Hey chicos.

This is just a small portion of a drabble I wrote for the TwiNetwork Iron Pen's challenge in December. The "secret" ingredients were: the professions a hooker and a Christmas elf. This is what I came up with in about 30 minutes.

"Advice is like snow—the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind." —Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Snow fell and blanketed the street, like a fresh coat of paint, splashing and leaving this monochromatic drench. It actually reminded Alice of of sperm. Blankets and blankets of ejaculate. And there wasn't much appealing about a sticky blanket of cum.

As disgusting as it was, there wasn't ever any thought of hers that didn't revolve around sex. And it had been that way for years.

When she was twelve years old, she had her first boyfriend—or at least that's what she'd told herself, then. He was nice to her, bought her things, took her places. Alice had never had a stable family life. Since a young age she'd been a ball of energy, and craved attention, and when her parents didn't provide it she sought it elsewhere. And the arms that she longed to welcome her, to hold her after a long day, to tell her that everything was going to be okay, to tell her that she was loved-they'd been the wrong arms. But by the time she realized it, it had been too late.

His name had been Tyler, and he told her that she was his world, his life. He laughed at her jokes, he smiled when she went on and on with her stories, her energy keeping her talking long after everyone else lost interest. But Tyler never lost interest. And Alice loved him. She loved him more than anything and when he started to pull away, she didn't understand why.

It started off small. He wouldn't visit as often. He would ignore her for a game on TV or a friend's phone call. The lack of attention devastated her. And when she brought up the issue, Tyler had a solution.

Tyler had friends.

And each one of his friends paid special attention to Alice, just not in the way she would have hoped, but she didn't want to make Tyler look bad in front of his friends by denying them. So she grinned and bore it. And when one friend became two, and two became ten, she slowly lost sight of why it had ever bothered her to begin with.

It would only be a matter of time before Tyler would start telling her that she could charge money for the attention she craved. And when she did, she not only had nice things, but people who always wanted to be with her and share her company, even if it was superficial.

But the joy of shiny things soon lost its luster—both the shiny things she received, and the novelty she once was to those who wanted her company. And the life she'd created started to fall around her.

With hollow eyes, Alice looked out into the snowy night around her. She'd walked this street so often that her path along the concrete was permanent, in just as many ways as it was on her own soul. The path she'd made for herself, the one she was trapped in, and the one she walked. It was all the same, and it had been that way for so long.

Nothing about the late December night appealed to her. Not the smells from the candle shop she passed in fragrant peppermints and pine, not the lights from the mall up ahead. It was all a backdrop to the path she'd chosen. It'd change every year, but she'd stay the same—walking up and down the path.

As she rounded the corner to the back of the mall—a favorite location of hers because most of her customers preferred the seclusion—the smell of a cigarette caught her attention.

Its aromatic enticement called to her. It'd been at least three hours since she'd had a smoke, and the last one she'd bummed off a customer, and the bastard had the audacity to take it off her payment. The smoke was like a finger, curling her in it's direction. And she followed happily.

She just about had a heart attack when she saw the owner of the luscious scent. She didn't know if she should laugh or be disgusted, but at that point it didn't matter.

He was tall, leaning against the back wall of the mall in a red and green pin-striped Christmas Elf costume. Everything about his outfit screamed joy and cheer, but the twitch of his lips and the glare in his eyes screamed "fuck this job."

She knew that feeling all too well.

As she approached him, she caught sight of a small patch of his dirt-blond hair under his Elf hat. He saw her approaching and waved her off. It didn't surprise her that he'd know exactly how she earned money by seeing her. One look at the bags under her eyes, the track marks on her arms, the disdain in her eyes, and it was obvious what she was. Her clothes didn't cover much, and they definitely didn't hide the truth.

"No, thanks."

"Oh, I'm not offering," she said as she came up next to him. He stood off the wall, and she'd realized just how tall he actually was—it was actually imposing. "I just wanted to know if I can bum a cigarette off you."

He gave her the once over; it was quick. But the way he paused after having done it made her feel like he was still looking at her. Looking over her, through her. Judging her. It wasn't the first time.

"Don't you think you've had enough?"

"Listen, Chris fucking Chringle, I didn't come here for a sermon or to be judged by a holiday dwarf about what to do. I just want a fucking cigarette. Do you have one or not?"

Thanks for reading!

xxNaya