cold lick

⚠️Trigger Warning: This story contains disturbing imagery involving children, ice cream trucks, and elements of horror. Reader discretion is advised.

The ice cream truck came at dusk.

Its chimes were broken—notes out of tune, like a lullaby hummed by something that had never been a child. The truck itself looked ancient, something pulled from a dream no one wanted to remember. Rust flaked from its sides like dead skin, its pastel colors faded to a funeral blush, and the windows were too dark to see inside. But the kids of Harlow Street ran for it every time.

Every time… except for Claire.

She hadn’t eaten ice cream since last summer. Not since her sister Lily vanished.

One moment, Lily had been skipping down the sidewalk, a purple popsicle in hand, her laughter trailing in sunbeams. The next—gone. No scream. No sign of struggle. Just the empty stick, still wet, lying on the concrete like an offering.

Everyone said she ran away.

Claire knew better.

The ice cream truck had come that evening, too.

No one believed her—not the cops, not her parents, not even the therapist who scribbled in his leather notebook like he could trap her grief with ink. “Trauma does strange things,” they said, mouths too soft to speak the truth.

But Claire remembered.

The way the truck had idled at the edge of the street like it was waiting. The way Lily had stared into the window, smiling—not scared, not confused, just… drawn. She’d walked forward like she was sleepwalking.

Tonight, the truck rolled in again.

Claire stood on her porch barefoot, arms folded tight against the cool breeze, heart rattling in her chest like a bird desperate to fly. The other kids swarmed it—laughing, waving wrinkled bills, calling out for rocket pops and fudge bars. The chimes played their broken song, skipping notes like cracked porcelain teeth.

Then the truck stopped. Right in front of Claire’s house.

The laughter dulled. Kids turned. Still chewing, still grinning—but too still.

The serving window creaked open. No driver. Just a void behind the glass.

Then a hand emerged—long and pale as bone, the skin translucent, almost wet-looking. It held a cone. One scoop. Swirled in black and bruised-purple, mist rising in tendrils that didn’t evaporate but clung to the air.

The ice cream shimmered like oil in a puddle.

“Claire,” it said.

Not the man. The cone.

She froze.

The voice came from inside the scoop. Warped and distant, like a memory trapped under ice.

“Claire, I’m cold…”

Her breath caught.

Lily.

Without knowing why, Claire stepped off the porch. Her feet kissed the pavement, still warm from the day but growing colder with every step.

The other kids stood motionless now. Popsicles halfway to their mouths, eyes wide and unblinking. They looked like mannequins left in a forgotten store window. No breath. No sound.

The cone extended further.

“Come with me. I miss you.”

It was Lily. That soft lilt warped by frost, by something unspeakable. Claire’s throat tightened. Her hand reached out, fingers trembling, aching to touch, to believe.

Then the scoop blinked.

A milky eye opened just beneath the surface. Childlike. Wrong.

And then a mouth split across the side of the cone, toothless and smiling.

“Don’t keep her waiting,” it gurgled.

Claire jerked back.

The door behind the window creaked open and a wave of rot spilled out—sweet and rancid, like melted candy over corpses. Inside, the air shimmered with cold. She saw flashes—tiny shoes, pink hair ties, fingernails frozen into metal walls.

Something stirred within. A silhouette with too many joints. Its breath was a hiss, its teeth clicked like hailstones skittering across a coffin lid.

Claire turned and ran.

She didn’t scream. Didn’t look back.

The truck didn’t follow. It didn’t need to.

That night, her sleep was broken by twisted dreams—ice cream melting into soil, cones with hollow voices, and Lily’s face behind glass, mouth frozen open in silent pleading.

“Hurry,” her sister whispered, her tongue stuck to a frosted wall. “It’s getting colder.”

Claire woke with a gasp.

A knock came at her window.

She turned.

There it was.

The cone.

Sitting on her sill.

Dripping.

Smiling.