II. SNOWVIEW

SNOWVIEW

We know the sun will shrink into a crystal shuttlecocks. A form of capital despair. No iced wings above or around us. The horizontality of the white calls us to sleep and demands that we abandon our bodies. To barter life for death. Inexpressible anguish. Slow coagulation of the senses. Mental fire drained. Desires clothed in coldness. I don’t know why but I insist on being here. Time doesn’t advance. Time devours. Less time than it takes to think about it and the perpendicularity of my shadow is already different. The anomaly of foreshadowing thoughts goes hand in hand with low temperatures. No crossroads over here. A frozen face of white reality. Unfissured. The sleeves of nights and days are counted so clearly. The breathing dough of life has no further need to speak. Finally we have defected from the bestiary of the others. Divulged. My hair shrivels. Flowering gestation of an icicle inside my gut. Isn’t it a privilege to vanish in the white? Soon it will be dark. Ingrained inability to survive in darkness. Is someone, or rather something following us? Impossible. Immense contingency of frozen white. How come we ended up here? Why . . . Clutched to memories . . . The sky is already tilted. Fed to the white. Gratifying meal. It’s a matter of minutes. The sun is lower than my face. It’ll be extinguished by the vaulted line. How many heartbeats separate us from the beginning of nothingness? How luring and attractive is the sinister sickly light, hypnotically raining on us, so far away from millions of breathing lungs. You and me at the uneven threshold of unsubmissive eternity. We . . . The grip . . . The naked language of survival. Gloves clutching one another. As if contradicting the vastness assimilating our silhouettes. I’m holding onto her hand, pulling it forward ahead of her exhausted body. Obeying the very principle of life. Action. Numbness . . .. slowly will take the inmost depths of us. Frostbitten, my fingertips don’t belong to my hand. The cold carves up our anatomies. It demands absolute possession of our organs. The immensity of the white invades even the clearest testimony of the senses. She can’t make the next step. I pull hard. The many layers of frozen snow defy my efforts. The bottomless flatness of the snowdrift wants to keep her. Thirsts to turn her into a crumbled pillar of salt. I want to shout but then I see them. A violent convulsion of primal anger runs down my spine. Seven dark tiny silhouettes. Advancing effortlessly behind us. Against us. For us. The snow under their feet is way firmer than under mine. They seem to glide their starving guts upon us. Messengers of death. . . I don’t want her to see them. I want to delay the horror mirrored in her eyes. Come on . . . my love. I pull her over, on her back. Now maybe I can slide her over this deadly powder. But she must help me with her feet. She must make the effort. Plant and push with your feet, come on my love. Do it. You’ll get warmer. Warmer . . . Warmer for . . . what. For those behind.

. . . .

This is the first page of the story. I charge a subscription of $36 per year for access to all my stories. There are 15 stories currently on my website -- ogoart.com -- and I will publish a new one each month, together with -- from time to time -- some excerpts from my novels. To subscribe, go to my website at www.ogoart.com and click on "Writings".