Ernest Slugworth and the Chocolate Factory
The true and wonderful story of Timmy Twonka's biggest rival and childhood friend. Words and Illustration by Matt Farr.
Here Comes Ernie
Both children gobbled down the meal faster than a turkey gobbles a gobble, an impressive feat considering that apart from being paired with potatoes and gravy, gobbling is what a turkey does best. Soup was slurped, sweet potatoes swallowed whole, cabbages ravaged.
“What’s all the hurry about?” Their father asks.
The young pair look at each other and then to their mother.
“Can we have dessert now?” “Please, Mum, please!”
The twins have talked at exactly the same time since they first learnt to speak, and it is impossible for anyone (even their parents) to tell which one said what unless one is asleep.
“Ooh! There’s dessert?” He adds, matching the children’s enthusiasm.
Their mother’s shoulders slump as she turns to her poor husband. Her eyes try their best to say sorry, but instead just looked sad and solemn because eyes can’t talk.
She tells the children to “Go on” who shriek in anticipation and dash off into the kitchen.
Ernie and Fran have a precious moment with their children out of the room.
“What’s with the despair and sorrow?”
“They were hell bent, I tried my best, I really did!”
The children skip past, oblivious in their childish excitement of the pain they will soon cause, each clutching a Triple Scrumptious Fudgemallow Twonka chocolate bar in their hands.
“Oh, I see.”
His wife’s hand moves over his, providing some slight comfort.
“Do we not have an abundance of other sweets in the house?” He groans.
Child 1 tears open their wrapper to reveal a simple chocolate fudge bar, disappointment consumes their face.
“Ha! See! For all the fanfare over this new chocolate bar, it’s still the same low quality product. Don’t fret yet, I’m sure I’ve got some chocolate escargot in my bag, brand new! Henri’s idea! They might be snails but they’ll be quick off the shelves!”
Now it’s their father’s turn to dash off in search of his bag, and the chocolate snails inside, but before he can finish -
“Dad! It's not about the chocolate.” “I’m sad that I didn’t win the golden ticket.”
He stops his search.
“A golden ticket? To what? To where?”
“It’s a whole thing.” and “You hate Timmy Twonka.”
He quickly looks between both children attempting to reply to both at the same time. "I don’t hate anybody. What’s the whole thing?”
“You hate Twonka bars then.” “You wouldn’t get it.”
In the end, it is his wife who provides the answer “If you find a golden ticket you get a tour of the Timmy Twonka’s Chocolate Factory.”
“I have a factory!” he posits, hands in the air.
The childs respond again at rapid speed.
“It’s not the same.” “Everyone’s been to your factory!”
Child 2 begins to peel back their chocolate wrapper.
Their father pleads, “You can both come to my factory! No ticket required!”, his hands now waving.
Child 2’s face fills with disappointment as if their face was a cup and sadness was a liquid.
“Here’s an idea! Tomorrow morning, we all come round my factory. You can both try the new flavours, meet the team - Tina loves to see you both! The whole factory! All access! VIP!”
“We’ve seen your factory loads of times.” “We have school tomorrow.”
“School? I can call in sick for you both! Say it was food poisoning from that rotten Twonka bar.”
“You’ll do what now?” his wife asks, arms crossed.
“I think it’s best if we just went to school, Dad.” They both say.
The children are excused from the table, one citing homework, the other to play with toys. Since neither parent could tell which said what, they both are dismissed.
Fran begins clearing the table.
“Did anyone catch you buying them? Imagine what people will joke. Even Ernest Slugworth’s kids are buying Twonka bars!” He complains.
“Nobody saw. And besides, everyone in town is mad with this ticket business.” She consoles.
“Everyone? As if business wasn’t bad enough!”
Ernie remains seated at the dinner table, head in hands, completely crestfallen. Fran hugs him from behind, her arms squeezing him full of love and leans in close to whisper softly into her husband's ear “Look! They didn’t touch their chocolate.”. His eyes move to the two bars on the table and see not a square removed from either.
Ernest Slugworth had a great life. He had married a wonderful wife, Fran, and was raising two wonderful (at times) twins. He had a wonderful chocolate factory that made top quality treats made from top quality ingredients. Everything he used was fair-trade and organic. He employed fifty wonderful workers and paid them each a generous wage. Everyone that tasted a Slugworth Sweet agreed they were the yummiest and scrummiest and mind-boggling they’d ever had. Trouble was, not many people had tried a Slugworth Sweet. You see, Ernest Slugworth was only the second most famous inventor in the town and had only the second largest chocolate factory. A man called Timmy Twonka owned a vast factory of his own and cut a large shadow. Timmy Twonka also cut corners over quality control and didn’t pay any of his thousands of workers a living wage or even frankly a wage, and was thus able to offer his chocolate at a much lower price point. Even Ernie himself, with his wonderful life, would admit that business was going somewhat less than wonderfully.
