I slide the plate of breakfast sludge in front of the customer. She doesn’t even glance up. She’s staring at her Hello Kitty robot and stroking the purring kitty’s fur. Her lip quivers like she is about to say something. Maybe a thank you, but the words never make it out of her mouth. She’s too engrossed in the stream beaming from her kitty’s eyes.

I move behind her. The stream beam blasts my face. Is it cake or not, babes? smacks me in the eyeballs. Bill and Saz’s show is one of the most popular in Blue Shore. Bill’s Adidas joggers are rolled up. Saz is holding a butcher’s knife. She sinks the knife into Bill’s thigh, both of them grinning. “Nottttt,” Saz shrieks as blood gushes from Bill’s flesh.

“Like and stay tuned!” Bill groans, grimacing and grinning at the same time. Holographic hearts fill the air around me, then vanish as I tear myself away from the stream.

The chef hollers my name. “ZAC, YOU LITTLE SMEAR OF DICK CHEESE! SERVICE.” My bare foot squelches as I walk towards the service hatch. My foot is still sticky from the slime I trod in this morning on the way to catch the shuttle bus that brought me to this hellhole. I hope the slime came from someone with a big snoz and a cold rather than a space knobhead, AKA alien. I managed to scrape most of the slime off with my penknife, slashing myself in the process, blood and slime mixing in a gory puddle.

It feels like I’ve been on this shift since the beginning of time. Like I evolved here, starting the morning grunting and now finally human enough to communicate with words. But it’s only 11 am according to the clock on the wall. At 11:01, the chef goes fucking apeshit, screaming, veins bulging from his temples, skin blistering, eyes popping from their sockets, all because I dropped the omelette I was meant to serve on the floor.

The spreading red sauce reminds me of the insides of dead things.

“Alright mate, chill,” I say. The chef pushes his eyeballs back into their sockets, and I wait for him to cook another omelette whilst he swears under his stinking breath.

Omelette served, I slump against the coffee maker. Every hiss of steam coming from the bulging machine is a voice taking the piss: “Skivvy. Lowlife. Robot,” it whispers, then “Zac. Zac. Zac,” repeating my name like it is a sacred mantra. I’m bloody sick of this café. The manky ketchup bottles, the rude customers, the orange tables, and the brightly iced cakes I have to deliver with a fake smile.

Sometimes, I imagine that I’m a robot. My arms move from the coffee machine to the till. Out amongst the tables, pistons popping, and tubes rupturing under the weight of hundreds of full English breakfasts, and metal coffee pots and teapots bubbling over, boiling water melting my rubber skin. My hydraulic dick strains against my too tight work shorts because some fitty is tonguing his sausage, and I only ever have the energy to wank when I get home, bathed in the glow of my bot, fingers smelling of bacon and iced buns.

I’m sick of the customers’ endless complaints, overloading my neural circuits. I want to break their necks. Really fuck them up. Force-feed them their moans. Shove the ‘butter with a pube in it’, or the ‘cold scrambled eggs’ down their throats. Then after I’ve finished English breakfast waterboarding, I will smash their baked bean brains out on the floor.

My manager, Iris, hobbles over. Her mouth hangs wide open, a gaping cave framing a view of her rotting organs. “Zac!” she barks, the word forcing itself into my consciousness, festering there. That’s how she always talks to me. Like I’m a bit of crud she just swept up off the floor. The other server here, Carla, glares, licking her lips, fingers in her knickers. I’m grateful that Iris hasn’t seen the viral stream that made me a Blue Shore wank bank. My old bird boss getting off on me would make this job even more depressing than it already is.

“Ice cream kiosk, now!” Iris’s words wither in the hot air. “The beach is getting busy, and our regular lad needs a hand. Pay’s the same, and the job’s a piece of piss, so none of your moaning.” She shoos me away with the backs of her wormy hands. She’s done with having me in the café. Good. I’ve been doing a shit job on purpose. Roodie’s Holiday Camp only employed me because Roodie is Mum’s friend.

I got kicked off the work placement programme because I kept skiving, sick of doing mock interviews with the other jobless losers. Mum made it her mission to find me work. Roodie is the big, and I mean big, boss who owns the café, the arcades, the ice cream kiosk, and most of Blue Shore. Mum and Roodie “date back years,” she always says with a wink, which means they were fucking, and I have to imagine her being pounded by that enormous, flabby slug. Grim.

