Saturday's Storyteller: "It was just another day at the grill, except for the woman with legs like silk, and arms that stretched from Denver to Portland."

by Belinda Roddie

It was just another day at the grill, except for the woman with legs like silk, and arms that stretched from Denver to Portland. Of course, her arms didn't literally stretch from Denver to Portland - that would be eerie and especially cumbersome. But her legs did indeed seem like silk, from the way they shone like silk to the way the skin of her calves almost rippled like silk, her thighs appearing to bristle in the wind as it bit at the hem of her purple skirt.

The woman ordered a stuffed pepper, and she made sure to make it super spicy: The meat had to be spicy, the cheese had to be spicy, the rice had to be spicy, even the chili powder had to be the hottest they had. And damn, why stop there? Stuff chopped jalapeños into the damn mess. Hop it up with habaneros as well. It was clear that the woman, allegedly billowy and cushiony on the outside, was prickly and hot on the inside, able to stomach the kind of cuisine that would send three full-grown men dashing into the restroom with their asscheeks on fire.

The waiter came with her meal and complemented it with a glass of red wine, which the woman drank greedily. It was at that moment that the young, reckless bartender, wiping a strand of brown hair from his eyes, decided to be daring and conversational with this particular diner.

"This is gonna be an unintentional pun," he said to the woman, a smile lingering on his thin lips, "but you really like it hot, don't you?"

The woman lifted her gaze from her plate, her fingers still gripping the fork, which held a dripping mass of beef and dairy and half-soggy vegetable in between its metal talons. The bartender was, of course, amazed with how long the guest's arms really were. Bent against the table like they were, with the elbows pointed down, they still looked like they could form an impressive wing span. He could hardly imagine the arms simply hanging on her sides. She could probably brush the tips of her ankles with her knuckles if she wanted.

Still, the woman seemed to be willing to give an answer, as well as an accompanying sneer, and as her voice, equally as glossy as her legs, floated toward the bartender's ears, he suddenly wondered if he saw two tiny horns protruding from her red hair.

"I like it hotter than Hell," she announced.

It took several glasses of wine after the stuffed pepper had been consumed, but the two did manage to make love in the next door hotel. The bartender woke up the next morning with a strange burning between his legs, and for a moment, he feared that he had contracted an STD from the bitch. However, upon looking in the mirror, he noticed something different entirely. As heat crept its way up and down his arms, he noticed how lush his skin looked, sharply contradicted by the two raw bumps itching on opposite sides of his scalp.

The woman had gone downstairs about an hour before he awoke; she had left a note, requesting him to see her in the evening at the downtown cantina. The one with the desert theme. The bartender checked the thermostat and found it at a surprisingly uncomfortable sixty-five degrees.

He had liked the way the woman had embraced him during their post-coital cuddling. He felt as if her arms could wrap around him twenty times. He felt older, but still reckless, in her grip, the flesh smooth but smoldering. At first, he had found the temperatures of her body to be stifling. Now it seemed more than ideal.

It was too damn cold now during an early dune morning. The bartender patted on his new head protrusions and sighed. Somehow, he could almost feel his fingers popping as they seemed to lengthen.

"Ick," he scowled, frowning. "How much climate change do we need to make this place a perfect hellhole?"

This week's prompt was provided by José García.