The Short Straw

Alex washed his hands and started walking toward the bathroom door. He heard a scream from down the hall. God damn it, he thought. It was Friday the 13^th of September and his residents were living it up again. He couldn't go in and bust them until someone complained, but he didn't think there was anyone in the building besides him that wasn't partying. “Can I be the person who complains?” he said to no one in the hallway.

The music had now escalated to the point where he could no longer hear any of the words. As he got back to his room, he thought bitterly about how he lost rock, paper, scissors to every other RA in the building and was forced to have the only Friday the 13^th of the year. If only I had done paper after the third tie!, he thought tom himself. He sat down at his desk and tried to get some homework done. He might as well do something, since he couldn't have fun this evening. After he had read three paragraphs about how Israel could have peace within the next decade, he heard another sound. This yell seemed to have fear in it. It was definitely not the guttural yell that he had heard earlier.

He decided to do some investigation. The boys probably wouldn't tell him anything, but maybe he could scare them just enough to turn down the music a little bit. He got down to the end of the hall and knocked on Jordan's door. Large amounts of shushing could be heard from inside. No response. He knocked again, this time adding, “I heard somebody scream. Are you boys okay in there?” The door opened just enough for Jordan to show the right half of his face.

“No one in here screamed. We're just playing some Halo. Maybe that was it,” Jordan said.

“Glad to hear that I don't have to save anybody's asses. Let me know if someone gets killed by something other than a Warthog,” said Alex before walking back to his room.

Alex got back to his room, sat down at his desk, and stared at his textbook. “I am going to read you,” he said to the $150 book before him. He flipped through it, looking for the part on Israeli peace. He found the paragraph where he had stopped the last time and then gave up. It was 10:30 on a Friday night and his brain could not care less about whatever the hell, bullshit plan Jimmy Carter had come up with this time. He decided that his time would be better spent facebook stalking that cute girl that sits in front of him in World Relations. He started to sort through his friend's friends looking for a picture of her or a name that jogged his memory. Why didn't he pay more attention during roll call? Was it Christine? That kind of looked like her. Or maybe was it Molly? That picture could be her with a different hair color. All of these questions raced through his brain, only to be shot down by limited profiles with no information. “Aha!” he said, accidentally, much louder than he would have liked to admit. Luckily, everyone in the rooms around him were empty for the weekend. This girl had the right age and hair color, but little else could be discerned by her only picture. It was a picture of her standing on a rock on Lake Superior far away from wherever the person who took the picture was standing. He was just about to continue his search when he heard another noise from down the hall. This one sounded suspiciously like broken glass. “Damn them and their Halo!” he thought to himself, “Why couldn't alcohol make people less rowdy?”

He could feel a draft as soon as he got a short distance from his room. They must have broken their window and had opened their door. Or maybe they had seriously messed up and accidentally broken the window in the hall. He got up to the door. “Fuck!” was all he managed to get out before his tongue gave up speech and sat motionless at the corner of his gaping mouth.

The door lay in four pieces. There were two chunks still hanging on the hinges. One of the other pieces was jammed into the mini-fridge and the other was just visible underneath the desk. All that remained of the window were a few pieces along one edge. Dan was hiding under the desk next to the piece of the door mumbling quietly too himself. Chase was stuck to the wall next to the closet with what was probably his own blood. Adam was sitting on the couch still trying to play the game, even though the TV had been tipped over and was now in two separate pieces. The left side of his face was covered in blood . Jordan was lying in his bed above the couch with the covers pulled over his head. He was mumbling, but with a volume normally attributed to yelling. Alex couldn't make out anything that either he or Dan were saying. “Are you guys okay? What the FUCK happened here?” Alex finally managed to say just before throwing up at his own feet. No one seemed to acknowledge his presence after 15 seconds, so he ran back to his room to call 911. After he got word that there were the police and ambulances were on their way, he called the front desk and had them get all of the RAs that they could to the fourth floor as soon as possible.

He ran back to the room. Chase had now fallen off of the wall and was in a crumpled heap. Adam now showed the same wounds as Chase, but still had blood enough to bleed against the faded upholstery. Jordan was still under his covers, but was now thrashing around, mumbling louder than should be possible. Dan was no longer anywhere to be seen.

Alex withdrew from the doorway and threw up again. As he rose from his heaving, he saw a dark shape standing of the middle of the room. It was dark green and looked as though someone had crossbred an iguana with a minotaur. It was holding Chase's left hand in its teeth and was ripping the remaining limbs from his torso. Alex looked into the creature's eyes and wiped the vomit from his mouth.

Alex turned and ran back down the hall, “Yhastghunotgh!” he yelled as he ran. He bumped into Hannah, the RA from the second floor as he ran, nearly knocking her down the stairs. Alex sped up as he approached the window, running straight into it. He hit the railing first and his momentum carried him headlong through the window and onto the bike racks below.

Hannah grabbed onto the door handle and pulled herself up. She rubbed her arm where she had fallen and walked over to the end of the hall to see what had become of Alex. She leaned out of the broken window. From the glow of the streetlights she could see Alex's mangled corpse amid the broken bikes and threw up all over the window sill below her.

