A Fallen Bird

A Fallen Bird

i.

The wind cut across the black infinity in ferocious bellows. In the darkness of a cold winter’s night, an ashen silhouette of a hand slithered over the glass-hard snow. The figure of a girl’s head thudded consistently into deep depressions created by the boots of the man whom tugged and heaved the naked body onerously by the shins. The man struggled in the contrast of the dark grey snow. He brought the girl to the edge of land where a black river flowed softly against the embankment. The man’s breath feathered white in the air as he hooked the girl’s underarms and tossed her into the black currents. The floating mound disappear into the night.

Weeks later upstream on a warm winter’s day, a truant boy plowed his boots through a pulpous layer of melted snow over the walking path of a bleak city park. Two buildings ascended into the cloudy sky above the unvarying row of the park’s skeletal like treeline. Adjacent to the park a widespread river flowed languidly to a highway bridge built before the small city. The boy looked to where a breeze had gone west through the park and past the river to an assembly of bare poplar and dark pine beyond the far shore. Light pluming breath. In the mounds of ice conveying in the current, the boy noticed a strange figure roll along the riverbank and he stepped off the sidewalk into the deep and sodden snow and went to the figure he leered. At the embankment, he stood with an unsettled expression as he studied the lumping form. A web of black strains swirled in the navy-blue water like a grim and aberrant flower among crystal bricks. Pale shoulder blades protruded and, seconds after, the lower half of a naked female emerged from beneath the broken ice. The boy was stupefied and shaking. He finally pulled out his phone and took a picture and dialed 911, watching and trailing the corpse floating along the riverbank.

An hour went by as emergency personnel and eager reporters arrived at the river. Curious pedestrians chattered in low speculation as they gathered on the walking path up to where the yellow barricade tape waved lightly in the breeze. The disquieted city brimmed with dissonant traffic as drivers studied the scene from the filling parking lots and busy streets. From a distance, they watched the emergency units scampering in the heavy snow as if waiting for something to happen. They’d heard a girl had drowned or something of that nature. The bystanders took photos of the commotion with their cellphones like independent reporters of their own online social profiles.

Meanwhile, at the riverbank, two men wearing diving suits walked chest high out into the frigid water and grabbed the girl’s body and brought her back to shallows where investigators stood by and snapped pictures. The divers carried her out of the water and handed her to the paramedics who placed her on a stretcher. The entire response unit collectively stood in silence at the unfortunate sight of a young and once beautiful native girl who lay pale blue and bare among the pondering bystanders. Her cataract-like eyes stared vacantly into the grey void above. Her face and body were disfigured and swollen by the moisture and bruises and lacerations littered in her flesh. A lifeless daughter lay the focal point of sombre examination.

They covered and strapped her body in a white sheet and hauled her away through the snowy park. Reporters took photographs and shouted questions to the RCMP passing through the crowds. The public appalled in the distance. A native RCMP corporal by the name of Jori Cardinal was selected to stand before the handful of local news reporters as they shoved their phones and mics to his face like an electronic bouquet. He cleared his throat and looked to the gather with an expressionless face.

“I’m Corporal Jori Cardinal,” he declared, “I, along with my partner, were first to arrive on scene. Questions?”

“Who was it?” one voiced shouted through.

Another called immediately after. “Who found the body?”.

The reporters inquired near the same time, one after the other. Was she aboriginal? Who committed the murder? Was it a suicide?

Jori expelled a deep plume and he brought up his hands and waved to dim the banter. “Okay—okay,” he broke through their voices, “look, this is going to be brief. Here’s what I could tell you. Unfortunately, we do believe the victim to be a young girl. We don’t know anything in regards to the victim. So don’t ask.”

“Was she aboriginal?” one inquired, regardless.

The corporal shook his head and scoffed. “We believe so. But, look, we don’t know anything. What happened, who she was… but I can guarantee both the city police and the RCMP will work diligently so we could answer these questions.” He looked at the ambulance her body went. “It is unfortunate.”

After several questions, he waved farewell and left to the panel, ignoring further inquests. His partner, Constable Donovan Garth, sat waiting on the driver side of the ’06 Chev Silverado. Garth knew not to bother the older officer who crawled in scoffing and grumbling beneath his breath. Not that Cardinal hated to be in front of cameras, it was the loath of repeating himself. To ask him anything at that moment would be out of line, as a friend.

The door slammed shut at Jori’s side. “Why do you white people have to ask so many questions?” he said.

Garth smiled. “Hey, there was that cute little thing from APTN in there. She’s native. And she was the one expecting a confession out of you.” He pointed to her somewhere out through the window. “Her.” They stared at the cute reporter about a minute… “And I’m not white, I’m Metis, I told you.”

“At least, I’m half right.”

Garth shook his head. “Detachment?” he asked, palm over the automatic shift.

“Detachment.”

Staff Sergeant Theresa Healy stood at the end of the detachment’s meeting room, her eyes watching over her reading glasses. Behind her cream, coloured walls shine luminously from the many fluorescent lights humming above. She pursed her lips and licked her fingertip before sifting through the papers in a clipboard. The women, in her fifties, sighed and dropped the clipboard on the wooden table surrounded by officers. The slapping snap breaking the silence.

“Well,” Healy said, looking to each officer, “that poor girl is in the labs as we speak. Once we identify who she is, first thing we do is contact the parents. Ask them what they know. Who she was last with, where she goes, who she was. Obviously, what we could tell was that she was in the river for quite some time. So we’ll have to keep our eyes peeled from here to who-knows-how-far-up that river. Georgie,” she called to a heavy set officer eating a sour cream doughnut.

“Yeah?” he replied, crumbs falling beneath his chin.

“Georgie.” She wiped her mouth in suggestion.

And he wiped his too. “Thanks.”

“Georgie, I’ll have you get dispatch to send word of this case federally. Tell every detachment from here to North Battleford. I’m sure they’ll figure it out sooner or later, but just to be sure. So after this meeting, let them know what’s going on.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, smiling. Good old Georgie wasn’t ashamed of his eating habits. He grabbed another baked good.

“Jori,” Healy addressed.

He looked to the short women standing stern in her soft blue uniform. “Yes, Sarge?”

“You were first on the scene. We’ll just cut to chase. You’re now detective on this case, corporal. If anyone in this room digs up any information, you report it to Corporal Cardinal here, immediately. Okay? So that means you too, Garth, will take lead on this. To investigate this case within the city perimeters, Graham and Bartley will take care of it. Okay?” She looked to Sherry Graham and Ron Bartley. Two young cops who the older members of the detachment thought to be inexperienced. A few were surprised with the decision. “You four are the brains and brawn behind this case,” Healy continued. “Any questions?” All were quiet. “No. Okay, good. Oh,” she realized, “and until we know for sure, no one here is talking about this case with the media, okay? These missing and murdered cases are fucking loud and contrived so let’s not blow it out of proportion.”

Jori nodded, content with the thought of not having to deal with the public. The staff sergeant walked out of the meeting and Jori watched as the officers gathered their papers and followed her out. Corporal Graham and Constable Barkley were last to get up and leave. The four assigned officers looked to each other in a silent initiation. The humming of the fluorescent lights above.

Later in the detachment, Garth stood at the coffee brewer and prepared for a fresh pot. As the black liquid filled, he looked about the office. The other officers chatted around their desks. Telephones rang. Fax machines dialed. Printers inked in clangour. When the pot spewed the last bit, he filled two large foam cups and stirred in a few sugar cubes and brought the steaming drinks through the office and to the desk where Jori sat typing in the case report. Garth set the streaming cup next to the keyboard and rested his hip on the desk. “Enjoy,” he insisted to the busy man.