Bedtime comes and Ernie makes sure to tuck both twins tightly into bed and makes sure to say ‘snug as a bug in a rug’ as he does so. Child 2 wriggles loose, sits up and asks sweetly “Why aren’t you and Mr Twonka friends anymore?”. Child 1 is fast asleep, tired from playing with their toys all evening, so Ernie kneels down at the correct bed and quietly replies “Well, sometimes when two people get older they grow apart”.
“But what made you two grow apart, when you were best friends?”
He looks away for a moment, hopelessly searching for the perfect words to make sense of a messy imperfect time.
“I guess we had different priorities. His was the factory, this great big fantastic factory that made all those wonderful creations, and mine was the people. The people that made the factory.”
“Like Tina?”
“Like Tina, like Henri, like Prodnose, like Ficklegruber.”
He begins tucking the awake twin back into bed.
“Hmmm”
“Hmmm?”
They look at their sleeping twin.
“Do you think we’ll ever grow apart?”
“Not if you're good to each other.” He pulls the door ajar and heads to his own bed for the night.
While brushing his teeth (a twenty minute task for a candy maker), he thinks about Timmy Twonka and about how their rift came to be. He recalls one time suggesting a caramel filling inside a chocolate bar and his former best friend and then business partner replying “How about something that will really fuck them up?”. The memory becomes clearer. Slugworth sat, pen in hand, at a desk filled with stacks of scrap paper, each filled with ideas and drawings of new flavours, new bars, new creations, while Twonka paced around the room, hands behind his back. Slugworth considers the prompt and scribbles something down, “You mean like salted caramel?”. The pitter patter of footsteps behind stop. Twonka coldly corrects “No, I’m talking about some freaky body shit. Let’s turn some fucker into a fruit. For life.”
Slugworth’s Factory
The next morning, Ernie’s in his office when Frank Ficklegruber enters sheepishly and takes a seat sheepishly and well, does everything sheep-like short of baaing.
“You're in early, Frank!” Ernie exclaims, full of beans.
“Couldn’t sleep, I’m afraid” Frank replies, empty of beans.
“Nightmares?”
Frank pulls a puzzled look.
Ernie waves as if to say forget it. Frank Ficklegruber has the most gentle of hearts and has always been an awfully kind man, but unfortunately is not one for puns or jokes or wisecracks.
“Here have one of these” Ernie passes over a small chocolate insect.
Frank inspects it in his hand, “It’s some sort of grub, I suppose?”
“Pop it in a mug of water and it’ll heat right up to the perfect drinking temperature, and taste delicious! Somewhere between hot chocolate and coffee. A prototype at the moment, but should wake you right up.”
Frank sips at his now steaming mug. His eyes widen first. Then his hair stands up. Then he stands up. Then he does a quick little jig before taking a seat again.
“Oh it’s wonderful Ernie!” Frank howls as he pats down his hair.
“That’ll relax in about a minute.”
“And I suppose it’s got a name, some silly pun?
“Hot Larva Java!”
“Of course. You really are the most incredible inventor Ernie.”
Ernie unfolds the day’s newspaper and shows Frank the frontpage covering Twonka’s golden tickets. “Not according to this.''
“Oh, so you’ve heard.”
“Everyone’s heard! Even the twins are desperate to find one of those golden tickets!”
“I can’t see this being any good for us.” Frank groans as he plonks a pile of graphs and charts with little lines pointing downwards on Ernie’s desk.
“What’s all this?”
Frank explains that while he couldn't sleep last night, he ran several time consuming calculations on the financial impacts the search for Twonka’s golden ticket would have for Slugworth’s Sweets. Various numbers were crunched depending on national interest in winning a ticket and further crunched based on how long it would take to find the five tickets. Would it be weeks, days or months? “I really think this could be very bad for us, Ernest. No matter the angle this whole ordeal looks very bad for us all, indeed.”
“Oh Frank, I think you’re being too dramatic. This will die down in a week's time. I wouldn’t worry too much about it”.
Tina pops her head into the office, “Boss, we’ve got a problem with the Hippity-Hoppity machine!”