“Try not to fall down a manhole on your way,” Carla says, a gum bubble bursting between her bared teeth, her slimy cunt-juice-covered right hand now holding a plate stacked with burnt toast. She blows me a kiss.

“Try not to shove a fork in an electric socket,” I shoot back.

I sling my apron over my head and throw it at Iris. She chucks me a cap, a cartoon seagull embroidered on the front. The seagull is Blue Shore’s dopey mascot. I bin the cap on the way out because there’s no fucking way I’m wearing it.

The café breathes a sigh of relief, as if I was the problem rather than the customers and my demented coworkers. The customers were the worst, and that problem is going to follow me to the beach. The holidaymakers, AKA the sunnies will arrive soon with their hyper kids and magical pets constantly causing mayhem, but it’s the Blue Shore yocals who make me want to dissolve into the lino because they often recognise me from the viral stream that made me famous in Blue Shore.

I often catch the yocals rewatching the stream with glazed eyes. Or I catch them watching me, dribbling into their hot chocolates, jerking themselves off under the sticky tables.

“A full English breakfast and a blowy mate.”

Or,

“A cum shake to go,” they say, giggling and leering and wanking as I grit my teeth, trying with all my might not to throw the plates of soggy mushrooms and brick-hard hash browns in their faces. All I want is for someone to like me for me, and not get wet or bricked up because of the viral stream’s fucked-up spell.

I pick at my cuticles, enjoying the feeling of peeling away the skin. Roodie’s Holiday Camp gets smaller behind me, and hot air slaps me hard when I hit the beach, the air-con blasting from Roodie’s Holiday Camp unable to reach this far. I wade through knee-deep heat haze, approaching the ice cream kiosk. It stands out like a skinned thumb. It’s painted a neon yellow that hurts my eyes, a giant plastic ice cream cone planted in the sand, and a Roodie’s flag flying from the roof, the letters printed in a creamy, dripping, pink bubble font. Music is playing inside the kiosk. Some old song. All panpipes and drums like something straight out of Middle-Earth. A head pops out of the kiosk’s hatch, smiling hard.

“Sup,” the head says. “What can I get for ya?” I recognise him. I fucking adore him. Roodie’s son is the most popular streamer in Blue Shore, known for his bad boy antics. Iris didn’t mention that the regular lad is Jake! Jake is trouble. Jake’s built different. He deals, he steals, he fucks whoever he wants to fuck because he’s cock-explodingly-gorgeous. He lets cats loose in dog shelters, sets fireworks off in churches, has street fights with smashed glass tucked between his knuckles, and people love him for it.

My brain is as rotten as everyone else’s in Blue Shore, glued to my bot. Jake’s my biggest addiction. I tune in to his stream again and again. He’s the reason I lose sleep, unable to tear myself away from my bot’s beam. I spend way too much time in chat streams, arguing with Jake’s toxic fandom about his love life, sex life, thug life, and listening to gossip streams with their endless speculation. But Jake’s been off the radar for a while. ‘Taking a hiatus, Fan Bams,’ has been his status for the last two weeks. Fan Bams is what Jake calls his followers. His stream went dark right after mine went viral. The Fan Bams have all been wondering where he went. There’s been a big hole in my life where Jake used to be. I can’t believe that he’s here in front of me. That I’m actually meeting Jake in person. I want to be like Jake: fearless and charming. Watching his streams made me feel like part of his world, and now I’m stepping into it for real.

“I’m here to work. Iris sent me,” I say, playing it as cool as I can, but my voice is shaky. I want to reach out and grab him. I want him to sign his autograph across my bare chest. He’s probably had enough of crazed Fan Bams though. That must be why he stopped streaming. I have to act normal, even if I am a nervous, excited wreck on the inside.

Jake’s sharky grin widens, and little sparkles crackle in front of his eyes. “Zac, right? C’mon in little bro. Welcome to paradise!” My heart twists. Does he know my name from the viral stream, or did Iris tell him I was coming?

Inside, it’s cramped, the air thick and sweet, and my headspace is instantly back in Ryan’s syrupy studio, where the viral stream was produced. I try to shake the memory of it from my head, but end up looking like a glitching freak.

Sweetie boxes line the shelves, drinks sweat in the fridge, and the freezers hum. Jake is sitting on a stool, a cone of neon-green ice cream melting in his hand. He holds out a fist and I bump it awkwardly. He twirls a gnawed-on pencil in his other hand. It’s dancing through his fingers. He drops the pencil, and it clacks on the counter. He ignores it, adjusts the bulge in his skimpy work shorts, then decides to go all in. My eyes follow Jake’s fingers as they slip under the elastic. He rubs the space between his balls and thigh. Sniffs his fingers. He sees me looking and grins even wider.

