The frost made the world seem beautiful.
Making it shine and sparkle, the trees were laden with snow and the ground lay untouched by footprints, the soft snow flakes still fell, all the homes in the neighbouring town were sleeping, awaiting the surprise to wake up on Christmas morning to find that a pure white coat of happiness had laid its body upon the world.
The wind blew in and out of the trees, disturbing fresh snow that feel neatly to the cold floor. I’d never liked snow, even as a child. So it seemed I was to be tormented as there was nowhere for me to escape the crunch or chill of snow in my shoes.
It was almost like a white wonderland.
Almost.
How many times this forbidden source of laughter had tormented me and scolded me, such a thing that came from hell could not be so cold, yet it was. Sneaky. People see this natural occurring as a blessing from the sky, where it truly is a curse. Once it falls so do the lives of many of plants and animals and even humans. Those unlucky enough to be caught isolated from the warmth doomed only to freeze…but not straight away. No. They must wait slowly only very slowly until their eyes shut and the world would turn from pure white to deadening darkness. I felt no warmth when I saw this new blessing fall from the December sky, however I also did not feel cold.
I no longer feel the cold
I no longer feel anything, why should I?
I no longer have anything to feel for.
When I see couples together I do not adore then nor do I envy them.
A child playing does no fill me with pride or even sadness.
A death it neither makes me cry nor feel any remorse. I simply can’t feel anything for those who are so ignorant the fact the world they live in is so cruel and unloving. You may live to see the new dawn but in all selfishness they do not thank anyone for that new day they simply expect that tomorrow there will be an other one. And sometimes, only sometimes but it does happen, the snow falls.
That snow that blocks the sun from the sky.
That snow that takes the lives of those unfortunate to be caught out and Laid to sleep under its cold blanket.
That snow that comes at the happiest time, when families gather to celebrate and share their gifts.
That’s when the snow comes, that’s when they are reminded that they do not control this world and sometimes the sun wont shine one more time and sometimes their hidden blessing s is only a cover for what lies beneath.
Depressing?
Maybe.
But now on the eve of this special night the moon is no longer visible and the sky does not shine with stars its glistens with millions of snowflakes.
I sigh, I will not fight it tonight.
I have to take cover before I freeze to death.
Nothing ever seemed so sad then seeing a little girl without her parents, swinging gently on the swing then you blink and she’s gone. And you start to wonder if you ever really saw her at all, but then you here the swing creaking and swinging slowly … as if someone had jumped off and run away without stopping the swing. All the other swings were covered in snow and one was not, one was slightly warm.
I sighed once more, I looked back and saw all the swings covered in snow. The memory was too clear in my mind. I’d seen the lady after she’d seen me, she was going to come to me, ask me where my parents where.
She’d take me away.
Take me to a home.
I ran. Couldn’t help the instinct inside me, telling me to run, have no contact with people who’d take me away. I needed to find them before she came. I ran, ran through the tree’s that lead off into the woods behind the park. I kept running I remember the lady calling after me, not knowing my name she just called “Little girl! Little Girl” I didn’t stop, she couldn’t follow me when I knew these woods inside out and knew how to run with the trees while they covered my tracks.
I guess while I ran I had time to think, and I always remember the one thought I thought on that night, it coursed through my mind and when I finally reached the edge of the woods by the large hills I stopped and fell on my back, starring up at the stars. The snow was very deep and my body started to shiver and tell me I needed to get up but I couldn’t… I wouldn’t.
That one thought escaped my mind.
“I’m alone.”
I never looked back on this though. Not for more then a moment anyway. I knew I was truly alone when I returned home that night and the house was up turned. The pictures that were once on the wall where now on the floor bits of broken glass sprawled on the floor. I tread carefuly over the glass, the mirror much in the same state showed a broken girl in its reflection and it held her there for many years to come. The living room was much the same, the table and chairs where upside down, the soot from the chimney was all over the new white carpet. The plates and silver was no where to be seen. Taken. I wasn’t surprised, there were pure china and silver.
She said I should never come back, but I’d made it here. Id come home. And where were they?
Gone. Disappeared.
The house was ruined. As I walked all round the house calling my mother’s name, my father’s name I even called my name, not really realising I was already here, trapped. Though I realised that was fruitless, the scarred and broken girl in the mirror was trapped and the girl in reality was fragile and scarred. I guess I should have realised what wouldb happened when I told them to go away, told them I hated them.
It wasn’t safe.
But every night I would dream of this. Dream of my home in ruins, like a temple of an over thrown goddess. And every night I would dream of how a scarred little girl came home, to find both her parents in the snow, searching for her. How her mother had been paralysed at the thought of her one little girl running away, how the little girl had made the decision to leave her childhood behind and run before it was too late.
I remember screaming and yelling and breaking much of my parents’ possessions, I had realised when I reached the hill with the stars that what I had done was foolish. I ran home faster than my little legs would carry me. I ran through the door, not noticing it was already open in wait of one such fatal girl to uncover. I ran into my parent’s room screaming for them.
“I’m home, I’m home!” no one answered.
No one ever answered me after that. I searched the whole house, tearing it apart, always screaming for my father and crying for my mother. No answer.
I ran outside, through the snow that had fallen on my garden, my garden, the garden my father and I had spent the last summer making beautiful with fruits of a different colour and flowers of a different smell. The grass had grown long and green and was ever so lush and soft to the touch but now it lay dead beneath the snow.
Snow didn’t just take my garden on that night. It took my parents as well.
We all know the old saying… Time flies when you’re having fun… well it works in reverse as well. Time is slow when the worst is coming.
That night that I left the house and headed for the lands over the hills of the valley I realised that when I went looking for what I needed, I needn’t have looked further then my own back graden.
My parents were gone and there was nothing I could have done… except maybe, not have left.
They tried coming after me when I yelled and ran, ran faster then I ever really could, but when I’d come home, when id tried to return to normality after walking out on what I thought was my prison I reaslied when I saw my parents pale bodies, wrapped round each other, sheltering from the blizzard. I tired to wake them, open their eyes, tell them that they were scarring me. Well… they did scare me but they’d never know it, I never gave them a chance.
I, in turn for running from my home, had killed my parents. The snow, a mutaul enemy of me from that day on, had taken my parents but in truth I had laid them into his forever binding hands.