A young man was munching candy from a bowl. This was candy that he’d bought in advance for Halloween, but it wasn’t a big deal. He figured he’d leave a piece or two to hand out on Halloween night. That would be enough, right?

Well, whatever. He was so absorbed in satisfying his sweet tooth, he didn’t pay any mind to concerns like that. Nor was he paying attention to much else, such as the feeling of his feet changing, becoming squishier before bursting out of his shoes like they were made of tissue paper. In fact, he didn’t notice anything at all until his pants were similarly torn to shreds. It was then that he looked down, seeing that he his legs had turned to what he immediately recognized as black gummi candy. His legs were smaller and cuter now, ending in cute black hindpaws. He could tell, in fact, that he was turning into a black gummi cat, deducing that his form was probably brought on by the halloween candy.

“...Wait, hold up,” the young man said.

...Huh?

“Why did I know all that immediately? You DO know what the prompt is today, right?” he asked as he started to grow a long black gummi tail. The prompt was Confusion, which the author indeed was quite well aware of.

“So... why am I so clearly understanding what’s going on? You DO know what ‘confusion’ is, right?” he said as the gummi transformation proceeded up his torso, “I mean, you’re a writer. I sure hope so. So, why in the world does this story have nothing to do w...”

He paused as his arms turned to gummi, shortening to match the cute proportions of the rest of his transformed body. He raised a cute feline forepaw, rubbing his chin with it. “Oooohhh, I get it...”

...He did?

“That’s the whole point, isn’t it? You’re just writing this story to have nothing to do with confusion, in order to confuse me about why it has nothing to do with confusion, aren’t you?”

...Um... no?

His ears perked up, now gummi cat ears on the top of his head, as his hair started receding, the top and back of his head turning to black gummi along with his neck. “I get it now! That’s the whole point! You wanted to make this story meta, so you built the story to include me getting confused with a meta element of the story! In fact, this meta emphasis probably was inspired by A Random Story from the previous year.”

No! No it’s nothing like that! Now, since I’ve informed you that you’re wrong, you’ll go back to being confused, right?

His face changed next, finishing with his mouth and nose forming into a cute little gummi muzzle, a smirk forming on it. “Nope. I’ve got it all figured out!”

GAAAAAAAAH!