Before we completely leave winter, I thought I’d write a little flash fiction piece inspired by it. If you’re looking for a quick read which blends relationships and the cold together, you’re in the right place. It’s not exactly happy, but I thought that it was almost morbidly beautiful while writing it. Hope you enjoy–or perhaps ‘enjoy’ is the wrong word. Either way, here it is!
Away, On The Chill Of The Wind
Winter loved him. It wrapped him up in frosty arms and told him that everything would be okay. It kissed the blue from his lips and the twinkle from his eye. It sheltered him, and ruined him.
I still remember begging him to come in from the cold. By the back door. He stood, bare foot, on the snowy ground. His toes were black. Every inch of his skin quivered, pricked by goose bumps and hairs which must have been frozen stiff. But I looked into his eyes and saw something other than fear, or self-preservation, or anything which belonged in those once-beautiful eyes. There was nothing left of the person I knew in him.
Winter took him, and changed him. His soft, brown hair became rigid and stark white. I could see every bone beneath his purple skin. His teeth chattered behind lips which were once red. Once, when I kissed them, not winter.
But he wasn’t mine any more. He belonged to the chill on the wind and the first snow. He belonged to iced-over lakes and grey skies, decorated by cascades of snowflakes. Perhaps every single one was unique, but he wasn’t. Winter turned him into itself. You couldn’t call him his own person any more. I refused to. That man standing, shaking, trembling in front of me? No. That was a caricature. That was an impression. An imitation.
It wasn’t the one who stole half of my heart. Truly, it wasn’t, since it was never his fault. He couldn’t resist winter, and it knew it. It saw happiness in the heat of summer, under sparse clouds and blue skies, and felt jealousy. Or perhaps it just found joy in stealing my lover.
I didn’t know. I’d never met the one who changed him, and made him this way. I tried to watch where he ran to, unclothed and enamoured with the cold, but I didn’t see a face or a silhouette. All I saw in his new home was the darkness of a snow-clad street at night and the emptiness of a winter sky. The few stars that watched over him didn’t twinkle, but dwindled until their light was barely passable for light.
They turned their backs, because even they knew he was running towards a frozen-over hell.
Oskar Leonard 