it coming when he brought the chocolate to life.

One day, supposedly, he had been slaving over a hot chocolate cauldron all afternoon, and, going by what he had to say about it afterwards, the words hit him like a brick collision.

He straightened his back and jerked out an incantation:

“Darkest cocoa, stuff of miracles! I breathe, we breathe, you breathe! I give you life!”

When he said all that, a couple of people closer to the counter all looked up from their drinks. It really was a surprise, that was true—but maybe not so great a surprise once you considered how he really did resemble the sort of boy inclined to raise his voice over fairly adolescent things. There was a whole window separating him from all the customers anyway, so it certainly wasn't worth the entire building's attention.

He unclipped his apron and rolled up his sleeves. Before anyone nearby could stop him, he dropped his arms into the bubbling chocolate. At that point, his small audience began to worry.

Hands, he winced, then elbows. In moments, he was bent double over the whole pot. His arms seemed to sink and sink, up to his shoulders and still going.

The process continued. He should have had his whole face burned off, it should have been peeling away like tissue paper for weeks after—a serious, serious wound. His human incapacity to inflict serious, ongoing pain on himself should have entirely prevented him from carrying on, the outcome seemed clear, it had to end. His head submerged anyway.

Nothing happened, nothing even singed.

Then he went under properly. He had been balanced on the rim of the pot, it was up to his armpits. By then, it looked as though his head must have hit bottom, right by the heat—he must have been baking his own brains out, skull wrinkling like a cabbage in a microwave—but then he was suddenly down to his hips too, he'd tipped over, he'd properly fallen in.

His shoes didn't go under. They stuck out the top like antennae—rotate once, stop, rotate twice. Everyone on either side of the glass divide was paying the whole act at least a little attention by now. You could tell by his feet, he seemed to be... Rummaging, carefully, methodically, something was down there. It had become a search.

Finally, he stopped, he'd lost interest. You could see his feet go limp. His boots began curling at the tips like a witch—that's what it looked like, as though the Wicked Witch of the West had fallen into her cauldron and begun melting, fully and properly, the heat was so much.

The feet went under.

Then, a pair of fingers gripped the edge of the pot. A whole hand surfaced, followed by a second.

Struggling, he pulled himself out of the pot entirely. With some effort, he managed to stand, any real expression hidden by the white-hot shivers. His face was pure panic, but the rest of him seemed somehow frozen stiff, like the chocolate had fully hardened around him, like he was a statue.

He was so soaked through with liquid chocolate, nobody even knew whether to approach. It was such a spectacle, the thought of getting near him had become like jumping up on a stage mid-act. Not a single person there that day could have done it.

It was very lucky that the thing still inside the pot knew—the perfect moment!—it chose that exact second to leap out of the pot.

It bounded right up to the boy, leaving big, muddy brown footprints as it went. It started to lick him, it started at the ankles. Everyone was watching now—it was a dog, wasn't it, it was a whole dog made of chocolate!

It started at the ankles, and he hardly seemed to react at first, but then it grabbed at him with its paws, it leaned up and started licking his work-short clean—that tongue was like a jet engine—and it really was working too, all the chocolate from the boy's neck downwards had vanished, all lapped up by the marvellous canine.

When the dog started licking his face clean, the teenager began to smile again, and before long, his face was just the biggest grin. Everyone was smiling.

He couldn't help laughing, he kept telling the dog to get down, it wouldn't stop until he was all cleaned up. Everyone else was laughing too.

Finally, it listened, it got down and turned on all four heels. Two sets of messy footsteps fell behind as it walked through the kitchen turnstile, nudging the door open with its big wet nose. Entering the customers' area, and without even stopping to sniff the room out, the creature began its tour of the tables.

Everyone realised quickly enough they didn't need to gather around, the dog had that covered, it was very methodical. it walked around every table, one by one, ascending numbered order. Everyone got a turn petting the beautiful animal.

When the table had children, the dog spent extra time there, and they'd all wave goodbye when it moved onto the next one. Its tongue hung out both in thanks and in anticipation for the next lot of friendly patrons. Lots of people gave it names—it must have had a million different names by the end of the day!—but its real name, the name that stuck, that came later.

When the chocolate maker finally came back from her day off—family, special occasion, something—and found a living, breathing chocolate dog padding about the place, she was stunned! Her nephew couldn't explain it, none of the other staff could either.

Eventually, she just had to accept it. Her business had a new mascot.

She decided to name it ‘Whiskers', which everyone found very funny.

As the days went by, and more and more people around town got to know Whiskers, it seemed almost as though it had almost been there.

‘It?', people would ask. ‘Should we be calling him, uh—no, sorry. You know what we mean to ask!'