“Want some?” he says. Do I… He glances at the ice cream, picks up the pencil. Resumes twirling.

“Oh! Yeah, sure,” I say. He meant the ice cream, not his sweaty knob.

“Lime is amazing but choose whatever you want. It’s free if we say it is. No one’s keeping an eye on us here, little bro. We can do whatever we want.” His bulge twitches.

“Lime’s good.”

“Great! You can have mine. I’ll make another.” Jake holds out the soggy cone, and I take it. The thought of eating the ice cream Jake slobbered all over is like a dream come true. The fridge gobbles Jake up, his pink work polo riding up as he leans in, exposing tanned, wet skin and a wetter arse crack.

He holds up a fresh ice cream. His is white. Vanilla or maybe coconut I guess. “Cheers,” he says, and we bump cones. Jake’s pupils dilate as he licks the ice cream. Somehow he becomes more gorgeous and attractive than before. Tonguing things suits him. I lick the half-melted ice cream. Electric sourness floods my mouth. I’ve never tasted an ice cream this incredible. Maybe because Jake’s spit is the best seasoning. I swallow, thinking of the viral stream again. The one I love to hate. The source of my shame, fucking with me by turning me on whenever it pops into my head. Jake must have seen it. Half of Blue Shore saw it. Then Jake knows what I am, and he wants me. That’s why he’s being so obvious. This is one of the rare times I want the other person too. More than anything. A drip of ice cream runs down my wrist. I lick it off. Jake’s tongue splits into tentacles, demolishing his ice cream in seconds. His eyes are locked on me. Outside seagulls screech.

Jake leans forward on the stool, strands of slick hair falling over his forehead, cutting across his eyes. “Well,” he whispers, the skin on his chapped lips quivering with his breath.

“Mmmm,” I say. My hand drifts to the hump in my own shorts. I feel daring. The day started like shit, but now everything’s looking up.

“I knew that Lime would blow your socks off.”

He’s not looking away from me. I won’t look away either. The ice cream melts in my hand. The speaker gurgles. Sweat pools in my belly button. Summer stretches ahead like a horny dream, Carla’s juicy fingers, Iris’s organs, and the chef’s moon-face fading away in an instant.

A cloud swallows the sun, and the sunbathers moan, wrapping towels around their pimpled skin. It’s my first full day on the job after starting yesterday, and the swarms of tourists haven’t arrived yet. The education stream just shut down for summer, and the sunnies, AKA tourists, will be on their way here, a line of coaches roaring down the motorway, ready for a break from reality in Blue Shore.

Jake connects his bot, Sid, a gingerbread man plushie with tattoos and a tiny, gold nose ring, to the salt-encrusted speakers. “What’s this tune?” I ask. Jake’s lapping up a cone of coconut cream. He wipes a drip of melted ice cream from his salt-chapped bottom lip. “Music to dissolve to. Works wonders on the gals.” Jake fingers the air like he’s fingering a pussy.

“Pity I like dick then,” I say, pretending to suck on an invisible knob.

“Works with guys too. Trust me, I’d know.” His eyes beam between his lashes. Course he knows. I’ve seen Jake get with guys on his streams. At least their blurred pixelated forms looked male, the occasional glitch, showing glimpses of a muscly thigh, or a stubble-covered jaw. I never caught sight of the places that really count though. Without actually seeing a dong, it’s hard to say for sure. “My mum was really into this music. The band always performed using homemade instruments. The Thrifters. Have you heard of them? Mum introduced me to the album.”

“Nah, they’re shit-hot though. What do you mean, your mum was into them? She went off them or something?”

“She’s dead now, little bro.”

“Fuck.” Now I wish I hadn’t asked. “Oh man. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. It’s fucking heartbreak that should be sorr…” He coughs. Smacks himself in the chest, and a crimson, bloody thing tumbles out of his mouth, trailing gore. Jake’s heart thumps onto the counter. It flickers, zigzags of neon dancing around it. Jake slams his fist down, smashing the heart in a billion pieces. All the tiny, broken bits of heart turn into shards of light, float into the air, then come together, reforming into cartoon hearts. The cartoon love hearts orbit us, dancing around each other.

