It’s December. The time of year when reality seems to buckle and split, a single braided rope fraying into parallel manic and depressive strands. Holiday cheer everywhere, LED lights and joyous inflatable Santas in the front yards, all framed by the unendingly grey sky, sun setting at 4 PM, cold …
Winter is a brutal child of mother nature. It acts like a tyrant as it lays siege all over the land, claiming multiple casualties in its wake. That’s why many animals run in fear for their lives. They will burrow underneath the earth and sleep until the cold has left, …
Jess steadied her breath as she saw the buck. She was behind a fallen log dug deep into the blanket of snow that lay across the ground. She brought her rifle up to her shoulder and rested it on her cover, moving ever so slowly as to not startle the …
October 9th I invited my old friends over for the first time in what seems like forever. We’d get together like this often throughout high school, when we comparatively didn’t have much to worry about other than the typical naiveties we all wore on our sleeves. It’s not like today. …
It’s cold. It’s always cold in January. Isn’t it? This January is not so unusual after all, it would seem. It’s still cold. The snow still hangs low in the branches of the evergreens. The snow fox can still be glimpsed occasionally darting in and out of the treeline. No, …
They walked the path because they had always walked the path. This year there were nine children, swallowed in coats of gray, slogging through drifts of soft, powdered snow as the bald trees stood sentinel. They had come a long way, almost halfway up the mountain, yet still the path …
Jake Thomasson pulled the sleeve of his sweatshirt down, covering his hand, and wiped away the condensation from the window. It was the third time he had done this in the past ten minutes, but he didn’t want to miss seeing if any cars drove by outside. He was sitting …
I. The snow had stopped about an hour ago, but god damn, it was still a treacherous road. Mark turned up the radio, half to keep himself awake, and half to try to hear the music through the interfering static. The mountains weren’t good for the signal, and even though …
Jim Sterling was not having a good night. For reasons he couldn’t begin to grasp, his life had become a nexus of misery. First, the snack machine down the hall from his office had eaten his last dollar. After pressing F4, he watched with hungry anticipation as the automated coil …
“The snow did not even whisper its way to earth, but it seemed to salt the night with silence.” -Dean Koontz, Brother Odd Winter’s bitter chill drifted in from the open window. Frost laced the dried wooden frames of the window sill and empty countertops still littered with verglas painted …