The truth really was that she didn't know. The thing had spawned miraculously in a vat of melted chocolate, she hardly expected the creature worked the same way as ordinary dogs. So, it was ‘it', and that didn't mean anyone loved it any less.

Except, things started to change a little.

For a start, Whiskers couldn't leave the premises, that was the big thing—it was so afraid to leave the place it was born. It just whined and whined after the first step out the door, nobody knew what to do about it.

Besides, what would happen when summer came along? Would the poor animal go outside and start to melt? Everyone agreed, it really was for the best that Whiskers stayed an inside dog in the end. It really was worth all the extra effort it took to manage that.

Even though, as the thought of temperature really did begin to present an issue, she had to spend such a great deal of her own personal time and money getting that specially tuned air conditioning system installed.

Even though air conditioning systems like that made so very little sense in their part of the world, it cost her an absolute fortune hiring an engineer willing to install one—because it certainly wasn't so simple she could do it herself, it wasn't as easy as installing a window, they had to have ducts installed in the walls, it took real technicians, more than one, and it ended up cutting into work hours, they had to close for a whole month, and all that time she had to keep coming up with reasons why her soppy brown dog had to stay on the worksite with its nasty wet footprints, since you could really take a nasty fall if you just slipped on one of those, and all that barking at the construction men hadn't been part of the deal. Look here, lady, it was funny at first, but you're pushing it now.

The building site situation didn't last forever, thankfully—the work concluded quite excellently, and it put them on the map, they were literally the coolest chocolate-making establishment in the country—but that had never been the only problem.

Whiskers didn't eat real food. No, obviously, of course it didn't.

Her magical, beautiful, loveable chocolate dog had somehow developed a more refined appetite—tinned dog food, wet or dry, it wouldn't touch the stuff. No, nothing but the best for Whiskers. It devoured only the most delicious chocolate, only the most delicious confectionery she could manufacture!

It really did all come down to her, as well—nobody else could manage it, it just wasn't good enough for Whiskers otherwise.

It was a gradual thing at first. She used to work up front, sweeping the whole building away with a smile; now, she toiled away in the back—the back of the back room, even!—making gourmet, handcrafted chocolate treats for, well, for what? For an animal? Not even a real animal?

Wasn't she better than that? You could see it on her face, she certainly thought so too—here was a talent being wasted, day after day, come by opening hours and see it happening yourself.

Anyone could have recognised it—if anyone could have just been bothered looking any longer.

She had become a periphery thing: just a stagehand, just the lady who fed the dog. You should forget she was ever even there in the first place, that's what her down-fixed eyes seemed to say. Just like everyone had.

Except me.

I felt like the only one who could still remember what it used to be like. I really could remember, it was as clear as day; but this place now?—this was a petting zoo in the ruins of a gallery, that stinking animal plodding about, table to table, putting its paws up on the counter, begging and whinging.

That nasty creature, really, the way it acted and what it had done to her, the whole situation was viscerally unpleasant. It was an index finger down my neck, I just felt physically sick.

Renaming day came and went: ‘The Chocolate Lab'. I'd say that was the last straw, but truthfully, I'd already made my plan before that unbearable pun went up on the big, dog-shaped sign above the entrance. Well, as much of a plan as it was.

I waited until dark. I broke in through the back window.

It had been left open, I'd noticed they'd started doing that every night, just for air, only a crack. Though they used to keep supply things there, it had been repurposed. It was Whiskers' room now. I was lucky too, the dog was waiting.

It looked at me, its little dark eyes shining up all wet and gooey. For the first time, I noticed the thing didn't even have pupils, just those smooth brown marbles. I turned away; it felt important not to meet that pathetic stare.

I took off my backpack, it didn't take much searching. I hadn't been able to fit anything large in the bag, not a shovel or a bat or anything. I had brought a trowel instead. My mother often used it in the garden, it had been sitting there, ready to go.

I tried to get a good grip, I didn't want to drop it—I'm not sure what I did qualifies as ‘brandishing', but that's a good enough word for me.

So, I brandished my weapon.

And I bashed its little fucking brains in.

I left, setting the window back as I'd found it.

I'd thought it through a hundred times over: maybe at first they'd think Whiskers suffered a spontaneous cranial implosion; a death as preposterously magical as whatever brought it into this world, it would make as much sense as anything else.

More likely, they'd see clear as day that someone murdered the thing (although, I found myself mentally double-checking my own use of the word ‘murder').

Really though, who cared? What were they likely to do about it? Check for sticky chocolate fingerprints?

The next morning, I found I didn't have the courage to stop by.

The following day, I managed it, I plucked it up. I got in my car, drove halfway there, got out and walked the rest of the way.

The place was closed. The next day too.

I haven't been back.