He jumped into the ice bath and felt the deadly embrace of an arctic ocean once again. A girlish shriek erupted from within him as every survival instinct told him to get out of the water.
“Fight it, Peter,” he said. “Fight the cold.”
“Are you okay, darling?” the Snow Witch called out.
“Y-yes!”
The coldness shocked any hint of libido out of him. He was a shriveled, teeth-chattering, husk of a man, sitting in the bath. And he was not adapting to the cold. The more he waited, the more it worsened. His lips went from pink to gray to blue. Contrary to what those Nordic, lutefisk-muching psychos in Scandinavia may tell you— there are zero health benefits to ice baths! None at all! It’s all a bunch of horsefeathers!
Meanwhile the Snow Witch panted excitedly in her ice bed, covering herself with a brittle bed sheet as she posed sexily for Peter’s entrance. Should she expose one shoulder? Both shoulders? How low should she hold the bed sheet against her chest, she wondered. When she saw her legs were covered she bent over and flung the sheet to expose one leg. Then she repostured herself to show more calf. More thigh? Too much. She tousled her blue hair about when Peter came out of the bathroom shivering and frozen. He nonchalantly struck a pose, leaning against the doorway, as though he was very cool and very casual, but very clearly he was dying of exposure.
There is nothing more exciting than jumping into bed with someone new— especially when you are unsure if your bedfellow wants to kill you. But who wants to die of old age without battle scars, without wresting a knife from a crazy girlfriend’s clutches, or explaining to the police officer that those bruises are from falling down the stairs? And to the young, desperate, and irresponsible— like Peter— risking decapitation was worth it to mount the summit, to conquer the mountain, and achieve that Mount Everest dream of bringing a girl to sexual bliss.
Into the rock hard bed he flung himself, the Snow Witch laid out before him like a Christmas feast. Peter held up her perfectly demonic leg— the most deliciously PG-13 part of a girl’s body— and ran his tongue across it. And like a snow cone forgotten at the bottom of a freezer his tongue glued to her frosty flesh. As ice crystals bloomed across his tongue the Snow Witch’s audible pleasure turned to audible concern— she began repeating the words “Hot, hot…” over and over, first flatly, but the longer his tongue remained frosted to her calf, the louder and more panicked her voice became— until she was screaming “Hot-hot-hot-hot-hot-ow-ow-ow!”
She kicked away and ripped her leg free of Peter’s blistering tongue. There was an audible peel and then Peter tasted blood and pain. The Snow Witch rolled across the bed, back and forth, clutching her burnt calf, as Peter nursed his frostbit mouth.
“Again?! Really? After the ice bath? You’re still this hot? Are you kidding me? You’re too hot!”
“W-we can m-make t-this w-w-w-work, b-b-baby,” Peter said.
The Snow Witch cocooned herself and shivering Peter in the blanket. Her icy claws gripped his head and forced him to look at her.
“I’ll make it work, if I have to. You will stay here with me, and I will figure out how to turn you into a snowman, and together we will live forever.”
“Uh huh…”
The Snow Witch screamed and erupted from his lap. She pranced and flapped the bedsheets like a great white bird. Her body steamed as she desperately fanned herself off.
“I g-g-gotta fuck-k-k-king g-go…” Peter crawled across the floor back to his clothes. “I t-think I’m d-d-dying here.”
The Snow Witch sat down on the floor and looked at him, her eyes like saucers of tears.
“You don’t want to stay here with me?”
“N-n-n-n-n-n-n-n-no!” He whispered. “I t-t-t-totally wanna s-stay. B-but my elf f-f-friends. They’re p-probably coming to k-k-kill you.”
The Snow Witch pinned Peter down to the floor, her eyes deranged and swirling in her head. Her voice dropped an octave as she barked like three-throated Cerberus, “I’d like to see them try!”
“L-let me t-t-talk to them. I’ll s-s-say you’re c-c-cool.”
The Snow Witch sat on the bed and hugged herself in the blanket like a child and pouted. After some thought, she held out her claws and solidified the moisture in the air into a great antique key to her gothic prison of ice. Peter trembled and looked at the melting key and felt like he had skipped a few months of boyfriend-hood. Was he really going to move in with her— already? Then she took one of her claws and carved her phone number into his forearm. The numbers slowly appeared on his flesh in blood like some angsty Linkin Park lyrics.
“O-ow,” Peter said.
Oh virginal Snow Witch, parting is such sweet sorrow, especially after a forced consummation ends in failure. So with nothing but a few burns left upon each other’s flesh, Peter dressed and departed. Before he left she gave him a peck and said, “I love you.” And to that Peter said… nothing. Which is the worst thing you can do when a girl says ‘I love you!’ Especially a girl with claws and fangs who can murder you!
And after a long and awkward moment of hesitation, with the Snow Witch’s eyes growing wider and wider in anticipation, Peter replied, “I love you too.” Although after the words had left his lips, he wondered if he really meant them at all. And suddenly Peter realized that maybe he was an asshole. He stepped out the window, and the Snow Witch, as if conducting an orchestra, magicked a platform of snow to carry him up and whisk him back to Santa’s workshop.