“You should be doing this right now, Don.”

“Yeah, true. But I think I’m getting carpal.”

“Quit jerking off so much then…And done,” Jori said, punching in the last few letters convincingly. “For now.” He sipped the coffee and smacked his lips afterward. “Not bad. The wife wants me to quit drinking coffee in the evening.”

“Losing too much sleep?”

“No, not really. I just get too hyper. She can barely handle it these days, if you know want I mean,” he laughed, his tongue protruding.

A smile was pinned to Garth’s shaking head as if he nearly spit out his coffee. He swallowed the liquid. “You’re like almost 100, don’t tell me that.”

“100? Are you calling me and my wife old?”

Jori was forty-two. His wife thirty-three. Jori spent ample amounts of time in the gym, at home and in the public facilities, so the age difference wasn’t so apparent in family photos. Jori was the type to fix his hair eloquently, slick folds defining his barber cut style. He was slightly sensitive to compliments pertaining to age and looks.

“I’m calling you decrepit, old timer,” he punched his shoulder, “you’re wife’s still a fine Pocahontas.”

“That’s better.” Jori took a sip.

“So,” the young cop cleared his throat, “what do you think?”

Jori let out a long, deep sigh. “Bruises. Deep ass cuts. We’ll find out soon if she was raped or if she was possibly molested. I think we could have a girl who was reported missing in the past two, three months, possibly, in our hands. If I were to guess, she was murdered, dragged to the river maybe a few days ago after the killer didn’t know what to do with her. I’ve never investigated a murder, Don. But there’s going to be a number of people wanting answers, and I intend to answer and find out as much as I could. Step by step. I want to know.”

“Do you finally feel like you’re doing something as a cop? That’s just how I feel right now.”

Jori leaned back on the officer chair, his chest pointing to the ceiling. “Don, I wake up every day praying that I do my job well enough so I don’t have to see anyone come out of rivers like that around here. I could of went my last few years as a cop without seeing that and I would of been fine.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he apologized. “I’m just tired of handing out speeding tickets and fucking dealing with the same old drunks around here, you know? I’m saying that I feel great going after a real criminal, a real crime. Someone who’s done real detriment. I don’t think I would have signed on to the force if I knew it’d be so mundane as it’s been the past few years. Actually thought about quitting.”

Don Garth was a twenty-five-year-old man who grew up in the southern areas of the province. He played as a first line defenceman on every hockey team he was a part of. And with his 6’5 frame and wide build, he excelled on the ice. Crushing opponent’s who dared enter his team’s end zone, injuring their star forwards with clean, and, sometimes, dirty hits. The type of player you’d rather have on your team.

“You wouldn’t have been a cop if you knew there were no murders, eh?”

“I’m saying I wouldn’t have joined if I knew there were no issues. No fight. No justice to be found. But these missing women, they need us. This city needs us. There is a fight.”

“Oh, God. So justice? That’s your reward? Fuck the money, fuck the benefits. Justice?”

“Justice, my friend,” Garth said coolly.

Jori laughed and cleared his throat with a drink of coffee. “You’re full of shit. You just came for the gun.”

“Oh,” he smiled and placed his fingers over the handle of the .40 S&W, “that’s pretty nifty, too.”

“Jori,” Georgie called to him from across the office, “phone’s for you. They got her.”

Jori and Don looked to each other. The telephone on the desk rang a fraction before his hand snapped to answer it.

“Cardinal,” he confirmed.

It was 7:45 in the evening. Jori and Garth stood in the halls of the morgue watching the forensic pathologist through a wired window on the door as he hovered over the girl’s lifelessly body, pointing and explaining the traumas to the coroners that stood opposite. Jori looked to the floor at the sight of her exposed body and knocked to address their arrival. The pathologist covered the girl up to her neck and after the officers walked into the examination room, looking upon her face as they gathered.

The victim’s swelling had faded considerably since afternoon. Jori disregarded the sombre thoughts—that of the shame in wasted beauty and that of the sadness in a young life taken—and examined the girl’s face thoroughly in a professional mindset. What he could tell of the girl was that she took care of herself before her death. The victim showed signs opposite to that of depression and suicide which were in most cases poor personal hygiene. She took care of herself before her death. Her brows were trimmed perfectly symmetrical. She had her ears pierced numerously on each ear. Her lips showed signs of previous lip piercings, grown in since. Her neck was bruised in such a way she had been choked, however, the marks were faded, indicating that they may have been inflicted before her death. Marks common in abusive relationships.

The pathologist removed the glasses that were barely on his nose. “Her name was Alexis Bird,” he broke the silence. “She would have been 20 yesterday. Originally born in the city here. She grew up on a reserve most of her childhood. According to her file, was arrested numerous times during her teens here in the city, so she must have moved away from her home here during those years. Something I’m sure her father will know more about.”

Jori looked up to him. “Father?”

The pathologist coughed. “Well, unfortunately, her mother passed away some years ago. Her father’s name is Kenneth Wiever.”

Jori’s jaw slanted. “Shit,” he muttered.

Garth winced. “Kenneth Wiever? No…”

Jori nodded in dismay.

Kenneth Wiever was a homeless man who they often found in the jail’s drunk tank for misdemeanours and causing mischief. If he wasn’t in holding cells, he had been roaming about the streets or at the mall panhandling for his next drink, possibly drugs. He had been arrested on a number of occasions shoplifting mouthwash and robbing houses. A pure, nonsensical nuisance. Jori recalled the time he had to pepper spray Kenneth and his friends for refusing to get in his panel after trying to steal from a gumball machine.

“I take it you know who Kenneth is,” the pathologist said.

“The poor girl,” Jori said. “He’s always out of his head. Stealing and panhandling around the mall. I wouldn’t have thought he’d have a daughter.”

“Terrible.” The pathologist looked at the girl. “Shall we?”

Garth put his hand over Jori’s shoulder in assuring manner.

“Yeah,” Jori said.

The pathologist slid the sheet off Alexis’ body and twirled his thumbs over the tips of his index and middle fingers and scanned over her pale stature as if to decide where to begin. He explained quickly she had been struck over the head but it was mostly likely a superficial wound. He put the tip of his finger over the light bruises on her neck and explained that she was in fact choked, though, as there were no blood clots in her eyes, she would have likely died by bleeding out rather than being choked or drowned. He drew his finger over the gaping cuts, clean and smooth like flesh coloured sedimentary diagrams. Her lacerations were a result of an assault with a sharp weapon, a blade, he explained as the rubber finger followed the slit flesh running down over her breasts. The white fat bubbled beneath the salmon tissue. The pathologist speculated that she may have been carrying a weapon at the time of her death as if the suspect was wary of getting in distance to stab the victim and thus instead slashed. The purple bruises over on her arms and scattered throughout her body were as a result of a struggle, that she was apprehended, and likely occurred at the time of her death.

“So, she was attacked,” Jori reiterated. “Slashed, at first, bleeding out. She would have run at that point. Was more than likely chased down, grabbed, and, as she was weak from the blood loss, the suspect was able to hold her down…” he pointed to the bruises on her thighs and on her ankles. “And?”