Jake blows the cloud, and the hearts drift towards my face. I inhale, and the hearts enter my body. Jake’s emotions beat through me. He’s exposing himself to me. Showing me his rawest, most painful feelings. I experience what it was like to lose his mum. The love they shared. Shit. My eyes are leaking, and for a second I’m embarrassed, but Jake’s doing this on purpose. He wants me to feel like this. Jake reaches out a thumb and wipes a tear away. “She died of a broken heart?” I ask.

Jake shrugs. “Nah, not like that. I mean, it actually did break. She was born with a dodgy ticker, and the mechanical replacement just stopped working one day. That was it.”

I stroke the back of Jake’s hand, running my fingers over the beautiful pattern of veins that criss-cross it. He looks at me, and for a millisecond the same love hearts appear on the surface of his eyeballs. “Thanks. It was a long time ago.”

The next track comes on. “Alright,” a kid says. A short arse, orange hair like greasy flames licking the counter. My legs are oxytocin-soaked jelly, and I have trouble standing up to serve him.

But Jake’s already on it. “Whaddya want, my brother?” Jake says.

“Woah! Jake,” the kid gushes. “Where have you been, man?!”

“I’m here, live and kicking. Tell everyone who’s anyone.”

“Wait till they all hear about this on the streams,” the kid says, pretty much pissing his pants with excitement.

The kid rattles off an order: a bunch of ice lollies, fizzy drinks, and a cone of orange creamsicle. I bag the lollies and drinks, and Jake scoops the ice cream. The ginger kid walks off as happy as Larry. Jake sits back on his stool, and a ghost trails in his wake and vanishes, as if Blue Shore didn’t render him fast enough.

“Easy peasy, right?” Jake says.

“Simple Simon.” I laugh, and now I’m wondering who the fuck Larry and Simon were and why they have dumb-arse phrases named after them.

“Just wait though. When the sunnies arrive, I bet it will be total chaos. Have you ever tried to get ice cream on a summer’s day? Some days, the line stretches right across the beach, as far as you can see.” I try to remember last summer, but all I see is a blur where there should be memories.

I peek out of the hatch. The beach goes on forever. Endless, sparkling sand, pitted with footprints, only deep-blue, starry sky beyond it. It’s like Blue Shore is the entire world, hanging in space. “I reckon I can deal with it,” I say.

Customers drift up to the hatch, tired, sun-fried, and sweaty. They drift out grinning, hypnotised by Jake’s famous, magnetic charm, happy with their hauls of cream and sugar, Jake’s signature scrawled in spit across their breasts or bum or any other body part they want. I’m not the sharpest tool in the shed, but even I notice something dodgy going on. Yocals with wide eyes and dopey far-out faces keep coming to the hatch. I can tell they’re yocals because of the way they dress. Typical Blue Shore drips: thrifted sports gear chopped and cropped, mesh tanks layered with plastic gilets, completed with jelly kicks of course. All of them order the same thing: a cone of lime, strawberry, pistachio or whatever, but all with an extra flake, and they hand over way more payment than necessary for just an ice cream and two flakes.

With each sus order, Jake nods, makes an ice cream, and hands over the extra flake wrapped in a bit of tissue.

The clouds on the horizon turn pink then orange as the sun drops, and the line of customers thins out. By five, we’re dead. Jake’s filling his signature brush’s chamber with spit, a string of saliva hanging from his bottom lip. He’s asking his bot about the surf in between dribbles. Sid dances on the counter as it gives the latest surf forecast. I swivel back and forth on my stool, watching the high tide creep over the beach. The ocean is flat and glassy. Sid reckons the surf might get better tomorrow or it might not. The forecaster is pretty undecided about the whole thing. “What’s with the extra flake?” I ask, as Jake tickles Sid. The gingerbread man is lying on his back, rolling around, laughing his tits off. Except Sid doesn’t have tits. Just two little tufts of icing for nipples.

“You’re really on the ball, aren’t you, little bro? Just making some profit, pushing cream.”

“Cream?”

“Some of the flavours have special ingredients. Makes people feel things differently. That’s all.”

This badassery is exactly the reason I tune into Jake’s streams, and now I’m living in one. But Jake’s not streaming this. This experience is just for me and him. Our own, messy story. I wonder why Jake isn’t sharing his life with Blue Shore anymore. I’d care more, if I could only have him through his stream. But I’m here with Jake now. I get to watch him live! I hope he never switches on his stream again. I want Jake all to myself.

