The can is oddly warm in your hand. The flavour is “Mango Risk”, a brand you’ve never heard of. It has to be fine, FDA approved, of course. When they say unnatural flavours, they mean artificial, right? Imagine being scared of a soda. It’s not going to be full of tadpoles. It’s fine. You think.
Don’t be silly. Of course, there was Persephone. Trapped with six pomegranate seeds. Children fading away on faery food. A wicked queen offering a bright red apple. In the old stories we remember the possibility of harm. That it might look sweet. You paid the money, so it’s not a gift. Just an exchange.
What did you sell down at the old soda machine? What did you ask for in return?
You remember Brad, who went with a crumpled dollar bill, past midnight. When the machine wouldn’t take it, he got down on his knees and whispered a secret into the slot. You know it whirred and clunked and spat out a can. You don’t know if he drank it.
You heard the graffiti changes late at night, when the sodium flicker of the street lights makes it yellow and strange. You heard there was a small cult dedicated to recording the changes, who calculated the most auspicious times to order a soda.
Another rumour told of a Dungeons and Dragons group, they’d buy sodas before playing. One of them made a character with the machine as his warlock patron. It was funny at first. The machine giving him occult powers, spitting out strange, imaginary sodas. Until—until he started bringing them with him. The sodas he’d made up.
This is stupid. It can’t possibly be true. You look down at the Mango Risk in your hand. It’s hot, but there’s condensation on the can. There’s no one else around.
When is something haunted? When something around it dies? Does it have to be a person? Or is it when we fill something up with impossibilities? A trick of the mind. That must be it. It’s a magic trick. A vanishing act. You drink the soda and it becomes a part of you, sugar whirring through the blood.
What did you sell down at the old soda machine? What did you ask for in return?
An exchange. A ritual. You pull the tab and drink it.