Weeks before her body’s discovery, in a grimy, unkempt room, Alexis reached for her phone from in her pocket. Ennui among the room stacked with dusty, old boxes and ripping garbage bags. A clock ticked in tempo on the poorly lit walls. She looked at the phone screen until suddenly she was struck over the head with a blunt object. Footsteps thud softly at her backside as she regained consciousness. She stared at the granular, widespread floor, her cell phone laying flat a few feet away. Before she reached for the device, she screamed as a man’s hand grabbed her hair and lifted her to her feet. She cried in distress and mercy as she looked upon the three men standing ominously side by side, staring at her as she helplessly tried to tear away from the man’s grip. With a bright, flaxen light shining directly at their backside, their faces were contrasted in shadow. She begged for her life to the man in the middle, pinching at his unrelenting hand fastened in her hair. His face was riddled in foreboding, dark resentment. He tilted his head as if to ponder his next move. She pleaded and apologized consecutively as moisture excreted from her every orifice. The men had not spoke a word…

The pathologist sighed. “We did a test, and the result came back positive. We did find traces of DNA and the bruises are indications that she was raped after the initial attack. We sent the data out for matches but it could take a few days, maybe weeks, to find out if there is or isn’t any.”

“Okay,” Jori nodded, “well, doc?”

“Cause of death… Bled out. Raped. Murdered.”

Jori pulled the sheet over Alexis’ face. “I noticed no track marks in her arms. Find anything?”

“Traces of cocaine and marijuana. No alcohol.”

“Well, doc, if you find anything else, let us know.”

“Of course. We’re still going to run further tests. More toxicity tests, and with permission, look for potential internal injuries she may have sustained. Could tell us more down the line.”

Outside the hospital in the dark parking lot, three reporters approached Jori and Garth and pointed their devices to their face and followed them through the parking lot, asking similar questions simultaneously. Bright camera lights glared in the officers’ faces as they squinted toward their panel.

“Officers,” said the female reporter from APTN, “were you able to obtain further information regarding the body?”

The officers stopped in the midway to the panel. “Yes,” Jori admitted, “at this time specific details are to remain private for the sake of the girl’s family.”

“Who was she?” a reporter blurted.

“The victim found earlier this afternoon was 19-year-old Alexis Bird.”

“So it’s confirmed, she was of aboriginal descent?” the APTN journalist inquired.

“Yes, she was aboriginal. Look, I’m tired. It’s been a long day. I’ll have our team set up a conference this weekend, but for now, we just want to go home. You get enough?”

The reporters didn’t. They wanted to know who her parents were. Who her boyfriend was. What school she attended. How tall she was. If she was an addict or in college. Questions he had asked himself a thousand times in the span of just a few hours since discovering the boy. Aside from the fact he was ordered from Staff Sergeant Healy to stay away from the media, he was genuinely annoyed by their repetitive questions and thus wanted nothing to do with them.

He pushed his way past the bickering and slammed the truck door in their faces.

Constable Garth came in after him, turning the ignition. “You okay, chief?”

“Yeah. I just hate goddamn, snoopy ass reporters.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

The image of Alexis’ ghost-like body intervened Jori’s nameless thought. Eyes without pupils staring up at him. His jaw clench, effacing the thought. “I’m okay.”

“Look, I don’t mean to be so clingy. Just making sure it’s not like the last time.”

Jori stretched his neck by moving his head in circles. “No, I’m good. I guess I’m getting used to it.”

They called dispatch and updated the detachment of the information they obtained from the medical examination. After an hour of filing the pathologist’s report and the case report and as well as a frugal attempt to call Alexis’ aunt, Kenneth Wiever’s sister, Jori’s shift ended and he began his quiet, twenty-minute commute to his house in his ’99 GMC Sierra. A slow country song played lightly through the tinny speakers and he tapped his finger on the steering wheel to its rhythm. Dark-green spruce towered into the night sky, their piney tips ascending like a wicked, black picket fence guarding the full moon. He pulled into his long driveway. Behind a handful of scattered pine, his two-story house sat quietly. The interior lights lit the yard where he looked to the impressions of his young daughter’s footsteps in the snow. He stopped as the garage door opened.

Later that night Jori sat on the couch in the living room with his laptop. The light from the screen beamed to his tired face, eye sockets shaded. The television quietly played a movie for his wife, Beth, and daughter, Tiffany, who sat in the dark next to him. But Beth’s attention was on her husband. His scrolling eyes, his busy index finger. He didn’t blink in the past hour. In that hour, he read that the news stations had already broadcast the discovery of a young aboriginal female’s body in the city’s renown river. Alexis’ name was every page, every headline. The story was littered throughout all social media news feeds. Residents of the city and beyond shared the featured image of the girl’s body floating in the water. Aboriginal Teenager Found In River. Boy Finds Dead Teen. Alexis Bird—Another Murdered Aboriginal Victim. Little detail in each post. To fill in the blank space, the public told their version of what happened, along with their opinions. As if they already solved the case. Of how they knew her. Public suggestions in forensics. Rumours that the RCMP had no intention of investigating her death because she was native. How she was a relentless drunk and probably killed herself. Regardless of the gossip, there was no definitive truth. The comment sections of Facebook and Twitter and news media outlets were, unsurprisingly, merely cesspools of pretentious speculation and unhinged ignorance.

There was a web page that created in her honour. RIP Alexis Bird—God’s Angel. It was open to the public so Jori took it upon himself to find out what he could. There were numerous condolences from friends and family. Friends reminisced much of how they had met or of their favourite memories. One of her friends spoke about how Alexis was around during hard times and for that, she was thankful thus deeply heartbroken of the loss. She was often described as funny and honest and beautiful. The pictures of which she was posted revealed the beauty that was taken away. Her face was flawlessly adorned in make-up as she posed frequently with a soft grin exposing her long dimple. The orbital of her cheeks darkened by a light, beige blush. Thin, dark liner vivaciously trimmed her sharp, brown eyes. Her dark, silky hair straightened smoothly in each photograph. Perhaps what flaws he noticed was that she met most of those who posted at parties. After profiling what he could he closed his laptop and placed it gingerly on the coffee table so he did not disturb the movie.

Having noticed his wife’s gaze at the corner of his eye, Jori looked to her as she brought her feet up off the floor and put them on his lap, her feet rubbing his inner thigh where his boxers had ended. On the love sofa, their daughter was sound asleep. Beth bit her lip and slid her foot further up his thigh, softly, until her toes snuggled under his boxers. He ran his hand over her smooth, bronze legs and felt under her loose night shorts. Even with her face hidden in the dark, he saw the beautiful girl he married. Memory alone gave light to her image. She was near a decade younger than he was and he often wondered how he got so lucky as to marry such a beautiful, smart native girl. She was magical in such a way that, with her sincere eyes alone, she could quell the anxieties that hindered his morale from within.

Over a decade ago, Jori took upon himself to work for abs. At thirty years of age, countless nights of drinking had taken a toll on his waistline. In lieu of going up a jean size, he went to register himself at a local gym. At the counter was a beautiful, young girl, sitting on a stool with her head fixed on a book. A Time To Kill was the novel. He remembered because he had to eventually read it to pretend he knew something of John Grisham so he could maybe impress her. Every day he attended and jogged a short while before taking to weights, hoping her eyes would wonder to him as he struggled with his arm curls. One day he had nearly killed himself in an attempt to do 500 sit ups. The girl had put down her book in annoyance and walked up to Jori as he struggled with his fifty-fifth rep. She told him that he could do as many sit ups as he’d like but he wasn’t going to get abs. Afterwards, he asked if she could help him achieve his goal and so, in the span of six months of her forcing Jori to run a minimum of 5 kilometres each followed by rigorous core workout routines, he had finally achieved the results he longed for. To celebrate the proud, young officer had taken her out for a drink at town’s lone bar and near a hundred bucks worth of diet cocktails later, the girl had admitted having liked Jori since he signed up and that she did, in fact, check him out. She teased him for not having the gull to ask her out. In no time at all, Jori took Beth’s hand, circled around the table, put his fingers lightly over her lower back, and they kissed among the quiet bar scene. The jukebox playing 80s music in the background. Since that night, the two have been together. He managed to support her with his police salary throughout her college years until she obtained a degree in dental therapy. During a vacation in Rome, he asked her to marry him, and nine months later their daughter was born and they wed shortly after. Beth was still as gorgeous as the day he saw her reading on that stool…

He leaned to her and they locked lips.

