The second story in what may be my string of failed stories haha. I had quite a few possibilities running through my head for this one. I just felt nothing quite connected in the end. That’s okay. I’m here to share the failures as well.
DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
She paid no mind to the cold, and it paid no mind to her. She stepped through the powder on legs that had made his own weak once. He wished the wind would pick up, because her footsteps were deafening, the sound working under his skin, through all the layers he wore to protect himself.
“Arms at your sides,” he said.
His voice sounded out of place. However, the command worked. Her gait conformed to the rigidity he’d expected, grateful for the illusion of inhumanity. Who was he kidding? It was no illusion.
The thought reminded him to check his shotgun again. He worked his hand over the stock and grip, to make sure it was there, to make sure he was there. He smelled the oil, moreso when he went to wipe his nose.
A strand of her hair broke free from its tie and flowed on a current like ink in water, yet anchored to that head full of so much darkness that it made even more sense in metaphor. He couldn’t look away, couldn’t focus. He raised the shotgun so he could focus on something. That helped some. His thoughts helped more. He shouldn’t speak of those.
Two rusted tractors came into view, which divided his. These echoes of civilization warned him that he should move on, that this was far too risky, if he hadn’t been spotted already.
Every dark stone in the snow, ever tree branch judder, every subtle shift in value to the curtain of gloom were eyes out to get him. And what a sight it would be: A man armed with a shotgun dressed in colors that spoke of no good, ushering a beautiful woman who was naked from the waist down to a place that could only be her killing ground.
He kicked something. His toes throbbed behind his steel toes. A stone. Or was it?
“Wait,” he said to her, seeing as she was still walking.
She held. He gave it a moment before kneeling down to inspect the “stone” further.
He rested the shotgun across his knee, holding the stock against his hip with his finger on the trigger. Probably not the best idea, but she didn’t seem to notice.
This was no stone. Some kind of machine part but unlike anything he’d ever seen. Couldn’t have been from one of these tractors, that was for sure. He touched it. Cold as expected, except for a vibration of some kind. He pressed his hand flat against it to make sure. Still there. His nerves were on edge, so it could have been him.
When he looked up, she was gone. He spun, looked in every direction, breath pluming in front of him obscuring his view. He repeated the whole process again, memorizing every environmental feature to confirm it was where it should have been when he passed back over it.
“Jones.”
He jumped with a too-hard grip on the shotgun and pulled the trigger. It knocked him on his ass, ears ringing, something hot running down his neck that must be his brains. He realigned himself on all fours, thankful that nothing red poured onto the snow.
“Don’t look at me,” Jones said.
“I’m not.”
He picked up the gun and stood. Where had she run? So many places to run. Maybe he should just call it. Move on. She wouldn’t last long out here, anyway. He had seen that movie plenty of times, and decided he didn’t want to write the sequel.
He felt that vibration again. This time in his boot soles, and when he looked down, she was there. As he had been. On all fours. Her eye, icier than what fell around them, gazed up at him.
He couldn’t move. Did she know? Of course she did. “Don’t look at me,” he said anyway.
Maybe if she thought he could talk, she’d think he was in control.
“You always liked it like this,” she said, scooting her jacket onto her hips to reveal more leg and a bit of ass.
“I said, don’t look at me.”
She didn’t listen. Keeping him locked with her gaze, she balled up snow, then piled it on the ground when it became too large to hold. Pinecones, twigs, and stones added to her project. Then she went to work on a new one. Roughly head-sized when she was done, she put it on top of the first one, then found two twigs in the snow to give it arms.
The faceless snowman stared blankly at its creator while she watched Jones. His eyes watered. His chest tightened. When he cleared his eyes, the snowman was wearing a small, rusted bucket for a hat.
“Don’t do it,” Jones said.
“Don’t do what?”
He tried with all his might to aim the shotgun at her. Maybe at himself would have been better.
“Show me.”
“You already know.”
“I don’t.”
She didn’t blink despite a snowlake landing on her eyeball. Once it melted, she said, “You do.”
She picked up a pebble and placed it on the snowman where an eye should be. Then another.
“Where is he?” Jones said between clenched teeth.
“I thought you didn’t want to know.”
She had him. Why did he think he could have taken care of things? He never could fix things. She’d always told him that.
“You’re not her,” Jones said. “That’s not him.”
She licked her lips, pressed them together, then released them.
“It’s how he felt,” she said. “What he looked like before–”
“Stop. Enough. I’ll let you go. Just. Stop.”
“You can never let me go, Jones. Just like we can never let him go.”
She brushed aside snow at her knee and found a twig. She put it on the snowman’s face, where a mouth should go.
It was inverted. Sad. Not happy as it should have been.
“Now do you remember?” she asked.
Her eyes teared up. It was a trick.
She nodded to the shotgun. “Do it.”
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