kristkindlemarkt

Night falls early at this time of year. It’s easy not to go outside, so I dragged you out.

“It’ll be worth it, promise. It’s naff but it’s a lot of fun in a naff way.”

And by now we’re both hyperactive on sugar.

“Ich liebe das Christkindlmarkt,” you say, sucking giant chocolate-covered marshmallows off sticks with machine regularity. People step aside to avoid bumping into you in the narrow avenues between stalls. You feel eyes on you, and you luxuriate in it.

“Ich auch,” I mumble with a full mouth. It’s not often I eat when you do, but no way am I passing up on some of the treats available here. “This candy floss flavour is called ‘woodruff’. What even is that? Is it a real word? Here, try some.”

Without pause you lean over and bury your face in green fluff. Once your wide-open mouth works a little between your teeth your jaw works regularly to pull in more. The floss dissolves as soon as it hits the moisture in your mouth so you don’t need to stop till it’s pretty much all gone. You swallow syrup and, as partial payment for the display of greed, force out a sharp rap of a burp. “Tastes like furniture polish.”

I look at the wisps that remain on my stick. “Yes, well. Perhaps we should be getting savory snacks first anyway. Come on, my treat!”

“Ooo, savory!”

I grab your hand and guide you through the crowd. On the way we stop for Glühwein, and I pay extra for Kirsch, so we are warm and full of spices by the time we reach my destination.

Three gentlemen tend an enormous round grill hanging from the ceiling of a low shack. Pale sausages blister over high heat then are moved to a higher grill to finish cooking. Previous customers receive them in absurdly small bread handles, for want of a better word. Each sausage is more than a foot long.

The smell of charring meat sets your mouth watering. Instantly, everyone around you looks more appealing. I sense your attention wandering and give your hand a squeeze. “Not long now.”

“That stall over there has a single person in it. I could slip inside and you could close the shutters.”

I look over to the stand in question. It sells little glass angel trinkets. How appropriate.

“… Tell you what, let me get you something. If you’re still hungry afterwards, you can go pick up an angel for the tree.”

“So you’re saying yes,” you say with a smirk, “but you wanna spend your money first. I’m okay with that.”

We’re called forward. I rattle off a line if fluent-sounding German (in fact I’ve just been rehearsing it in my head for five minutes), and receive a line of fluent Polish in turn. I laugh, apologise, and order twenty Olmabratwürste.

“Twenty?” asks the gruff grill master, looking us both up and down. You smile sweetly, the flash of your fangs hidden amongst dark night and festive lighting.

“Sie hat Hunger,” I explain, and pay the man.

It takes ages. You have a plan to devour every stallholder by the time our order is prepared.

We find a nook on a covered bench and sit down. The sausages are spitting hot but God do they smell good. You scald your mouth when you bite into one but regret nothing.

Five disappear like morning mist in an hallucination of lightly-spiced meat flavour. Then your stomach finally registers that it contains something. The feeling of incipient satisfaction grows with every new Wurst, but far, far too slowly. As you swallow the last mouthful of the last sausage you are merely pleasantly full. Your stomach cries out to be bloated.

“Still hungry?” I ask, even though I think I know the answer.

“Mhmm. Told you I would be.”

“Still worth it,” I say cheerfully. “You are beautiful when you eat.”

You belch a low note against the back of your fist. “I’m going to go be beautiful at that stall, then.”

The person manning the stall is too young to be the stallholder. Perhaps a son? He’s maybe twenty and he drops like a sack of bricks when you leap on him. I whistle as I let down the metal shutters but catch a glimpse of him beneath your suffocating bulk. Clawed hand tight over a silenced scream, face buried tight in his neck and your jaw really the only thing that’s moving. He mouths a plea for help to me as I close the final shutter.

You must be starving. By the time I finish up and round the back of the stall his weakly-struggling form is buried up to the waist in your jaws. You extend a hand as a request for help and I leap to pulling off his shoes and bulky trousers. It’s too late for the gillet on its way to your stomach but your guts won’t have to process to much clothing, now.

Your eyes are heavy-lidded and your motions hurried. It’s like you’ve never eaten, even as your dinner opens his eyes in pitch blackness thick with acid and meat and his own cloying blood. You roll onto your back and I hold his legs still while you work him down your hard-working throat.

“Ooof, I needed th~woooaaaArRok, sorry, that.”

I look at you rocking back and forth on the floor, cuddling a belly measurably large than before. The life inside you endures briefly and your mouth still runs wet with anticipation until that life stops. There’s only one thing to do.

I lock the door behind me. “They’re going to cancel the Christmas market next year,” I say mournfully, even as I lay my hands on the struggling mass of flesh. You press against my hands and all is right with the world. Kneading stimulates the enzyme produce. He’ll be falling apart soon.

“Look on the bright side.” Your eyes flash with terrible delight. “If you’re social network climber works, there won’t be another Christmas.”

You get a kiss for that one.