Eighty degrees is what the thermometer said this morning. Now at high noon, as me and my family sit in the heated shade of our wilting tree, I’m more than sure that the heat is surely closer to one hundred. You’d think after being here as long as we have that we would be use to this dreadful weather, but we aren’t. I suppose that’s the point of it all. We moved and we schemed in our past lives, now we sit motionless, our souls cooking in our flesh suits as our sins seep through out pores and hair follicles. Maybe once this is all over, we can be reprieved. The power will spring on, the air conditioning will come to life and finally we can enjoy a glass of water that doesn’t burn our esophagus on the way down.

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Our only source of relief comes once a day in the form of an ice cream truck. An old 50’s-esque rust bucket with the worst exhaust you’d ever smelled. Its call to the citizen was not a jaunty tune or a bell like the better ones that no longer blessed our street, but a series of obnoxious, unsettling alternating tones reminiscent of a dying police siren in loop. Its operator was Mr. Vinci. A forty-something misshapen monstrosity of a man who walked permanently hunched over due to the ceiling of the truck being so low. He’d park the truck in the center of the road as no one really ventured down the street and then opened the flap on the side. He stood there silently as his uneven eyes looked down at you past his pointed nub of a nose as he waited for your order.

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“One please.” That’s all there was. Never did he ask what flavor ice cream, as he only had vanilla. No point asking for a type of cone, he only carried wafer, spotted with specks of brown that moved if you stared at them too long. He’d turn around and fiddle for a moment, hacking and coughing as he built your snack. Sometimes if you stare too long, you’d swear you’d see something moving within the shadows beyond the dim light inside or a tentacle may appear from under one of the wheel carriages. Sometimes I swear I hear a sound almost like a whimpering of a small animal. Mr. Vinci would duck down and whatever noise stopped instantly. After a moment he’d turn around and extend the already melting treat out of the window to you.

“Oh look, he added coconut,” one boy said before he quickly lapped away at the item. I looked down at my cone at the faintly visible small white specks and then back up at Mr. Vinci’s uncovered, rapidly receding hairline and knew better.