Four am. Just making sure it’s not going to be like the last time. Garth’s words repeated in Jori’s head subconsciously as he lay awake in bed. Like the effect of terribly overplayed radio hits. The light from the moon illuminated through the window. The feather pillow below shaped to his head. He looked at his wife to check if she had noticed his restlessness but she slept sound. He stared back to the ceiling...the last time. The last time he saw a dead body was of his niece who died years ago in a drunk driving incident. He responded to the scene of a chaotic wreckage. A truck lay in the ditch on its side. In the distance others, cars were thrown off the road. Scattered among the roads were coroners and paramedics carrying out the bodies that flew out the windows. The officers escorted Jori to the suspected culprit of the accident, a car laying on its roof. In it, he saw the driver. The lifeless girl tangled and hoisted upside down by the seat belt, her arms hanging past the side of her head. Nose broke. Blood draining into her peered eyes. Her hair thick and soaked dark red. The memory was haunting. Jori sighed slowly and turned to his side away from his wife and stared into a shadowy corner where he saw his niece’s face dwell angrily, eye sockets hollow and draining a darkness which streamed past her caved cheekbones. Or perhaps it was Alexis. He stared blankly at the image, prepared for a sleepless night.

Into The Frozen Veneer

THE YOUNG MOTHER lay weeping. All the more bearing her son in thin arms. A boy she had barely known. Only that she had not raised him. She was selfless enough to avoid letting any child grow into a world where the survival of winters meant waking up in the middle of a kitchen on a mattress to the sight of red-hot coils glow within a grimy stove. She thanked God everyday that he was the third child but the only in flesh for but one pair of innocent eyes would be tainted the image of slow bleeding blight creeping beneath her door. Cold winds whistled a chaotic song that reminded her of each wearing winter which grew worse after the other and how those shorting days entitled fading smiles. Her hands that shook like her child in the night would one day be able to build a fire. One day.

The sun was hidden on a lonesome gray morning. She wiped the tears from her eyes and buried her head in the boys long brown hair. “Wake up,” she whispered to him as she rested on his crown. She gently turned him towards her stare and he grumbled and his eyes slowly peered open and he smiled softly as if to say hello.

As she kissed him on the forehead she looked over to her clock. An old unwashed coffee brewer that at one time may have been white. She slid her feet off the sheet-less bed onto the cold floor and went to fill up a glass of water over the unkempt sink. At the last drop she looked to her frozen window and suddenly felt a sense that her life was confined to the hopeless constitute behind the dark crystal murk and so there was solace unearthed in that of her son’s departure home. She reached out to feel the cold window and held it until the shape of her hand melted into the frost. She put the cup down and shortly after dressed her boy in his winter wear and handed over his pack.

“When can I come visit you again, mom?” the boy said.

“Whenever you want to,” she properly adjusted his scarf. “I’m getting you all dressed up just to take it all off in the car. They’ll think I’m going crazy.”

The boy laughed.

“Whenever you want to. But you just got to go back to school. And I want you to be a good man and learn lots, okay?”

He lifted his chin proudly and smiled. “Yes.”

“That’s my big man.” Although she fought off the tears, her teeth rattled and her eyes inflamed and she held her uneasy hands folded over his. Transparent sadness spoke tales past the facade. She pulled him in for a hug and kissed his forehead. “Okay, at least we know you won’t freeze on your walk to the car.” She opened the door and he walked into the snowy, dark morning towards the parked headlights of his foster parents’ car and watched him ride off with two people in which she knew just as strangers. They vanished into the grim snowfall and she closed the door. The semblance she had convened melted into a teary face.

THE YOUNG MOTHER was asleep when suddenly her door came crashing open and she rose to feel the chilling draft that came behind her boyfriend as he stood in the doorway. She ordered him to close it and got to her feet. His panting breath let off the lingering stench of alcohol as he quietly stared at her, eyes low and unsteady. He was drunk enough to have his jacket unzipped in a snow storm, his reddened ears and nose embossed of snow and frost. Her brows were risen unimpressed but shook it off as if it were inconsequential to react in anyway.

“Lock it,” she said.

He turned to the door and back to her. “I’m sorry, baby,” he plead as he slowly walked towards her.

She stood quiet in stoical manner.

He slid off his boots and held his hands on her shoulders and looked down at her as her revolting expression wound away from his putrid breath. “I meant to come home sooner. I’m sorry. I love you. I promise it won’t happen again.”

Looking away, she said “you stink.” She brushed his arms away and sat herself down on a thin, copper framed table chair and looked to him as if to tell him to sit and he did, more so falling. “Almost three days. You couldn’t stop by once?”

He grumbled and stared blankly at the old, unwashed walls. “Kids. Oh kids just love a fun, old drunk.” He laughed to himself and turned to her, “you think I’m really the daddy type?” Filthy teeth exposed through his grin.

“Well,” she said, lighting up a half burnt cigarette, “for all it’s worth, I missed you.” She inhaled the first drag slowly and even slower blew out the smoke towards the ceiling. “So, what’s up? You came to screw or what? What do you want?”

“Baby, I came to see you. That’s it.” He shifted his entire body towards her and reached out for her resting hand. “If I was any good with kids, I’d be here. You know that.”

She pulled her hand away and walked to the sink.

“Anyways, I can’t stay too long.” The sound of the faucet pouring into a glass. “I think I might have to go for stitches.”

She examined him as he took the toque off his head. She placed the glass of water in front of him and shifted through his greasy hair to see a long, open laceration near his temple. “Oh my God. What happened?” she asked.

“It’s nothing,” he assured, “it’s nothing. I got jumped by these goofs at a party over some shit. It’s nothing. I just got to go get it stitched up, I suppose. I’ll go to the clinic.” He took a drink of water. “Aah, that’s good. After that, I’ll come see you.” He poured the rest of the glass down his throat and placed the empty cup in the sink and slipped on his boots. “I’ll be back soon. It won’t take long at all.”

Her brows pinched between her nose. “You’re not coming back, are you?” Disdain in her voice. “It never ends. Just go,” she said, opening the door.

“Hey. Shh. Here.” He handed over a couple small pieces of shredded plastic grocery bag. “Keep that until I get back. Some guys are going to stop in to see me, so don’t worry if they show up a bit early.”

“A couple of guys?” she worried.

“It’s nothing, baby. They’re just coming to do a little bit of business. Hook me up, you know? Then you know what that means,” he smirked. “Just save that until I get back. I love you, beautiful.” He leaned over and kissed her and left.

The strain on her face faded as she looked down towards the wrapped plastic shreds that lay in her palm. She walked quickly over to a cupboard and tiptoed and reached and placed the pieces on the highest shelf.

