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By Root 304 0

looking at each other before cautiously holding their own hands out as well.* The only one not making a gesture was poor Garth, whose hands wagged as loosely by his sides as his chin did on his neck. From behind him, Angela gave the big man a forceful jab to his hefty underside. Perhaps a bit more nervous than most, Garth awoke from his frozen stupor, saw what the rest of us were trying to communicate, and flung his hands forward in a sudden motion. It was a spastic display that sent a forgotten snack cake once in his glove out into the snow between our two parties. When it landed in its crinkly covering, the monstrous beings seemed to view it as a gauntlet, nervously reaching back for their weapons once more, causing our side, en masse, to take a few stutter steps back in response.

“We come in peace,” Jeffree managed to get out. He had one hand on Jaynes’s old shoulder and the other on Carlton Damon Carter’s, seemingly prepared to push the former into harm’s way as he pulled the latter away from it. As Booker Jaynes yanked himself free, one of the creatures, the shortest of the bunch, shot down to grab Garth’s pastry off the ground, causing another wave of backstepping by us. He huddled off to the side of his group with the Little Debbie, seeming truly agitated by his find, holding it at arm’s length for quite a while before bringing the open packaging closer.

“Yum yum,” I told him. I think it was something I’d seen in a Bob Hope movie once, where the sophisticated American tries to communicate with a bestial savage. Our animalism connects us, I struggled to remind myself. “Mmmm, mmmm,” I said, making feeding motions with my hands. His eyes were firmly affixed on me. He raised the now crushed cake to his lengthy nose for a series of quick snorts, then pulled a loose piece into one of his massive, hairy hands. With a slow, dramatically deliberate underhand swing, he threw a piece of pastry lightly across the expanse at me. His companions stared dumbly at this interaction. I caught the missile and—before I could think of what unknown contaminant these creatures might share, what hidden virus they might be infected with—I swallowed the cake down, humming “mmmm” all the way and rubbing my belly. It was cake with the texture of a sponge soaked in oil since 1952. Pausing for a few seconds after my last swallow, seeing I didn’t fall to the ground and meet a quick death, the creature ate what was left of the portable sweetness.

“AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”

The sounds it made, the groans, were loud, vulgar. They were appreciative too, and the now excited snowman gathered over his buddies. The international sugarcane trade that fueled the colonial world—these beings had obviously missed that. I watched, struggling to be culturally relative and hide my revulsion, as they moved the crumbs around in their mouths, their alabaster tongues glistening.

“They like the food,” I turned to tell the others. They were all nodding, uniform looks of frozen shock on their faces.

“Them shits is good,” Garth mumbled, eyes glued to the display of ecstasy before him. “Let me see if I got more,” he said and began patting himself down, pulling through all the pockets. The others soon joined in, frantically groping him like those sweets were the only things holding off a rabid dog. Garth looked like a sculpture they were putting together.

“Uh, guys? They’re leaving,” I interrupted. It was true. A quick word from the main yeti had sent the others, one by one, back out into the tunnel beyond. Except one. He was moving toward us. Moving toward me.

I didn’t appreciate how massive he was until I was swallowed in his shadow. The smell, the horrible fishy smell, like the penguin cage at the zoo. The hand, a mitt of calloused, pale, dead skin, raised slowly up to me. Up toward my chest, open, flat. Still. Like he wanted me to take it.

“You going to leave him hanging?” Jeffree asked, incredulous, to which the others agreed in a united chorus of “Don’t leave him hanging.”

I grabbed the hand. I was touching it. Not as cold as ice, but as cold and