In the Cold and Dark

It was the middle of January and it was fucking cold. The days were slowly getting longer, but it was still dark by 6 pm. Milly lived about ten blocks from the Walmart where she worked as a greeter. Her entire income was spent on food and shelter for herself and the nine cats she had collected over the years, so she couldn’t afford a car. This meant that Milly had to walk anywhere that she needed to go. Usually that wasn’t a problem – except in the middle of January when it was fucking cold.
Milly had lived her entire life in the confines of this rural Midwestern town so the word “acclimation” had never been applicable. But as she approached her fiftieth birthday, the chill seemed to have developed the ability to wedge fissures in her joints. Her accustomed walk to work became increasingly longer and she needed more time with her hot water bottle to recover.
Milly sighed. It was easy to tell when food stamps and WIC were dispersed because the store was always doubly busy on that day. Women who couldn’t afford babysitters because they had spent all of their money on beer and cigarettes went shopping with their ten children in tow.
Milly had just finished a double shift. She felt tired and increasingly racist as she navigated the crowded aisles between the staff room and the front doors. A small boy wearing dirty jeans and a ripped t-shirt ran into her side and almost knocked her from her feet. The boy’s mother shot Milly a glare as she walked past as if to say “Why didn’t you get out of his way?” Milly finally made it to the door and was nearly swept from her feet again when she stepped outside and was assaulted by the frigid wind. The cold instantly wormed its way up her back from under her coat and down her neck through the loose knit of her scarf. Hairs all over her body stood to attention in a vain attempt to trap warm air next to her skin. Milly’s aching joints audibly groaned as she tucked her mittened hands into her coat pockets and turned towards home.
After the first block Milly started noticing that something was wrong. She had walked to work in all kinds of weather – snow storms, fog, forty below wind-chill factor, you name it – and knew what to expect. But tonight was different. The digital billboard outside of Burger King had said that it was five degrees outside with a negative ten wind-chill. Cold, but nothing she hadn’t survived before. Tonight, however, she was having trouble breathing and her footing was completely obscured by ankle-high, windblown eddies of snow. She had stumbled several times and had to stop every few yards to catch her breath. Usually, Milly could keep herself moving enough to counteract most of the cold, but tonight it seemed to be remarkably tenacious. Fingers of cold caressed her skin before plunging through to her muscles and bones. Three layers of insulation did not seem to deter these attentions. Rhythmic spasms traveled all along her body and Milly felt a painful ache throughout. Once, when she was nine, Milly had gotten a patch of frostbite on her left hand. The skin had gone numb and rigid. This was nothing like that; she felt everything.
The street was completely exposed and Milly was buffeted by every errant gust. As a native of northern Minnesota, she had a crippling fear of depending on others for anything as well as a modest dollop of social anxiety. So, despite her increasing distress, it didn’t occur to Milly to simply duck into a business and ask for help. Instead, she simply pulled her arms out of her sleeves and wrapped them around herself as she trudged on.
At the halfway point, Milly had to turn off of the main road to a side street. This street had both fewer streetlights and hardly any passing cars. There was also no foot traffic besides Milly herself. By this time, Milly had become insensible to everything but putting one foot in front of another. The moon was obscured with clouds and the houses shed only feeble light that didn’t survive to reach the sidewalk. The cold had encased Milly thoroughly and she moved with the jerky, painful motions of a Parkinson’s patient. While she was concentrating on forward momentum, she paid very little attention to her actual direction, trusting routine to guide her home.
Suddenly, Milly pitched forward into a snow bank. This was enough of a shock to break up her congealed thought processes. For some reason Milly was reminded of the day she had gotten frost bite when she was nine. She had been out playing with her older sister, Edie, down by the waterfront. After a while some of Edie’s friends had passed by and Edie had run after them. This was no cause for concern because in 1969 it was still safe for a nine year old to walk alone in the early afternoon. Other than vague feelings of uneasiness when passing the Paul Bunyan statue, Milly wasn’t worried about being left alone.
A slim, fallen branch proved an engaging toy which she used to draw dirty pictures in the unbroken snow. Milly became so engrossed with her fun that she did not notice how much time had passed until it became dark. At this point she was worried, but only that her mother would be angry. The moon had been full and brilliant that night, so finding her way home hadn’t seemed risky. The streets were practically deserted as she walked home. Far from being fearful, Milly was intrigued by the dark, fathomless shadows cast by the moon. As she passed a large oak tree, movement in its shadow caught her attention. She stepped into the shadow, straining her eyes to see what it was, but all she found was a snow cyclone. Then, as now, she abruptly fell into the snow bank concealed by the shadow. Being buried in the snow bank was relatively warmer than standing in the wind. It was also quite fluffy and soft. Milly found herself quite comfortable and for a few moments was reluctant to get up. She imagined herself to be an ice princess resting in her snow flake bed. She giggled at herself. The sound of her laughter brought Milly out of her reverie and she was quite embarrassed. What if someone had seen?
As she started to pick herself up, another movement to her left caught her eye. Her father called the long ribbons of snow driven by the wind snow snakes and that is what seemed to be in the shadow. But it was behaving much differently than a normal snow snake. The thing was indeed made of snow and not quite substantial, but it moved out of sync with the wind, seeming to go where it pleased. Tentatively, Milly reached out her hand. The hoary creature twined itself around her small arm, swirling continuously. Milly stared at it; she had never even heard of anything like it before. She slowly started to turn her body to bring her arm and the creature into the bright moonlight. When the first bit of the snake was brought into the light is convulsed and seemed to strike down at her hand. The blow traveled through her glove and into the flesh as if it were unprotected. Milly winced and the creature swiftly glided away from her. She walked quickly the rest of the way home and managed to forget that anything unusual had ever happened to her.
Now as Milly lay in a snowbank for the second time, she clearly recalled this event and wondered how she could have forgotten. With this recollection she realized that the ground was not covered with eddies of snow, but with thousands of snow snakes. She couldn’t see them, but she also discerned that the fingers of cold inside her clothing were in fact snow snakes that had wormed their way in. The breath that was short before now came in terrified gulps and every inch of her began to spasm. The snakes had found tender prey and they weren’t going to allow her the breath to scream.