IN THE HOURS that plodded throughout the lonesome morning the young mother’s gaze was fixed to the cupboard across the kitchen where inside were the plastic shreds that managed to distract her from all else. She opened and closed it on several occasions to ensure the pieces had not been stolen or had not run away, a sigh of relief after she reached and felt the plastic against her fingertips. The green text of time on her unused coffee brewer climbed slowly past noon when she began uncontrollably biting her nails and jigging her leg, rhythmically swearing at her cuticles underneath her breath and sprouting to the door every time she heard so much as a sound of a passing vehicle. She repeatedly opened and closed a drawer near her fridge and watched as a small tin cylinder tube rolled back and forth and soon after she picked it up and placed it in front of her gently on the table like a cup of coffee filled to the brim and sat down and looked restlessly to the cupboard.

When there was no longer relief in swearing and biting her fingernails, she almost instantly grabbed the pieces from the cupboard and lay them out on the table. She untied the small knots and unwrapped the plastic and poured out the brittle white crumbs in a pile next to her straight pipe. After the last one, she pinched at the small pile. She studied the crumbs closely and carefully and put it up to her nostril for a whiff.

“No,” she panicked. “No.”

She stuffed the tip of the pipe and took a light to it. It lit up in a flame that expelled an odd black smoke and immediately she pulled the tube away from her lips, coughing violently as veins bulged from at the sides of her thin face and neck. She threw the pipe across the kitchen and viciously whipped her arms across the table top, the pieces of plastic and substance scattered across the floor.

She kicked randomly towards the grain-like white crumbs and shouted amply. “You f-cking cocksucker. You son of a bitch.” She kicked over a chair before going back to stomping at the specks. Smeared streaks of white. “You need this shit. You should of kept it. You dirty bastard. You need this shit. To clean off your gross balls, you piece of shit. Soap? You need soap to clean of your infected dog dick, you dirty bastard. You worthless asshole…”

She dropped to her knees and cried in her palms, mumbling and a swear: fuck. A knock at the door. She wiped clear her face and slowly rose to her feet and the door peered open enough to see two men in about their early thirties standing with their arms huddled to their chest, their heavy breath freezing in the air.

“Is your boyfriend here?” said the man nearest to the entrance, leaning his body in closer. He appeared near half a decade older than the other. She may have seen his face around a time or two or perhaps heard of him but never would have damned him a drug dealer if she had to guess. “He said to meet here.”

“Yeah,” she widened the entrance, “come in. He said he’ll be around.”

The older man smiled. “Yeah. Thanks.” And they came in and wiped the snow from their dark clothes onto the floor and walked blatantly to the chairs with soaked boots and sat themselves down as if it was a thing they had done casually in the homes of their own mother. The older man noticed a lady’s concern and looked to the puddles of slushy water leading up to his feet and squinted and grinned curiously at the floor smeared white. “Oops. Were you doing a bit of cleaning? At least now you got some water to get all that off.”

She grabbed a filthy rag from the sink and dropped hand and knee to wipe the water off the floor. “Yeah, I dropped something. Sorry about that.” She looked at the younger of the two, his face stone in demeanor. He anxiously twirled his thumbs and picked at his fingers and then she wondered why it was that as if he refused to look at her. She looked over to the older man and felt uneasy that his stare had hardly eased its inspection of her, unlike his quiet friend. A confident grin below sharp eyes.

“That man of yours, sure takes his time,” said the older man. “That kind of behavior gets a person in all sorts of trouble in this business. Did you know that?”

She went to rinse the rag. “I can imagine. He said he’d be home soon hours ago, so he should be coming.” She took her time twisting and yanking the cloth, watching the filth run down the whistling drain. “He went to the clinic. Got bottled and he needed some stitches.”

“Bottled? Oh. That’s no good,” he smiled at the younger man. “Shit happens when you try to have a little fun around these parts. If people aren’t drinking themselves to death, they’re smoking themselves to death. They’ll spend everything, take everything, just for a little fix. Even from their own mother, brother. Even child.” He saw her head turn slightly, white orb spying over her shoulder. “Hey, I’ve known your boyfriend for so long, how come I don’t know who you are? I think I heard about you.”

She threw the rag in the sink and turned around. “I’m sure everyone has something to say about me.”

He laughed. “No, don’t be so hard on yourself. Your boyfriend too has been on your side of the street for sometime I think. What’s a pretty girl like yourself doing with a smelly, no good goof like that?”

“Hey,” she protested. “He’s a good guy, okay? Everyone has their problems. Nobody’s perfect. And nobody’s so great to be in a position to judge.”

He nodded in what looked to be sarcastic agreement. “You’re right. You’re right. We all got our flaws.” He looked down at the puddle of water surrounding his boots. “I’m thirsty. Are you thirsty?” he asked the younger man. “Do you got anything to drink?”

“Water.”

“Water. Okay. Grab me and my bro a glass. Please?” the older one requested.

The younger man turned towards the wall as if resenting a hand fed meal.

She turned on the tap and filled the first glass to the brim. As she turned the faucet off she heard the sharp snapping click of the deadlock. She turned to the younger man as he stood door side like a club bouncer.

“Okay, I want you two to leave.”

The older man refused her demand with a smirk.

“Right now,” she screamed. “Leave.” She walked briskly to the door but was struck down by the guarding man’s fist before she could touch the lock. She spat phlegm and blood onto the floor as she crawled towards the mattress. “What the f-ck,” she questioned in a daze.

“You’re not going anywhere. And your definitely not screaming like that again,” he got up and put a pistol to her head. “Do you hear me?”

She agreed reluctantly with a nod as she repeated please through her bloodied teeth.

“Okay. I think you’re senses are back, mostly.” He scampered across the kitchen floor. “So he told you that he’ll back later, did he? You’d think sooner than later, this man that loves you so much. This is probably going to be terrible news then.”

He threw her the rag from the sink. “Wash up,” he said and then looked to the younger man, “sit down. I think she learned her lesson.” He went and knelt to her and took the rag from her hand and gently wiped the blood from her chin as she sobbed and shook, staring blankly away from him. “You don’t seem that stupid at all. Not as stupid as I thought you’d be. You know, no offense. But dating that guy, don’t blame me for finding room to assume. Anyways, I’m sure you know that he’s not coming. No. You see, your boyfriend wasn’t bottled last night. I’m assuming he didn’t stay too long. You would of seen the cuts and bruises all over his body. My boy here gave him all that. But he left that out didn’t he?”

Forcibly bringing her face aligned with his as she pulled away, he continued, “If there is no law in the matter of your business than who is there to judge? Who can honestly wait for God to do anyone’s bidding? I don’t think it’s his style. I don’t think it’s a cop or judge’s either in those situations, last I checked. When one is dealing with issues that are under no script, no word, of law or of God, then who has the right to justice? Me. When your piece of shit boyfriend took drugs from me, the will of nature dictates that I’m great enough to judge.” He took a calming breath. “And so last night we made an agreement, me and your loving man.” His hand fell high on her lap as with his other his fingers slid across her cheek. “I’d get my money one way or another.”

She slapped his hand away. “No, you can’t,” she cried. “I’m not his property. He doesn’t belong to me. You can’t do this.”

He looked to his partner for but a deadpan reaction. He gripped her hair and shoved her temple into her shoulder. “I could, and I will, tonight and tomorrow, and the next day and the next day. Until I feel like that little junkie ass has subsidized for three thousand dollars in losses.”

As he began to slip the top off her shoulder, there was a knock at the door.

The younger man went to the window but could not see through the frost. He looked to his superior to find that he was just as bewildered. The older man took out his pistol and casually pointed it at her. His finger wrapped around the trigger. She knew he would pull it if she made even the slightest sound. The knocking persisted longer than one would normally expect. Annoying as the consistent knocking had been in days prior, the young mother’s face lit up slightly as if she suddenly realized who was on the other side.

