The Snowman

The snowfall is as thick as a supernatural fog. In the swirling clouds I see shadows. Faces appear to me, jump out at me, like fun-house phantasms and then dissolve as quickly as they came. Perhaps they recede back into the cavernous emptiness of my memories.

Silence. The only sound is the cruel whistling of the wind and the occasional flip-flap of my hood. The world is dead as my soul is dead. I stand alone. Like Rip Van Winkle I’ve awoken from a hundred year ethereal sleep only to find desolation. Only to find deserted streets. Vacant eyes framed in brick peer down as I gaze up at the breathing, zig-zagging sky. My legs tremble beneath me like I’m tweaking. Lucid lithium dreaming. I feel dizzy. The strength and vigor I once knew as a youth has escaped me. I think it runs through the trees with the whispering dryad ghosts.

As I walk on I can hear the soft crunch of the snow beneath my feet. Can the dead who rest in the ground below hear my footfalls? In their shadowy slumber through lidless sockets, they see pitch black - even blacker than black my glimmering shadow floats by as a distant train billows smoke into the nuclear sky. And the dead forever grin through lipless smiles.