“You’re cool with it, right?” Jake’s arm stretches across the kiosk, his bones turning to elastic. His hand lands on my thigh. He massages it, squeezing so hard it hurts, moving higher up my leg, under my shorts. His fingertips stop just short of my crotch. Our eyes connect, mischief written in his. He laughs, and his arm snaps back and shoots across the shack.

“Cool as a cucumber,” I dribble, dick hard as a frozen cucumber too.

“I knew you would be! You want some more lime? It’s trippy as fuck.”

I nod. “I loved it. I’d eat a whole tub of the stuff.”

“Hold your horses, little bro! You’ll end up in another galaxy if you do that. Knew you’d love Elf Sherbert though. It’s the most popular flavour. That was a tiny dose yesterday, and you let most of it melt. You’ve got to have the full experience today. A scoop and a half should sort you out.”

“Elf Sherbert,” I repeat slowly.

“Yep. Every cream has a street name. Lime’s Elf Sherbert, Strawberry’s Slut Dribbler. I’ll fill you in on all the rest later.”

“What’s in Elf Sherbert then?” I wonder out loud.

Jake taps his nose. “Can’t give away all the secrets, can I?” Jake heaves down the kiosk shutter, then hands me a cone of lime ice cream, so green it looks radioactive. “I’ve eaten a ton, so it hardly affects me anymore, but for newbies, it’s like blasting into space.”

I lick the ice cream and the track changes, a pirate shanty drifting from the speakers. Lyrics about a love lost at sea. Taken by singing sirens. Pulled into the deep. Drowned with kisses. I wrap my lips around the ice cream, sucking it into my mouth. It tastes as good as yesterday, even without Jake’s saliva garnish.

A psychedelic rush washes over me.

The kiosk expands until we are sitting in a giant void. A billion stars twinkle above. They fall from the sky becoming UFOs, hovering all around us. The alien pilots inside are chattering and pointing. Jake’s eyes are black holes sucking me in. “I thought this summer was gonna be boring as shit,” he says softly. “But now you’re here. And you’re cute as fuck.”

Jake leans back, legs wide open. He licks his lips, and I’m on the tip of his tongue, a granule of sugar melting in bliss. He looks at me dangerously, the word ‘CAUTION’ strobing in front of his nose. “It’s just you and me now. Hey! You can help me sell cream if you want? We can share the profits.” I can’t say no. He’s offering me a slice of his world. I’ll do anything to gobble it up. To gobble Jake up. I want to bite him. I want to taste him. I want to smear mint choc chip all over his chest and lick it off.

I think I say yes, but the world is shattering. I’m riding one of the planet shards into space. I’m joining the mantis aliens, the Greys, and the Pleiadians in their Galactic Federation. I’m sitting on a meteoric throne, and they’re hailing me as their prince. Jake’s here too. He’s lapping alien ectoplasm from my toes. Space elves surround us, whistling and twittering like birds. “So you’ll help me?” Jake says.

“Yes,” I groan. One of the mantis aliens has pried open my jaws. Its long furry tongue unrolls and probes my mouth. Enters my throat. Yes, I think. But I can’t remember what I’m agreeing to. Dealing? Toe licking? Fucking? Worshipping Jake all summer? All of the above?

The mantis drags its tongue from inside me.

The ice cream kiosk tumbles back into my vision. Jake’s holding out another cone of lime cream. The beach is dark now. Everyone’s gone. It’s like time sped up.

The stars giggle.

The sea rises and falls.

“I’m planning to diversify my business. Not just sell to yocals. The sunnies are going to love cream,” Jake says, his face a swirling galaxy.

Tomorrow, the sunnies come, and if Jake’s plan works, we’ll be rolling it in.

We. Me and him. I lick my lips. The taste of Jake is still there. Another flavour lingers on my tongue, metallic and cosmic like stardust mixed with crushed Martian cockroaches.

Jake was right. Yesterday was a walk in the park compared to today. The sunnies are here en masse, and the beach is packed. We’re rushing around, baking in the oven-like kiosk. Jake said to ditch our clothes and even our undies because “Roodie doesn’t give a flying fuck what we do.” So we’re working naked, sweat dripping from our knobs. The world is slanted, the sky sagging under the sun’s weight. Heat waves ripple over the sand, and barefooted sunnies leap from parasol shadow to parasol shadow, or run quickly across the scalding sand.