“Who is that?”

Her voice trembled before she could speak. “I don’t know.”

“Go tell them to fuck off. And if you say or do anything, I’ll kill you and whoever that is. Got it?” he spoke through his clenched jaw as she nodded. “Go.”

The younger man stood behind the door and slowly opened it. And there in the snowfall stood a chubby little girl in a thick faux-fur jacket, her son’s friend, standing silently with a tight smile. Inside the men looked to each other as her head protruded out into the cold. They could not hear a word over the bellowing winds drafting through entrance. The older man moved to stand directly at her backside and put his ear in closer.

“Okay, see you later then,” the young mother spoke in a clear yet shaken voice.

The man moved even closer, his ear near in between her head and the door.

“Help,” she whispered.

The man grabbed her hair and threw her to the middle of the kitchen floor and ran outside and pulled the little girl in by her coat collar and bowl-cut hair.

“Leave her alone,” she begged, fearing for the crying girl.

“What is wrong with you?” He tossed the girl to the floor and put the gun to the women’s forehead almost at the same time. “Do you want to die? Huh?” Jabbing her in the forehead. “Are you stupid?” He pulled the gun away and put it to the terrified little girl’s temple as she sobbed to the ceiling on her knees. “Is this what you want? You are just as stupid as I thought you were.”

“I’m sorry,” she cried at his feet. “I’m sorry. Let her go. She didn’t do anything. She’s just a little girl. Please, let her go and you could have anything. You could do anything, please.”

“Let’s take them both to that backroom,” he ordered the younger man who stood panting in apparent anxiety.

They took the women and the girl to the main bedroom down the hall and gagged them using whatever clothes they found laying around and tied their hands behind their back. The younger man stood on guard as the older swore to himself in the kitchen. The mother begged to the younger man through her gag but he was unmoved. The older man came into the bedroom punching himself on the cheek.

“Should we just go?” said the younger man.

His superior looked at him as if insulted. “Leave? She knows who we are. If this fat little kid says anything, we’ll be screwed. Cops will be all over our ass.”

“What if she doesn’t say anything?”

The women looked at the little girl as if to calm her down.

“She’ll tattle-tale,” he said walking to the little girl. “Won’t you?”

The women shouted something through her gag for the older man’s attention.

“You did this. You brought another child into your fucked up little world to suffer. And now you know what? She gets to watch and witness. Witness what happens to f-ck ups like you. Then after that? We’ll see how fast you could dig your grave and hers when this is over.”

The superior grabbed the seams of the women’s pants and started pulling them off and when she was in her underwear he ordered the younger man to pin her swaying body to the floor and he did so in reluctance, looking elsewhere with his hands clutched over her shoulders. The older got inbetween her kicking legs and unzipped his jeans.

Then there was another knock at the door. The men turned to the hallway. Frozen. The sound of the door creaked open and with it the wind and the sound of boots stomping and the older man stood up and pointed his gun down the hallway and then to the floor ahead and laughed in relief.

“What’s up?” said a hoarse voice. “What the hell? Why you getting all hostile?” A the stranger with a face gaunt and that would have a starving shark lose its appetite walked in the room and he stopped instantly at the sight of the two distressed bodies gagged on the floor. A little girl and half naked women. “Whoa. What the hell is going on here? I guess I didn’t miss too much.”

“That stupid bitch brought this f-cking kid in it. Now we’re stuck with them both.”

“What do we do?”

“We have our fun and get rid of them.”

“Get rid of?”

“You didn’t miss a damn thing.”

He took a few back steps towards the door. “Hey, I just got out of jail. I thought we were just going to stop by for a bit of fun. This is too f-cked up, man. I can’t do this.”

The superior turned to the man. “You are doing this.”

“What if someone finds out? I can’t do life, man. C’mon.”

The older put his hand over the man’s shoulder. “Look, don’t worry about a thing. No one will ever no we were here. Besides, this is a junkie’s house. All her neighbors know that people come by just to get f-cked up all the time. Plus it’s a blizzard out there. No tracks. No anything. It’s fine. We’re fine,” he said with an uncomfortable grin.

The gaunt man looked at the little girl. “Can we talk in the kitchen? All of us.”

The superior and the younger man looked at each other and both walked out of the bedroom, the strange man lastly closing the door.

“I CAN’T DO THIS shit,” the mother heard the younger protest down the narrow hallway.

She looked to the little girl and mumbled as if to calm her down. She shifted her jaw tirelessly until the lime cloth between her teeth slid to her neck. “Okay,” she whispered. “Turned around.” The pudgy girl turned on her side and the women used her teeth to pluck and untie it as aimlessly as a snared rodent gnawing its own leg however her binds were too tight around the girl’s swollen and reddened wrists. “F-ck.” She looked to her dresser lined up with the bedroom door and propped herself to her feet. She waited until the three intruders screamed uncivilly before she used her hips to budge and fasten the dresser against the door, inch by inch.

“I’m going to break the window. You’re going to get on my back and jump out, okay?” she said to the little girl. She looked around the room but there was nothing her teeth could grip to break the window therefore she put her forehead against the cold glass and pulled her head back past her shoulder blades and thrust forward. A mere spiderweb crack came about the thudding impact. The men continued to obliviously argue. The concoction of their arguing voices and the thudding struggle of the little girl’s feet masked the impact. Blood poured down her forehead and into her shrouded eyes. On the second attempt, glass and ice and snow came crashing down onto the floor and shards were instilled in her flesh. They heard the shattering impact on that occasion.

As the women got to her knees the little girl stood for a moment to see the lady. Her face full of blood and lacerations and skin hanging from her forehead. “Go,” she demanded. The sound of rushing intruders came down the hallway. The little girl stepped on the mother’s back and she rose to throw the girl out the window. When the intruders broke through the door they saw the smashed window and rushed to it. The little girl’s tracks lead to a small break in the tall fence where she passed under for escape.

The superior took to kicking the mother in the ribs in blind anger and the gaunt man hesitantly walked backwards to the door.

“This is f-cked up,” said the strange looking one, “I told you. I’m out, man.”

In almost an instant, the older man turned to him and put a pistol to his head and demanded that he not move to which the gaunt man told him “do what you got to do” and thus was shot in the back of the head after he turned to walk away. Blood and flesh and bone skewered throughout the hallway walls. The younger man shook when he saw the lifeless man’s skull empty a pulpy pink and red liquid to the floor.

“You have anything you want to say?” he said to the younger. “You want to go?”

Scared, the younger one shook his head.

“Well hold her down. I’m getting what I f-cking came for.” The older turned the women on her back and unzipped his pants. “Hold her down I said.”

The younger man was still, watching as the women lay silent and bloodied. He watched as the man started tearing away the clothes off the helpless mother like a savage beast. A man who had more vehicles than anybody could need, more people at his side than most politicians, and more money required from the enslaved to last a lifetime. The man regarded no life save himself. Although the ladder was never clear to the younger, he realized that now. At last, he saw only a manipulative man selfishly unhinged from all law and virtue of man and God. This nefarious man could of seized his unrelenting pride and let the loss of it wear on his soul as bleakly as wind against stone however he did not and therefore the young man lifted his pistol and shot the unjust man twice in the back as if the entirety of which he stood aloof to the monster was for that moment of which nature appointed him law and judge and subsequent of the settling echos of gunfire he witnessed the deliverance of justice as the eyes of evil saturated among the dead and then the pistol fell to the younger one’s side.

