The capitol grew rank in the summer heat, the humid streets clogged with sweating tourists and rats.

Local villagers flocked to the coastal capitol seeking to pluck eager to be rid of dollars from the plump damp palms of the rich touristas in exchange for cheaply made trinkets and bastardized versions of local delicacies.

Beyond the hawking vendors brightly painted lean-tos lay the garbage strewn alleyways along which hungry mothers and hollow eyed children hid in shadowy alcoves and awaited the less savory tourists who frequented the capitol not to purchase trinkets or sample local stews, but to sate their twisted appetites on the salty brown skin of island children- over which they salivated in the flickering blue light of their computer screens the remaining weeks of every year.

And it was there, in just such an alleyway that Isaiah crouched- amongst the severed fish heads and the flies, clothed in tattered loin cloths and reeking of the accumulative filth of a lifetime’s insanity, waiting for the moist little man in the white summer suit who had once bought him ice-cream and promised to return to him his little sister, Esmerelda, before he had finished the cone….

This was written using Misky’s Twiglet, ‘salty brown skin’ opening with Dylan Hughes’ First Line Friday Prompt, ‘The capitol grew rank in the summer heat, the humid streets clogged with tourists and rats.’

Seems to me there exists a very fine line between the two…