Decades later they’re still coming. Disaster tourists, la-di-da. Please, sir, may I have your gloves? Trade you for a picture with my crystallized sister. They love it when you shiver and beg. Makes them feel like they’re winning.
I’ve been on the hunt since I turned twelve. That was ninety-eight days ago. It’s taking so long because they’re too well-fed. Don’t forget I have to carry my tourist all the way home myself. Can’t exactly become a man if someone’s holding my hand.
The sky’s a smudge of melancholy. The cold’s a bowl of revenge. That hasn’t stopped the tourists, though, who roam through the market, louder than ever. God forbid a second elapses where nobody says or buys a thing.
Suddenly, I see him: The One That I’ve Been Looking For.
He’s sipping on a slushie at a neighboring kiosk, a middle-aged guy with gunmetal hair, studying trinkets fashioned from bone. His gloves are off and his coat’s undone, as if to say the weather’s no biggie, what is all the fuss about?
The ignorance. The disrespect. That unzipped fucking coat.
I bet he laughed when the blizzards hit, when half the world froze over. Now he’s here on holiday, watching us starve at favorable rates.
A pale young girl, about my age, shuffles into view. You can tell she was pretty once, before the frostbite claimed her ears.
The Unzipped Prick looks up from his slushie and offers the girl a wink. Not money or food or a sense of worth. A brazen wink. A flutter of lashes. Flirting like a dirty old butterfly.
I make for him like chaos theory, daddy’s knife hot in my hand, ready to plunge into manhood.
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