Photo by Zac Durant on Unsplash
It was bright and tranquil the day it begun, snow lazily falling and covering the world in a soft downy blanket of fluff, drawing a white curtain over the ugliness of the ruined dirty and trampled snow.
To everyone else it was a day as any other, Saturday, and only days before Christmas. The muffled scrape of shovels clearing driveways and sidewalks did not so much echo in the air as it seemed to be carried on the wings of the very snowflakes themselves as they slowly drifted down. Other sounds hung in the air too, gently muffled by the snow; the engines of distant sleds whining as they bound across a field, the sudden grinding of a snow blower rattling like a lumbering abominable chain saw, and the shlish and screams of children tobogganing down a hill. Somewhere, a dog barked.
To one man it was a very different day. An unseen dark storm brewed deep within his breast, burrowed into his soul. He paced restlessly, pulling at his hair, rearranging his safe little nest in agitation. He straightened knick-knacks, adjusted pillows, and realigned books. It was coming, the memories, and the urge, unstoppable. Today he would leave his quaint little house.
It came only with the falling snow, his catalyst, harbinger of unpleasant memories and dark urges. Otherwise, he hid away here contented behind his walls, safe, a victim of agoraphobia, living life unseen. That closed in claustrophobic feeling of the thick heavy snow gave him the courage to venture forth, to indulge.
He stopped pacing, pulled back the heavy curtain, and stared out the window at the calmly falling flakes and the world they partially obscured. A world that was usually too frightening to look out at even from behind his glass and wood-frame cage. The expected surge of sick dread washed through him, weakening his knees and making his eyes water in painful fear-filled remorse. He closed his eyes and swooned a little.
He released the curtain, turned away from the window, and staggered blindly, not daring to open his eyes yet.
The urge deep inside pulled him back toward the window, stronger than the sickly fear that pushed him away.
#
A boy played alone, trying to build a fort in the white downy fluff. He kicked at the soft snow in exasperation, unable to make it stick together to form walls. When next his mother looked out the window, he was gone.
She stepped out the door, looked up and down the street, and called out his name.
The man who took the boy was not a large man. He was skinny and balding and had an air of impotence cum invisibility. This was the sort of man most people did not notice, forever overlooked and ignored. Even his name was nondescript, ‘Ted’. Then again, psychoses do not care about size, looks, or names.
A scream bounced from snowflake to snowflake. It did not sound right. It was not the fun-filled happy shriek of a tobogganing child. It was shrill and desperate, torn violently from the throat, frantic and terrible. No one noticed the scream, so lost were they all in their own activities, in their own private little lives of their own little worlds within this winter wonderland.
The dogs heard it. All around the little town, dogs barked and howled.
Ted’s slash of a mouth was frozen in a wide grin, eyes sparkling maniacally. A giggle bubbled up like the bright red blood of the boy. Red oozed warmly down, creating a gentle uprising mist as it soaked into the pristine white snow.
It would snow again. Soon. And so, too, would Ted come again out to play.
#
The air tasted crisp on his tongue, so intense was the cold. It bit at his fingers and toes within their protected confines. His nose stung and his lungs burned with each inhalation of chilled air. Wincing, he rubbed his hands together, blowing into his cupped fingers, trying to warm them.
The cool light of the moon seemed colder, more distant, shining with an ethereal pale light wrapped in ghostly light circles as its light refracted off the invisible frozen air crystals hanging suspended in the atmosphere enveloping the earth. The stars, their light much dimmer, tried feebly to point their little beacon lights to the ground below, like a distant warning.
Ted looked up at the sky, the clouds rolling in drawing a shroud across the sky, shutting off the moon’s pale light. The snow had started to fall again. Barely at first, scattered tiny flakes drifted down, growing bigger and thicker, multiplying in number, and turning into a dreamy soft down gently filling every surface. With the heavy snow came the memories. He winced as they crashed through his head like a multi car pileup, unstoppable, uncontrollable, a shrieking dance of mental chaos. Next came the urge, insistent, insatiable, and unstoppable. He had to fix it.
This time there was no scream bouncing off the gently falling snow, just a wet sort of gurgle, low and quiet, and the pristine white virgin snow slowly turning bright red beneath the pale night light of the moon. This time even the dogs did not notice and the people mostly slept, safe in their own little lives and oblivious to the other little lives all around. All except one man who did not sleep, but now slumbered forever.
#
The dog came first. It stopped, snuffling deeper, nose digging down, snorting into the snow. Ted’s heart raced, eyes dilating and nostrils flaring as he watched the dog. The dog had found ‘the spot’. He was about to act when the dog startled with a yip, turned tail and ran away, its trail following like a shadow, slowly fading behind it with the fresh falling flakes covering the tracks. The snow in the hole dug by the dog’s questing nose was stained crimson. Like a soft sigh, snow continued to fall, covering it. He followed the dog. He had to fix it.
#
People moved about, safely cocooned in their private little lives, each doing their own thing and oblivious to the lives around.
The woman walked with some difficulty through the snow along the edge of the trees where it was less deep. Every now and then she cupped her hands to each side of her mouth and called. She was looking for the family dog that had escaped off the rope tethering the animal safely in the yard. She came across the vanishing tracks in the snow, thought for a moment, and decided to follow the trail into the woods.
He watched the woman find what was left of the dog. He could almost hear her heart pounding faster, feel the constriction of her chest, and see through her eyes widened in horror. It was all written in the tortured shock on her plain slackened face. The snow continued to fall in a lazy downy rain.
He pounced on the woman, knocked her to the ground. She fell and rolled and he rolled with her. A crimson stain slowly began to spread across the pristine snow.
It was not about killing. He just had to fix it.
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