I was waiting at a bus stop with a well-dressed snowman and a woman on her phone with eyes like Marlene Dietrich and a purse shaped like an amanita mushroom. The snowman was bent to the side, just above its portly base, tiny boots in the air. “That snowman is drunk,” I laughed. The woman glanced up. “What makes you say that?” she asked. “Look at him,” I said. “It’s 80 degrees out, and he won’t even melt.” She scoffed and continued scrolling on her phone. The snowman stayed as he was. The bus came to a stop and opened its door. No one got on. The door closed, and the bus rolled away. A gust of wind blew in from the west, and I broke into a long aria from an opera I had never heard before. When I stopped the woman said, “I think you’re drunk.” Before I could ask why, she stepped into the street. She was hit by a yellow Hummer and dragged to the stop sign, fifteen feet, a sanguine streak smeared across the pavement. Two plastic pints of Jim Beam burst from her purse, which had lost its fungal features in the accident and now looked more like a broken heart. The snowman straightened up with a chuckle and wiped his forehead. “Who’s drunk now?” he said. He was beginning to melt. The driver grabbed the two pints and drove off. He was either drunk or on his way. I went to check on the woman. I looked both ways before stepping into the street. She wasn’t breathing. She didn’t even look human anymore. She looked more like snow in the sun. When I got back to the bus stop, the snowman was gone. A dark puddle had gathered beneath the bench. It trickled toward the woman’s remains like wine from a cask. I got down on my knees and drank, not quite sure where the blood began. I woke up on the bench. Bent to the side. Wearing a cape. My teeth had pierced my lower lip. Someone had put a pipe in my mouth and a carrot up my nose, and I was beginning to melt.
G. R. Bilodeau is a peripatetic writer from New Jersey. Cook. Peddler. Music Journalist. Author of Notes from the Parking Lot of Lost Hopes and Dreams (Alien Buddha Press, 2024). Their work has appeared in X-R-A-Y Lit Mag, Burrow Press Review, TIMBER Journal, Tilted House Review, HASH, and elsewhere. Find them on Instagram @grbilodeau
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