The women was too weak to push the dead older man off from her torso. “Please, help.”

The younger man roused from his shock and dragged him off and as soon as he stood to his feet, the sound of a .22 caliber rifle went off and the women looked over to the doorway and saw a hefty man wearing spandex over his plaid jacket, his gun pointed sharply. The little girl’s father. The young man fell to the ground at her side, life seeping from a blank stare and soon after, when the hefty man had picked the young mother up to her feet and escorted her out, he died on the cold floor.

In the hefty man’s pick up truck in the driveway, he had blanketed her and assured that she was now safe and that help was coming. She looked out to her tattered, trailer home and its frozen windows glowing through the evening’s darkening skies and, as they drove off, the world went black.

THOUGH SHE HAS always waited for God, perhaps He did answer back however not in the way she had expected. She could not see his face or feel his hands or hear his voice. Perhaps he spoke through the confinement of her cold, gray home. In such a way being, even as great as He, one could not amend, could not dictate, nor judge. Only an extension of understanding that may be derived as it is. A cold and gray home. An internal loneliness within. Perhaps angels are not always found only in the joyous and prosperous aspects of the world but also that of in dismay and pain. She dreamed that those whom suffered longer and harder battles were the ones that brought themselves closer to the warming embrace of divinity. She had never read or heard of script or of law by God or by man that could directly dictate the will of flesh and so it was only by her steadying hand and alarmed spirit that she could find the greatness within herself to grant justice and it was in that dream she was terrified but somehow she had also built a fire. Then she awoke.

A year had past after the storm. The sun streamed through her hallway windows like thick, golden beams. Particles of dust danced liked ever changing constellations. The walls were adorned with framed photos of family and friends and stickers that immortalized the simplistic words of terrible and nameless writers of past. Live. Laugh. Love. She followed the fresh smell of coffee into the kitchen and picked out the pot from the stainless steel brewer and poured herself a steaming hot cup. She stared out past the window as she stood at the sink and scrolled along her freshly painted fence and in disguised thought she realized there was something important missing. “Get up now, you’re going to be late for school,” the young mother hollered to the hallway and turned back to the window and took a sip of coffee.

 

Numb Basin

It was late into the evening on a cold wintry lake. Winds and snowfall hurried to bury the ice road that beset ahead. A thick mist tailed as he drove his truck through the pallid sight like a current jetting through deadened water, snow pummeling against the swishing window wipers. The four-foot high edges were rounding out and in no time the road that could host two lanes caved in to nothing more than a convenient rut for the wandering downfall. Aware of the conditions and having rode down the route a great deal, his pace didn’t let up even as the tires would crash against hardened drifts causing sudden jerks. He knew that it had been worse. What an ungodly day it must have been.

He had just delivered several packages to a small hamlet that could only be reached by an ice road. It took him longer to arrive than planned. He was halted by an elderly women in her grim cabin. One who he knew and spoke with every time he came by. One who only spoke Dene words, much like his own grandmother. She was a nice old lady who was always surrounded by her grandchildren. He was still unfamiliar with most of the Denesuline words she spoke, his native language. Edza was the only word he could make out from her babble. Cold. On any other day he would listen and visit, however he insisted his departure, his mind weighed by worry. He waved off and left the isolated community.

He thought about the moments he shared with his girlfriend days before, looking over to her long black hair as they drove through a quiet town late that morning. Her soft nose pointed down towards where her cellphone rested between her thighs. Her fingers pressed against the screen busily. She wasn’t usually as quiet. He purposely cleared his throat and tapped his fingers loudly against the steering wheel as to gain her attention. Her gaze was still unmoved. Eyes were fixed on reading whatever message or post that was returned, staring and smiling. A type of smile he hadn’t seen in a while. He asked her what she was so busy with and with that an argument ensued for the remaining ride home. He couldn’t remember their words, only the frustration in their expressions and how she couldn’t look into his eyes, the way her jaw line shifted when she explained herself then she said nothing at all. Barren tones of radio covered the aching silence like a carpet over rusty nails.

She sent one more text and sat with her hair covering half of her face as she rested her chin on knuckles. And for days after that, they shared conversations sparingly. He refused to listen to her, and she refused to fight. He focused his days looking after his ill grandmother. Her ailed body too weak to carry out most normal functions. Getting her up from the couch. Seating her carefully on the stool. Cooking and feeding.

During while, his girlfriend had been at her parents or wherever else. Places he would rather not know. He would only see his girl in the evening when she would come home to sleep next to him. Laying thousands of kilometers away could have felt just as close, as if her presence and stare a polarizing force to depart.

He watched the heavy snowfall crash into the window like tunneling vortex, a guilt encasing him, similar to the way someone would realize they forgot to lock up their house or feed their dog. Maybe he was wrong about it all. The assumptions. If she wanted anything else she wouldn’t have been at his side, even as he resented her. He sped up, realizing he was still quiet a ways away from home, ways away from her, and ways away from giving her an apology.

Too long on the hazardous road, not enough sleep. His eyes fought to stay open, weary from a sleepless night. The white in front of him became flashes of darkness. A comforting dark that promised serenity. His eyes closed shut. A violent jolt woke him from his slumber. In a short instance of unconsciousness, his truck lost control and barged into a snow drift as tall as the hood of the truck and his forehead hit the top of the steering wheel.

The vehicle was motionless in the snow, the muffled engine idling below the powder. Radio static. His head rested on the steering wheel, unconscious. The wind howled and the snowfall brought on its encumbrance as if nothing happened.

She was sitting on top a boulder about the size of a small bus in the middle of the woods. She beckoned him to climb up. He took her hand and crawled up to met her at the top, seemingly taller than the green trees that surrounded them. A ray of sun peeked over the fringe of green as he pulled her in and she pulled him in. They looked in each others eyes, smiling. And their expressions faded as they brought their heads in forth at a tilt. As their lips locked, sunlight pierced between their joined dark, contrasted figures and its citrus glow erupted like the splitting of clouds in the sky as they parted to look at each other, her hands resting over his shoulders as his lay at her waist.

He remembered every thing clearly in that moment. The chirping and bleating and whistling of birds and rodents from the treeline. Her sweet face, the green of the trees, the blue of the sky. The way she hung her head slightly, forcing him to stare into her brown eyes, into the warmth of her soul. Her fragrance, one he couldn’t place, familiar and comforting and angelic. An aroma of everything he would ever need.

She ran ahead of him through a small beach and removed her sandals and walked hurriedly to dip her toes in a clear blue pool in the middle of the forest. He noticed her begin to peel off her top and slip off her shorts and until she was naked in the water. He looked around. Only trees and wild. She looked back at him as she dipped herself in and smiled invitingly, backpedaling towards the middle. He took off his clothes and stood hesitantly before the water. She waved him in. He took a step and submerged completely, like walking off a diving board, and his entirety was stung from the sharp cold.

He abruptly woke to the sight of his breath freezing mid-air. He felt his hands shaking uncontrollably beneath him. He lifted his bruised forehead from the steering wheel and looked about the cold cab. He wiped away frost from the window and discovered he was near buried. The wind whistled loudly through the cracks. He turned the key and the engine spat and jogged before starting. He cleared the frost from the gauges and saw that the gas was just above empty and by that thought maybe he was out for an hour or so. If he was out for any longer, he may have never awoke. He knew that all too well.

He swore and punched his dashed board until his breathing grew heavy and his knuckles sore.