That’s when I notice that the ice cream kiosk is all wrong. Nothing is quite meeting up in the right places. It’s like someone bulldozed the ice cream kiosk, then rebuilt it using a torn-up flat-pack plan, joining the planks together in the incorrect order, leaving gaping holes where yesterday there were none. I take a look at the long line of sunnies, and decide to escape, diving through one of the holes in the kiosk wall. My stomach slides across scalding sand. The sand rapidly cools until it is sub-zero, and I freeze in place. Ice-crystal-covered slabs rise up around me, enclosing me, and a ceiling of frosted glass and icicles slips overhead.

My blood cools instantly, my flesh turning to ice. My eyes are the only part not frozen. I know because I can move them around freely whilst the rest of me is paralysed. My skin is coated in strawberry syrup and hundreds and thousands. Freezing mist surrounds me, rushing away when the ceiling slides open. A marshmallow hand with chocolate flake fingers attached to a long, bendy arm made of woven strawberry laces, reaches in and picks me up.

This isn’t the same ice cream kiosk I was in moments ago. This is a kiosk in a topsy-turvy universe. The walls are covered in posters of human lollies and ice creams. I feel sick looking at an image of a pretty girl because she’s sliced and diced, gorily piled in a cone, boobs covered in raspberry syrup. In another poster, a group of human lollies are fake smiling, lips pulled up in the corners with strings of liquorice threaded through their cheeks, lolly sticks shoved up their chocolate-dripping arses. There’s something hard between my legs, and it’s not the usual culprit. I realise that I must be impaled on a stick too, and I’m glad that my arsehole is frozen and numb. My lips hurt from grinning, and I can taste aniseed on my tongue. The gigantic ice cream, holding me between crumbling chocolate flake fingers, passes me to another ice cream on the other side of the hatch.

The ice cream customer opens its mouth, the top of the cone separating into two jagged halves. I try to scream as the ice cream shoves my head inside its mouth, but my frozen vocal cords aren’t working. My final view is of a set of razor-sharp candy fangs coming down on me. I flinch, preparing for the agony of being munched to death when the sound of a buzzer drags me through time and space. I’m sucked through the hole in the kiosk wall, and my world snaps into place like puzzle pieces being slammed together by a demented toddler.

Then darkness. One long blink, and heat slams back in. I’m back in the kiosk on Blue Shore Bay, seagulls squawking above and waves roaring in the distance. Fear Factor Phil is standing at the hatch, his bot, Tails, hovering in front of him. “Piss check,” Phil screams.

Tails flies over the counter, tail whirling. He hovers in front of my dick, then returns to Phil’s beaming face. “Not a dribble! Let’s meet our fearless dimension hopper.”

Phil hands me a tiny trophy. I don’t watch Phil’s stream. I’m not into watching people getting scared shitless for thrills. So I don’t expect the confetti that fountains from the trophy.

“Fucking hell.” I lob the trophy at Phil and it smacks him in his forehead, leaving a gnarly dent. Blood bubbles from the wound.

“Looks like we have a bad sport, fear lovers.” The words ‘bad sport’ flash in front of my face. “Let’s find our next victi…I mean fear lover before this geezer wallops me again.” Phil wanders off, still talking to his bot and his thousands of viewers. I wipe the pieces of confetti from my sweaty mug, looking at my reflection in the fridge to make sure I get every little piece.

When I turn back to the hatch, a middle-aged woman is tapping her long, green fingernails on the counter, clutching a baby goblin in her other arm. The goblin stares at me with swamp-coloured eyes. The creature’s bananary stink fills my nostrils. “A Mini Milk, and a cone of strawberry with an extra flake, please,” the woman says flatly. She’s wearing a see-through bikini, barnacles clinging to the plastic. I glance down at the special section of the freezer, where the cream with special ingredients is stashed. Lime, strawberry, pistachio, bubblegum, and coconut cream. AKA: Elf Sherbert, Slut Dribbler, Smash, Dreamscape, and Spunk Rush. The woman doesn’t look like Jake’s usual customer at all, but I can’t check because Jake’s nowhere to be seen.