Tina has worked with Ernie for roughly ten years now and has been promoted roughly ten times. She is Ernie’s Head Supervisor and day to day helps out everywhere Ernie cannot. Much like Ernie and Ficklegruber and Henri and Prodnose, Tina also used to work at Timmy Twonka’s factory. In fact, most of the employees at Slugworth’s Sweets did. She used to joke that “At Twonka’s factory there’s not just a glass elevator but also a glass ceiling.”
“A hippity or a hoppity problem?”
“The grasshoppers are hipping when they should be hopping and hopping when they should be-”
“Hipping?” Ernie suggests.
“Yes! How did you know?” Tina replies.
Tina and Ernie whizz through the factory towards the Hippity-Hoppity machine, but Ernie can’t help but take detours on the way, inspecting various whirring machines or tasting from every bubbling pot he passes. Each machine is completely unique and each requires a unique set of skills to operate. He finds Henri and asks if he’d fixed the Runny Honey problem, where instead of giving you the energy to sprint a marathon just a teaspoon of the nectar would give you a runny nose. He has! Henri says he found the bee that had a cold and made sure it was back at the hive, cosy in bed, wearing warm slippers and a bee sized dressing gown. “Excellent work Henri!”. He takes a whiff of the flora room and yells “Beautiful work” to each gardener. He asks Prodnose if he’s figured out the issue with the chocolate caterpillars. Ideally, upon sucking the caterpillars are shaped into tiny cocoons and when you open your mouth a butterfly gently flutters out, in practice they make you burp loudly and these burps launch the butterflies at a terrible pace across the room. Prodnose shakes his head and points to a wall covered with the squashed chocolate carcasses of several butterflies. “Well, if anyone can, it's you!” Ernie reassures him.
He turns to Tina, “Where were we?”
“The grasshoppers!”
“Of course!”
Tina leads Ernie to the faulty machine, past a swarm of candy grasshoppers jumping around unevenly and several factory workers chasing after them in vain. The Hippity-Hoppity machine is a magnificent assortment of pipes and shapes, with a central block covered with a hundred knobs and levers. Ernie takes a brief look and listens to each pipe before smiling and getting to work. A small crowd of workers gather and observe as Ernest Slugworth begins twisting levers and pulling various knobs. The horrid sputtering sound soon softens into a nice rhythmic whirring, the machine is starting to sing. A new batch of grasshoppers pop out of the machine, and the confectionary critters leap obediently into Ernie’s cupped hands. He notices the audience watching him for the first time and passes a grasshopper to each. “Ok, so here’s what went wrong and here’s how to fix it” he imparts detailed instructions. Tina stands by jotting down notes.
The Golden Tickets
Not very long ago, there used to be thousands of workers in Mr Timmy Twonka’s factory. Then one day, upon finding a new cheaper workforce in the Oompa-Loompas, Mr Twonka told them all to leave, to go home, and to never come back.
The letter they all received read as follows:
I, Timmy (short for Timothée) Twonka (long for T.) am sad to inform you of the termination of your contract. Everything you made and worked on inside the factory is owned by me. Do not come into work tomorrow, you are no longer needed.
Some of the workers took their recipes and ideas they had written down with them as they left. Two of these workers, Ficklegruber and Prodnose, started their own candy companies selling their own inventions, like gum that never lost its flavour however much you chewed and an ice cream that wouldn’t melt even under the hottest sun. This made Mr Twonka and his lawyers very mad. The pair were sued into insolvency and branded spies and thieves.
Some of the workers burnt or ripped their recipes, leaving Twonka without a clue as to how to recreate them. The luminous lollies for reading in the dark, originally natural and organic, became filled with toxic chemicals and would make children’s bellies illuminate for days on end.
Ernest Slugworth was not fired with the other workers. He was Twonka’s oldest and closest friend and most brilliant inventor, and when everyone else was told to leave, he remained by Twonka’s side. This was Ernest Slugworth’s biggest regret in life.
It wasn’t the firing of his friends and colleagues that made Ernie eventually quit. Nor when the new workers arrived in crates and received no salary bar cacao beans. Nor when health and safety violations were ignored and corners cut in quality control. Nor when he discovered that the whipped cream room was full of cows and machines built to routinely spank them. Instead, it was when he looked at Mr Twonka and could no longer see his childhood friend inside. Something had changed behind his eyes, innocence was replaced by cruelty and brilliance with an ugly insecurity, and it became clear that there was no counsel nor patience that would bring back his friend. Ernie left Twonka’s factory, never to return, and started Slugworth’s Sweets the very next day.
