White Nightfall

Dust billowed in a draft which moments ago gained entrance through the many cracks in the western wall. Leona coughed and shivered as the wind and dirt contrived to enhance the drought in her sinuses. Ten days. Ten days without food, water, or medicine. Ten days since the radio had sputtered its last words, “Avalanche…cut off…no relief coming.”

There was no snow falling outside. The temperature had dropped below zero weeks ago, too cold for anything but hard ice to fall from the sky, and fallen it had. Never during the day, when she huddled next to the fire trying to keep her blood pumping. Always at night did it assault her shack, hammering against the walls, smashing against the ground-level windows until long strands stretched like a spider’s web out from the meeting point of ice and glass.

Leona rocked back and forth as another draft whistled through the walls and weathered windowpanes to snuff out the tiny flame she shielded with her body. The embers warmed her for only a few moments more before they surrendered to the cold. Just as she would soon, she knew. No grand ceremony like she’d heard the Japs had done out on a big ship for all to see. No, she would surrender and be lost forever in cold darkness. She shivered again at the thought. No one to see her off, no one to wish her a pleasant journey or thank her for everything…whatever “everything” was.

Outside, a fox pounced intending to come down on a hapless victim. But the rat knew better. Burrowing under the snow, it ran towards the house as the fox surveyed its failure. The rat had not eaten for weeks. Though there was grass beneath the snow, there were no seeds, nor anything else it could eat. The fox had tailed it for hours, trying again and again to land a scrawny meal for itself. Sidling up to the house, the rat paused to catch its breath. The fox saw the human place, and remembered the bullets whizzing over its head in the Spring. It sprinted in the opposite direction.

Leona could only gasp for breath as the wind howled around her. Even wrapped in furs and blankets, the mountain’s icy breath tore through her flesh and bone. Her stomach had long ceased to complain as her body began shutting down everything it could to remain alive. With each gust, a little more of her tore away, until at last only her heart remained. It strained to muster each beat. Until at last it could do no more, and gave in to the mountain’s promise of rest beneath a pale blanket.

The rat gazed through a shattered windowpane as it too surrendered to the white.



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