My bot starts buzzing and vibrating, then counting down from ten in moth-speak, which sounds like fuzzy buzzes, each louder than the last. I grab my backpack, rip the zip open, and my moth bot, Zebby, flies out, her digital eyes glowing red in anger. She hates being disturbed during the day, giving me ten seconds to receive whatever has pissed her off before she deletes the message, hangs up the call, or bites me ferociously. Bloody thing. She spends most of her time moping deep in my musty backpack. If I could take her back to the shop for a refund I would, but bots are for life, not just for Christmas. The stupid thing catfished me, projecting all these beautiful colours onto her wings, then turning into a dull, hairy, evil little creature the moment the return window ran out. The only time she’s in a good mood is at night, when I’m glued to the streams. Then, she flutters around my bedroom, trailing pixels, her stream beam filling the whole room so that I’m immersed in whichever stream I’m watching, only landing occasionally to chew a hole in the curtains or the dirty clothes on my floor. A message from Jake jumps out at me, filling my vision, his salt-chapped lips so close it’s like he’s kissing me as he speaks.

“Out telling sunnies who pass the vibe check about our hustle. Man the fort, little bro! Back in no time.”

I fake smile at the woman and goblin. I don’t think she passes the vibe check, but I’m not sure what the ‘vibe’ is. “Hey, you’re Ryan’s masterpiece, aren’t you?” she says, and it feels like she’s tying a noose around my neck. If even sunnies have seen the stream now, it must be spreading beyond Blue Shore. The stream is like a virus, infecting everyone. Soon, the whole world will be getting off on me. I nod, feeling sick as her hands slip down her bikini bottoms. She licks her lips as she stares at me hungrily. The goblin, free from her grip, jumps from her hip, latches onto a wall and begins climbing the kiosk, claws digging into the wood. I try to grab the goblin’s hairy leg, and it spins, spit flying from its fangs. I let go because catching magical rabies was not in the job description. The goblin disappears onto the kiosk’s roof. I try to focus on the task at hand and not on the rising and falling of the woman’s bikini bottoms.

“You sure you only want normal ice cream?” I say, looking down, widening my eyes at the special cream compartment, then looking back up and giving her a not-so-subtle eyebrow raise. Her wet fingers are on the counter now. She leans into the kiosk hatch, boobs turning into squashed pancakes on the counter, and peers down at my sweaty penis.

The goblin is bashing its fists on the roof. “Sure, hot stuff…” She reaches in, her hand going for my dick, and I jump back.

“No!” I stutter. “I didn’t mean that…” My mumbling is drowned out by the goblin’s pummelling, so I shut up and get the ice creams. At least I was right about her not having the vibe. Maybe I can actually help Jake sell cream.

When I turn back, her eyes are rolled back, and her bikini bottoms are soaked. I pass her the ice creams. The goblin baby leaps from the corrugated roof at the smell of ice cream and chomps the entire Mini Milk, swallowing it in one gulp.

“Thanks. See you next time!” I say, hoping to never see her or the horrible baby again.

“Now, how about the Slut Dribbler!?”

I look at her, confused.

“Strawberry with an extra flake.”

My confidence plummets. Each new customer feels like a test I’m bound to fail. I obviously don’t have a vibe detector like Jake does. I pass her a cone of Slut Dribbler, my cheeks burning. The goblin gives me a funny look, its eyebrows like two fat caterpillars on its wrinkled forehead. I’m glad when they move out of sight.

I do a double take. The line behind the woman is endless, sunny after sunny stretching forever. How am I going to deal with them all by myself? The ancient wall fan whirs, blowing 1000-degree-air at me. I’m so hot that I’d take my skin off if I could.

A beluga whale of a man approaches the hatch, blocking the view. I think he’s naked, but it’s hard to tell because rolls of fat are cascading down his body. Maybe his swimmers are embedded somewhere under the lard. Two tiny seaweed-coloured eyes glint at me between his bulging eyelids. “Two Strawberry Cornettos, two 99s, two Cokes, a 7UP, and a Feast,” he says in a high-pitched voice. His skin is blotched with gross puke-coloured patterns like some kind of fungus is growing beneath his skin. I didn’t hear a please, but I get on with the order anyway, desensitised to rude customers from my days in the café. The whale’s oniony breath follows me to the fridge.

I pass him the cones, the ice cream already melting in the heat, and quickly shove the rest of his order in a plastic bag. He plunks down three pebbles in exchange for the order. I lift them to the light one by one. They’re nice stones. One has a unicorn carved into its surface. Another’s surface is painted to resemble a mushroom. My favourite is the pebble with a tiny Venus de Milo etched on its surface in crazy detail. I chuck them in the exchange drawer where they join the beads, feathers, teeth, a tiny watercolour portrait, pearls, a braid woven with plastic beads, and fingernail clippings (collected in a little baggy). All the exchange items emit auras, the colour and brightness corresponding to an item’s value.

