At last we had clear skies. More storms were on the way, but for today, we had sunlight and still air. We needed to make the most of it. After doing some work in the shed (first digging to and digging out the shed), I came into the house all dressed up in my snow gear.
“Come on, girls, let’s go for a walk.”
The girls’ reactions were as expected; Sonja was overjoyed, Momo was unwilling but compliant, and Chloe was too nervous and obedient to have an opinion one way or the other. They got fully dressed and came outside, where I had eight long strips of wood, cut from a large piece of plywood I had found in the shed.
“Master, what are those for?”
“These are going to help us stay above the snow.”
Quite simply, they were handmade skis, though not like the antiques you might find hanging above the fireplace at a fancy ski lodge. However, I was actually fairly proud of them. Each ski had a length of thin rebar duct taped to the bottom, strong enough to help keep the wood from cracking under our weight but light enough to not drain our stamina with every step. I had also found some scraps of tin roofing from the building of the house and added them to the ends as slopes to help them move over the snow. With nothing but several layers of duct tape, I secured everyone to their skis. It was certainly an awkward feeling, trying to get around with them on my feet, but my first steps out into the snow were promising.
Outside of the house, the world was completely white, not a single tinge of hue beyond the clear blue sky. Snow had entombed everything, every tree and every pine needle, plastering itself into the ridges of bark at every angle and leaving nothing untouched. Every branch was weighted down with powder, hanging submissively like curtains. It almost looked like an alien world. The girls followed me, struggling to move with their skis, but at least they weren’t sinking into the snow.
“Let’s see if the road has been plowed.”
We made our way over to the driveway, first checking my car. On average, the storms had dumped a solid six feet of snow, but around my car, being subject to the wind, it was twice that. Besides already knowing where it was parked, our only sign as to the existence of the car was the raised hill created by the snow replicating its shape as it was piled on. I brought a snow shovel with me and had to do lots of digging before I even reached metal. Jesus Christ, I had never seen a winter as extreme as this. I continued excavating around my car, only stopping when I finally exposed a window and could look inside. It almost felt like I was gazing into some ancient tomb.
“Girls, I predict a lot of shoveling in our immediate future.”
Even Sonja groaned at the prospect.
We then trekked down the driveway, past countless drooping branches with their ends buried in the snow. We would try to shake them loose whenever we could, but even when we cleared off all the snow, they still hung, despondent. It might take some time before they recovered and regained their rigidity. Hell, every man knows how hard it is to stay erect in the snow. We reached the end of the driveway, where we found good news and bad news. The good news was that the road had been plowed. Well, I had no idea when, but from the fact that there was only two feet of snow on the road, it proved that this road wasn’t completely forgotten. The bad news was that the plow had left a huge wall of snow at the end of the driveway that would be a bitch to dig through.
From there, we simply zigzagged through the forest, looking for any kind of paths we could use. By now, the girls and I knew these woods like the back of our hands, but there was no longer anything recognizable. Trees had been replaced with white pillars, ravines had been filled in, all manner of plants and brush were completely buried. It was an eerie reality, but it was also truly amazing and stunningly beautiful. I tried taking pictures with my phone, but they all came out as just a white flash.
“It’s sort of like that documentary, isn’t it?” I hollered from the front of the line.
“I wish there were some polar bears around!” called Sonja.
I kept on looking back at the girls, checking their progress. Sonja and Momo had gotten the hang of their skis, though of course, Momo looked pissed off and wanted to go back to bed. Chloe was doing better than I expected. Due to her light weight, she was staying on top of the powder better than any of us.
“What do you think, Chloe? This all reminds me of your hair.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. Hell, your skin is so light, that if it weren’t for your clothes, this would be perfect camouflage for you. You could strip down and be completely invisible.”
While the idea of taking off her clothes and disappearing into the snow did not appeal to her, the fact that I was thinking about her made her smile. But she then stopped in her tracks, unable to move beyond Momo who was standing still and looking down at the ground. Ahead of her, Sonja halted when she sensed the stillness, and I did the same when the forest behind me fell silent. Momo had a mournful look on her face, and after seeing that expression, Sonja gazed around at the surrounding woods and her tail drooped. Chloe was already clutching herself and sniffling.
“Girls? What is it? What’s wrong?”
They all turned to me.
“Master, we came out to this spot before Christmas to play and we found something,” said Sonja.
“What did you find?”