Now, Ernie found himself once more stood just outside the gates to the vast factory, its darkness consuming and monstrous. The factory had nine long chimneys constantly churning grey smog into the evening sky like multiple giant cigarettes protruding from the earth. For over ten years, no one in town had seen a star in the night sky due to the pollution created by the factory. He watched the procession of delivery vans going in and out, and imagined the enormous demand for Twonka bars to justify it. He thought about the empty shelves in sweet shops and newsagents and dentist waiting rooms across the country.
Earlier that day a retailer had rejected a crate of Slugworth’s Seriously-Super-Long Worms saying that they still hadn’t sold any from the last crate. Only two of the golden tickets had been found so far. This fever would last at least another month in all likelihood. He rubbed his chin and started to worry about what all this could mean for Slugworth Sweets.
The Family Begins to Starve
The weather turned very cold. Ernie walked to the factory each morning in his thickest winter jacket, and as he was unable to afford to heat the factory, kept it on until it was time to walk home. Inside Slugworth’s Sweets the atmosphere was getting bleaker and bleaker. Sales were not improving, and it was decided that it wasn’t worth turning on all the machines and that only the very top selling sweets should be produced for the time being. Many of the machines gathered dust and their steel turned cold. One day sat in his office, Ernie noticed his breath appearing before him as small to medium puffs of smoke.
Ernie knew something was awry even before turning his key in the front door. The sounds of laughter and chatting that normally hit his eardrums upon his doorstep were absent. It was so tensely quiet, you could probably hear a mouse - except a mouse dare not make a noise. You could probably hear a pin drop but in this tension a pin would simply refuse.
Fran was at the hob boiling potatoes for a stew, she didn’t turn as he approached.
“The twins were teased at school today for bringing a salad as a packed lunch.”
Ernie’s shocked, “But our salads are filled with crunchy veg and dressed to impress!”
“They called them slugs. Saying that they could only eat salads because they were slugs.”
“Slugs are incredible creatures! They play a vital role in -”
She turns to look at him for the first time, “Can you please stop your relentless optimism for an honest conversation?”
Fran explained that she had applied for and been offered a job as a sustainability consultant and was planning to take it. She said that it was OK and that she was ready to go back to work and that they really needed the money.
He packed the childs lunch for the following day, acutely aware that it was another salad and that he was essentially packing fodder for his children’s tormentors. He added in a packet of Sour Slugs to one and Fizzy Flies to another, and wondered if those too would lead to teasing and whether everyone would be better off if he bought each a Twonka bar.
And with his wife unhappy and his twins unhappy and with himself finding unhappiness seeping in, Ernie curled up on the sofa and watched a nature documentary about a type of snail that lives deep in the ocean with wings.
Halfway through, the twins call for him from upstairs. Maybe they’ve changed their minds and do want a bedtime story he thinks, and climbs the stairs with the impossible task of tucking them in without even uttering the phrase ‘snug as a bug in a rug’. He considers which story to choose, maybe Courageous Mr Chicken (the story of a chicken that must protect his family and community from a cunning fox) or Eva! (a harrowing story of a woman battling antisemitism from local children that think she’s a witch) or maybe Malcom and the Giant Melon (the story of a giant melon that finds a boy). But upon opening the door it becomes clear the pair had other ideas.
The room is filled floor to ceiling with drawings and scribblings of bugs, slugs and creepy crawlies. “What's all this about then?”
They excitedly tell him "We thought maybe if you had a new sweet that was amazing, then maybe you and mum wouldn’t be sad” and “We are making a new sweet that is going to be the most best sweet ever. Way better than any Twonka bar.”
“Oh my darlings, you don’t have to worry about stuff like this at all!”
“Dad, we are sick of salads.” they both reply in unison.
Ernie sits with them as they explain each of their ideas. They get very excited about one drawing of a caterpillar. “What does it do?” he asked and they replied “He’s called Colin” and “He smiles” and he thinks “Absolute fruitcakes, the pair of them.” but says “Oh, I’ll think about it, my loves.”
Only Ernie Left
And thus the day finally came when it no longer made any good economic sense to bother turning any of the machines on. Slugworth gathered his staff, each had a steaming mug of Hot Larva Java and each stood with their hair at attention, and told them that they were not needed at the factory today, or tomorrow, or even on Thursday which was the day after tomorrow, unless some child found that last golden ticket and this Twonka madness died down. He reassured staff that he would continue to pay them until he couldn’t. He told them that he was sorry for the uncertainty, for the stress, and for letting them down.