I pass the whale his change, dropping a crab’s claw into his hand. He tucks the claw under a roll of fat like it is the most normal thing in the world, then looks at me expectantly. I dig into my nose, really getting up in there, picking out a sandy bogey. I wipe my finger on his palm, and the bogey slides across his fortune lines. He rolls the bogey between his fingers, forming a nugget, and plops it onto his tongue. “And the rest of my change,” he says, eyeing me suspiciously like I’m a malfunctioning android. “I gave you an extra pebble cos I need to change one up so my son can play the arcades.”

“Sorry, sir, but you only gave me three. Worth what you ordered minus a crab’s claw and a dried nose nugget.”

“That bogey weren’t even dry, matey!” He says, licking his lips. “And are you calling me a liar? You little piss pot!”

The sun dims, turning blood-red. My pulse beats hard against my wrist like a creature trying to break free. I open the exchange drawer. It sticks, the sand grains in the slide mechanism jamming it. I yank it open. The whale man leans over the counter, and the kiosk tips, rising into the air at the back, then slamming down into the sand when he unbeaches himself, the seven or so pebbles that he spied in the drawer still reflected in his mean, beady eyes. A vein pulses in the side of his bald head. “I told you, I gave you four! I saw them all in there. I want to see a fucking manager!”

“Just me here,” I whisper, murderous rage surging through my body.

He snarls, “Give me my change, shitbag.” Well, the customer is always right. I do a quick sum in my head. Maths is for bots, but this sum is simple. One artistically carved pebble = five and a half dull marbles. I reach into the marble sack, counting them with my fingers, pulling out six. He can fucking have one half for free. My ears are buzzing. I pull my hand back and lob the marbles as hard as I can.

The marbles impact the man’s slab of a head, knocking out two of his bared teeth, breaking his nose, shattering cartilage, shooting through the 99 cone, smacking him straight in the third eye. A laser beam of blazing light explodes from his third eye hole, incinerating everything it touches. The kiosk goes up in flames, crackling then whooshing. The whale man drops to his knees. Falling forward. He face-plants the sand.

I’m enjoying the carnage. Fire, blood, and ice cream. Every part of me is burning, the fire flaying my flesh from my bones. A cool hand slides over my intestines. The fire instantly vanishes, my meat body snapping back to my skeleton. “Zac, little bro,” Jake’s voice murmurs. “There’s a queue waiting.” Ash drifts around us like snow.

“Shit. Sorry, I was miles away.” I turn, breathing in Jake’s hot, smoky breath.

“That was cool as fuck though.”

“It was?” When I lean over the counter, searching for the blubbery man’s body, it isn’t there. Instead, sunburnt kids are collecting the marbles from the sand.

“Yeah, that was textbook. The way you chucked his change over his head. Epic. Here, go have a cone out back. Calm down. I can serve this lot.” He passes me a cone of lime. I spot the whale man’s flabby arse retreating in the distance. Guess he didn’t want the marbles enough to get down on his hands and knees to collect them.

I do as Jake says, crouching behind the kiosk, huddling in the building’s shade.

My right calf muscle spasms. I rub my leg. My calf muscle is bulging, the skin over it taut, veins throbbing, little lights dancing under my skin. My calf is so big, it looks like I spent a week in the gym working on that muscle alone. My memory is thrown back to the shuttle bus stop. To the puddle of slime I stood in. I guess it wasn’t snot. Oh shit. This is terrifying. I remember a streamer who would go on adventures in far-flung places. He went for a dip in a jungle river, and a parasite swam up his pee hole. Two weeks later his brain was full of worms, the slimy things coming out of his nose and eye sockets. He streamed the whole thing. Even as they were eating him alive.

That was bad, but at least those nasties came from Earth. Shimmering slime on pavements doesn’t just get there all by itself. I wonder which space creep spunked the goop all over the pavement. I try to think of a hench species of alien but my brain comes up with nothing. I will have to ask Zebby about it tonight. It’s times like this that I wish I paid more attention to the education streams. Worms in the brain are grim, but a parasite from space could be a gazillion times worse.

I take a lick of Elf Sherbert. Tiny aliens appear, dancing across the sand, beckoning me with long, spidery fingers and curling tentacles.

I close my eyes and blast off.