I didn’t go out too often since I prefer staying at home outside of work, but sometimes I went to the nearby Six Flags with my 3rd grade boy. Once while walking pass the line of concession stands, my son pointed to a new ice cream stand, located where a bush had been last time we visited. It was not weird for stands to be added or removed, but my son was pulling me to the stand as if there was some attraction compelling him.
“You want ice creams? It takes you a lot of money here, you can have much more at home, and a lot of flavors!” But my son won’t stop pulling me. The attraction might exist, since we saw many other parents buying ice cream scoops for their children, while the candy shop opposite had lost most of their customers. Something might be weird, but still, I was being begged eagerly.
My son instinctively pointed to cookies n’ cream, his favorite and the only flavor he would eat. Defeated, I ordered what he want for him, and a chocolate flavored one for myself.
For some reason, the chocolate ice cream was more deeply flavored than what it seemed. The chocolate was not the one I usually had at home, but one that was crafted by one of the master chocolatiers, and seeped deep into my taste bud. It certainly was worth the popularity it had, and after that visit we would fetch some ice cream there.
Due to my frequent return I came to know the one selling ice creams. A woman in her late 30s, she usually tied her cream-colored hair into a short tail, and wore her own apron on top of the shirt. In fact, she rented an apartment the floor below, something I didn’t realize until meeting her. This meant that we meet quite often not in Six Flags, but much nearer to home.
From her I knew that her ice cream was homemade- I wondered how she could managed the time, but then, every night, while I was comfortably seated, she was working on new flavors restlessly, and this answered the chocolate ice cream’s taste, since she told me she ordered Belgian chocolate in bulk. We became good neighbors and exchanged often.
In return, I shared moments of my daily life, how I went to work and then sat in front of the TV for the rest of the day and night. “That’s not good enough,” she went on to encourage me to change, like when she quit her job to pursue her dream and set up the ice cream stand she had.
She wanted change for me, but not myself. I just wanted more TV time and scoops of ice cream, and she was not listened to at best, if not denied up front. That way, I continued my routine life, and licked from my spoon every night at 2, while my son was sleeping and the TV was on playing a DVD.
One day, she called me to her place, just to discuss her future since she claimed to be moving away to open a new shop on the West Coast. Seated, she ported a cone of mint chocolate ice cream, and which was said to contain some “special ingredients”. I didn’t know what special ingredients it had, but that “This is for me?” “Yes, please enjoy it and treat it as some kind of parting gift.”
Upon tasting the ice cream with the spoon the woman gave him, the world around the fat guy started spinning. Strangely a mint-colored background, embroidered with chocolate stripes, formed. He thought it was some kind of psychedelic, since he was dazed by the flashy surroundings and the sickness it caused spread to his whole body, and even stranger, he could actually notice the surrounding getting larger, and himself shortening to a mere 4’4”.
Meanwhile, his fat belly disappeared, the fat being moved under the skin to all parts of his body, some to his chest and hips which were a bit thickened. While the shoulders collapsed, the proportions become more of a little girl than a fat guy, and so was the limbs and hands, being more refined and lengthy. Most of the body hair fell off, except those on the head, turning dark beige and growing rapidly, eventually tied into a twintail by an unseen force. The skin took on a lighter color, as smooth as a child. While the head became rounder, the eyes was larger and had amber color instead of the old blue, and the nose and mouth much smaller than before. The T-shift and shorts gave way for a cute chocolate and mint-colored dress, decorated with lushy green bows; new leather shoes and long mint socks replaced the worn sneakers. Finally, at the most intimate part, what had made the transformed one a man was no more, replaced by something appropriate for a little girl.
“Mama makes the best ice cream,” I said. Mama told me something I didn’t understand, “my girl, you are going to lead a new life from now on.”
All art used here are under fair use.
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