They each shook his hand, thanked him for the work and told him it was the best job they’d ever had. One by one they left unsure if they would ever return, if they would ever get to turn on those fantastic machines again or if they’d simply gather dust. Ficklegruber hugged his dear friend, Prodnose invited his family round for dinner on Friday, and Tina stayed until the very end helping to answer questions and listen to the worries of the anxious workers. “What will you do now?” she asked once everybody had left. Ernie didn’t know how to reply and so he didn’t.
Ernie sat at his desk for the rest of the day and when 4pm came, he locked up the factory, pulling the big chain across the gates. He walked past the giant Twonka factory on his way home, it’s fire roaring no matter the hour. Ernie arrived home and started the cabbage stew early.
Oh, and then Thursday happened. Well, actually before that Wednesday happened.
Charlie’s Chocolate Factory
A boy named Charlie Buquet found the last golden ticket. He was a local lad, quiet and polite, and found the ticket less than a ten minute walk from the factory gates. Ernie knew his father who played football with the toothpaste factory’s 5-a-side team and was a liability at left back. The very next day the children were set to enter the factory. Hundreds gathered at the gates just to catch a glimpse inside, to watch the lucky five enter clutching their elusive golden tickets so tightly they were creasing, to catch a glimpse of the reclusive Timmy Twonka, to be a part of a moment in time. When asked at the gates, the crowds would say that the small sight inside the building was wondrous, that Twonka himself was handsome and a bit of a snack, and that the whole ordeal was euphoric and historic and another word ending in oric. In the days to come, they’d condemn the whole event, say Timmy was hideous and put a bad taste in the mouth, and that they always knew something was crooked inside that factory.
Four of the children left the factory either physically deformed or horribly treated and with legitimate reason to either sue or seek law enforcement for various human rights violations. Timmy Twonka ended up fleeing the country within a week, leaving behind poor Charlie Buquet the keys to the factory. Later, investigative journalists would report that Twonka had not been paying his income tax for the past 10 years, and was behind various bribes to local authorities and politicians.
The boy was not a natural CEO of a multinational company. Firstly, he had no business acumen. Secondly, he had some weird ideas. He introduced a new chocolate bar inspired by his youth, that would break four ways with each quadrant resembling one of his grandparents. His new sweets were either cabbage or boiled potato flavoured. He didn’t seem to know any other. When asked about the harm caused to the other golden ticket holders, the boy simply replied that “they shouldn't have broken the rules”. And after all that, people didn’t really feel like eating Twonka candy ever again.
Mr Twonka’s Chocolate Factory soon closed down once and for all. It would eventually become an exclusive nightclub for art students until drugs were found mixed into the chocolate river and that too was shut down.
Slugworth’s Sweets started selling again, and as everyone had developed such sweet teeth, it was at a much higher demand than before. Prodnose’s new inventions were launched to much acclaim and everyone agreed that he was a better inventor than Timmy Twonka ever was and that Slugworth’s candy was their favourite.
Fran decided that she wanted to keep working part-time and so did. Ernie decided that with business good he too could work part time from now on, and used his free time to start a community garden which proved very popular. Tina was promoted to co-director of Slugworth’s Sweets and together, her and Ernie shared workload and decision making equally to great success. And the twins were finally able to eat something other than cabbage stew again.
After what seemed like an endless sequence of days filled with too much day, enough cabbage stew for a lifetime and increasingly tough choices, everything was working out for Ernest Slugworth and his family.
One evening, a few years later, Ernie sat at his desk after a busy day at the factory and opened that morning’s yet to be opened newspaper. Buried at the bottom of page 12 was the news that Timmy Twonka’s dead body had been recovered from the wreck of a crash. His new glass hot air balloon was about as good of an idea as it sounded. A photo attached depicted Twonka with a wispy white beard and long uncut fingernails. As he read the news, a tear formed in Slugworth’s eye and when large enough fell and PLOP hit the newspaper below. The ink started running and he stopped reading, closed his eyes and thought of their childhood together. They were running from sweet shop to sweet shop, spending all their collective pocket money, small fingers unwrapping candy in the streets to be scoffed before dinner. They would talk for hours about what flavours they would create when they were older, and what inventions they’d had ideas for. Each would return home, filled up on treats again only to pretend they weren’t to their parents. After dinnertime, both would dash across the street to swap and compare their respective parent’s desserts. It was youth of sweet innocence before power and greed made a good thing rotten.
Ernie popped one of Prodnose’s chocolate caterpillars in his mouth and after a couple seconds watched as it fluttered out of his mouth, out of his office window and into the star filled night sky.
thank you for reading.
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all the best, matt