The door was blocked by the surrounding barricade of snow. He pushed until it slowly peered open and he was able to squeeze out of the vehicle. He walked far enough away from the truck to see that it was moments away from becoming his frozen coffin, almost completely buried. There was noway he was getting anywhere. He took a shovel from the box and began to dig just outside the driver-side doorway where the wind blew right over truck’s cab. With the doorway clear, he jumped in the cab and looked through his storage departments for anything he could find of use. A box of matches. Extra gloves and a pair of hide mitts. Old packages of broken up saltine crackers. A flashlight. And a pile of sweaters and extra snow pants and greasy old gloves. Some rope and select tools.

He dropped his head on the steering wheel, feeling the swelling on his forehead push against his skull. He thought of how great it would be to have a trucker’s radio and how stupid it was that he didn’t but there wasn’t much point in sitting around thinking of what he could have done. He stared at the vents. Streams of freezing air. The gas gauge was sitting right on the empty line, temporary comfort soon to fade when the gas would. Perhaps it would last until rescuers would arrive but that was a chance he would have to wage for his life. He turned off the ignition and got out of the vehicle and shone his flashlight down both directions where the road would have been, but the snowstorm had devoured its existence. From afar, it looked as if the truck had been placed arbitrarily in the cold desert by an act of God. There was no leaving. Not by tires, not by feet…not mortally.

He needed to get back home. If not for his own life, he needed to for her. The woman who lived in his heart. He needed to hear her voice again. The cold sung on the lake a deathly bellow. But he was not afraid of the fear that arose within. He seen storms before and he had survived them all. He’d walked through snow storms drunk, battered and bruised. Fell through ice in the later days of winter. Fought off an angry, old wolf with an ice pick. Heartbreak. Loneliness. Seen the deaths of family and friends. And although the deathly bellows sung, the fear within him sung clamorous, for without it he would welcome death’s music in grandeur. It can’t be on this night. Not for his own life, but for her.

His shoveled and tossed the snow overhead, enough to stay above the pace of the relentless blizzard. Hours later a small area outside the driver door was cleared out. He took a handful of tools from behind the seat. He rummaged through every crevice inside the cab for a tarp or something until he thought to check the box. He removed the piling snow and clawed his way to the iron, his hands sifting through until his fingers caught a grip of what felt like a sheet of some sort and tugged it out. Canvas.

Later he threw the sheet above the gap from the open driver door to the cab hood and secured it using rope. With the excess canvas, he pegged it down so that the sheet lay out against the side of the truck like some makeshift lean-to. As he finished, he crawled under the cover to ensure it was as robust from the inside as it was out. He patted the inner lining and thought to himself that it’d take a tree to fall over to take it down. He grabbed all the extra clothing and whatever else he could find and placed it out underneath the shelter as a floor. It was as much comfort as he was going to get, although he could still feel the overwhelming cold creep up his skin.

He jacked up the truck enough to pry out the rear tire from its frozen mound. He placed it near the entrance of the canvas enough so to crawl in through. He dipped a long, greasy rag into the gas tank until it was drenched in the musky fluid. He slipped off his gloves and put them between his teeth as he twisted the cloth so that gas would trickle over one side of the rubber. He took a book of matches out from his chest pocket and he slid a match against the striker and put the miniscule flame against the gas. The flame burst for a moment before dying down to shallow a height. It took only a few moments before the cold rubber caught aflame and burned lightly in the frigid cold.

He crawled further back into the canvas and watched the flames grow below the emitting thick, black smoke. Inevitable darkness crept as he sat nibbling away at the package of stale and tasteless crackers and thought about the elderly woman. Edza, she said. He could see the distraught look in her eyes now that he put his mind to it. She wanted him to stay until the storm would clear, her fingers pointed at a steaming pot of some sort of soup. It could have been just a broth of old scraps and bones meant for dogs, he would still eat it now.

The flames danced in the wind and faded to black as his eyes lids came to a unhurried close, as if to purge the despair in his heart and mind. A few hours had passed before his eyes burst open. Disappointment on his face as soon as he saw the continued storm. There was a sun somewhere beyond the violent grayness. It might have been six am but he wasn’t sure. He threw off the bits of clothes piled above him and crawled out of the shelter. His body felt weak and sensitive to the cold, the long, sharp gusts of frigid air sinking into his ail bones as he looked to the smoking embers of his exhausted fire. With a harsh, gruff cough berthing from his heavy lungs and through his sore throat, mucous oozed from his nostrils and he wiped away and spit his phlegm towards it and swore.

The truck was seamless underneath a foot or so of snow. He took his shovel and cleared it out so that it wouldn’t go unnoticed to rescue, pushing through maturing illness within, his sluggish movement. He dug out an area and pulled another tire from the truck and threw it into the embers and soon its black smoke blew into the distance. About an hour later, he was depleted, a heavy sweat pouring down his face. He crawled through the shelter and into the cab to look about the lake.

He sat and wondered how long it would take before rescue would come, if they ever would. Heavy eyelids flickered open and closed, open and closed. In the white distance, he saw a giant plow cutting through the incredible height of snow as simply as a utility knife cutting through packing tape and the height of the plow truck was too great for the flying powder to crash against the windows where two men sat, one young the other older and stoic, whom both looked about critically in search for him and once they saw him the younger man would open his door and help him get into the cab where he would remove his gloves and rub them briskly in the stream of warm air plowing from the vents, and they told him that his grandmother and girlfriend were worried sick about him, turning around to where, in no time at all, they arrived to the sight of his tiny town in the distance. And then he saw his girlfriend, the tip of her finger over his nose as they lay in bed smiling silently at each other. They whispered their affection to each other as the sunshine came in between. Then she screamed, her voice piercing like echoing sirens and gunfire.

He awoke in a violent shiver hours later. He looked around and wondered where he was. He repeated his grandmother’s name, shouting, crying, and looking around ceaselessly as if he heard her voice come from every direction. He got out of the cab and ripped the canvas down like she was simply hiding behind it, begging for her help. But there was nobody. He felt his skin burning up beneath his clothes.

Panicking and irate, he threw off his jacket and sweaters until he was standing shirtless in the blank, white world, his shrieking voice faint in the bellowing storm. He began to walk through the deep of the snow and, short of a hundred meters away from his truck, the coarse and stiff top layer of sharp ice scraped against his stomach and hips until his flesh gradually peeled clean off and the blood rolled down his sides, a fringe of red left at the edge of his trail. He carried on bluntly.

He saw her in the distance and she saw him and they ran through the snow as if it wasn’t there. He laughed and smiled, moving as fast as he could. They wrapped their arms around each other and he told her how sorry he was for everything, for ignoring her, for assuming the worst of her. And she explained that it was her father she had been talking to. Her father whom would pay for their wedding in the next coming of spring with money he had been saving. The news was supposed to come as a surprise to him. She had told him this before, when he would walk out on her. “It’s okay, baby. . . it’s okay,” she whispered in his ear. He cried and smiled and his tears froze on his face and she enveloped him in her heat, so much so that he was no longer cold or burning up. He held everything he ever wanted. “I love you,” he said, and died in her arms.

The snowfall stopped. A sea of ivory surrounded him as he lay lifeless, his arms wrapped around a mound of coagulated snow. His eyes were open and unmoved, his skin blue and purple and peeling. Dashes of white flakes rolled across his face as he stared across the rippled pallid. The day was reluctant of conclusion, the sun piercing through the thick gray above. A whispering wind in the dead of winter. In the world where volcanoes rumbled and cows grazed and men stood patiently in suits among towering monuments build by great machinery and mountain ranges rose above heathens, existence was wrapped around minuscule flakes that glared like billions of diamonds scattered across the numb basin.