“A girl,” said Momo, “a girl like us. She was lying in the snow. She was dead.”
A shiver moved through me, starting from the tips of my fingers and toes and the top of my head, and moving towards the center of my chest. It felt like my heart was being twisted around a spool and reeling in every artery and vein out of my limbs.
“What did you say?”
“I think she was a deer,” said Chloe with a tearful sniffle. “She was frozen. We buried her here under some sticks and brush.”
Sonja looked down at the ground, wringing her hands. “We wanted to tell you, but we didn’t want to ruin Christmas.”
I struggled to speak, my throat dry as sand, my tongue feeling like it was swelling and cutting off my air. My eyes became wet, invoking the sting of the cold.
“Girls, you had better not be lying to me. Is there really a dead… is there really someone buried here?”
They all nodded, and the silence hit me like a thunderous wave. My knees buckled, I fell to the ground. Guilt swept through me, no, such a word doesn’t truly describe what I was feeling. Because of me, a girl was dead. Because of me, a human life had been created simply to be snuffed out by the cold. Was I lying in the exact same spot where she had lain in her final moments? Her naked body being bled of its warmth? Her bare skin feeling the frozen edges of the snow and ice? Her transformed mind filled with confusion and fear, knowing only for certain that she was going to die? I screamed and beat my fist against the snow, cursing myself and whatever power had forced an innocent creature to suffer and die. The girls rushed over me but I couldn’t see them, blinded by tears and snow. I had feared this would happen. Every single day since this started, I had been terrified that this curse would create a human life and bring about its death, that would I rob an animal of their chance to live and they would die because I turned them into something they didn’t understand and couldn’t save them.
It had been a long time since I cried, but I did so now. I had created a person, as if they were my child, only for them to suffer and die. This girl, what had she been like? If I had found her, if I had saved her, how might my life be different? How might she make me smile? How might I make her laugh? How might I wake up beside her? How might she fall asleep beside me?
I don’t know how long I laid there. The girls stayed beside me, crying as well, afraid and unsure of anything they could do to make me feel better. Finally, the sun began to set, and they knew that we had to get home. They pulled me up onto my feet, and once standing, I began to think a little bit clearer.
“Let’s go home,” I said with my throat aching.
We trudged through the snow back to the house, none of us saying anything. We reached the porch just as the sun disappeared below the horizon. We cut the duct tape binding us to our skis and stepped inside, stripping off our winter gear. I walked into the kitchen and reached into a cabinet above the fridge, pulling out a bottle of Jack Daniels. I had never been a drinker, I didn’t even know why I had bought it, but I was glad I had it now.
“Master?”
I didn’t look at the girls. I couldn’t. I walked into the living room and grabbed one of the blankets. “I… need to be alone. There’s plenty… of food, so you can fend for yourselves tonight. Don’t disturb me.”
They were crying but they behaved, not following me as I went upstairs. With no bed, I could have slept in the bathtub, but I wanted to be in a smaller place. I chose the bedroom closet, having just enough room to lie down. I pulled everything off the coat hangers, letting it all fall down to the floor to form a makeshift mattress, just something soft that would keep me warm. I wrapped myself in the blanket and crawled into my nest. I closed the door, and in the darkness, opened the bottle.
I spent the night and the following day in the closet, drowning my sorrows with liquor. I drifted in and out of a dreamless sleep, miraculously avoiding any spills. Every once in a while, I would hear the girls come up the stairs, most often to use the bathroom. They did as I told them and left me in peace, something I was grateful for, but every time they would come upstairs, they’d stop at the bedroom doorway and I could feel their eyes on the closet door. If I listened closely, I could hear them talking. They wanted so badly for me to come out, for me to tell them I was ok or just say a word to them, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t face them.
I didn’t feel hungry, I had lost my appetite, but nature still called. At first I would go to the bathroom, but as soon as I emptied the Jack Daniels bottle, I filled it with pee so that I would no longer need to leave my enclosure. My mind was tearing itself apart, trying to figure out a solution to this. If I stayed here any longer, this would inevitably happen again. Some animal would turn into a human girl and end up freezing or starving to death, or even worse, wander out into the road and get run over. This ability, or curse, whatever it was, was it getting worse? How far from the house was that deer when she transformed? Chloe had been maybe a hundred feet away from me back when she lived in the shed, but the girls found the other girl more than a mile from the house. Was the range increasing? I had no sense as to the frequency of this phenomenon, but would it now start happening more often?
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