Until Hell Snows Over

The flurries fall in a motion like their leafy predecessors, catching along the wind and dancing as if they will die when they finally reach the ground. They fall in flakes that will soon morph into clumps, which will then snowball all the way into the mounds below, glacial in form, casting dramatic shadows along the sides, not swathed in streetlight. The walkways are coated with thick ice, and the salt that will be sprinkled mere hours from now will attempt to fight the intruders on the cement form. Soon, the air will ascend from biting to chilled in a soar not unlike a dove, with flurries instead of feathers, yet still sharing the hue of ivory. The material, like many ages before it, will then be whittled down by humanity; what once was used for chisels is now used for plows.

The air is muffled; if one whispers, it will disappear from sound, unable to reach unwanted ears. Gasps are silenced, tears are turned to hushed ice, and whispers blend into the susurrations of the snow. An atmosphere of secrecy and silence adorns the muted campus grounds well before lecture hours, leaving only mental echoes of the clock striking seven pm only twelve hours earlier. A breeze is not present, but the bitter cold still seeps through the windows, pressurizing the old glass to near breakage as it has for decades.

The holders of these translucent testaments have stood for far longer above and within the confines of the surrounding terrain. After centuries, the stone welcomes its hibernal friend, allowing the true watery nature to be absorbed, leaving itself darker, in contrast to the bright albumen layers that encompass its foundations. Within the second floor of this darkened form are two warm bodies. One was asleep, the other had jolted awake minutes before. Her hemlock eyes track the flurries, watching them amass on the windowsill, refusing to face the man behind her, unable to handle the truth within his eyes. Yet, he still makes his presence known by having an arm around her waist, a welcome assurance to keep them tethered together.

She wonders if the warmth is amplified by the sin of being within a bed of another woman, a house of another woman, and a man of another woman. She feels the heat of hell being transported into the place that ranks second for sin, the place in which she resides, the bedroom of an affair. The act of sneaking away and off together gives two the intensity of the first love. With even more irony, she is once again with her first love, and the sinister delight has seemingly doubled.

Not to say that she doesn’t feel guilt, in most moments her remorse for the life and people that she has chosen herself over, her child, her husband, and his wife, completely overpowers her. Yet, somehow, her only coping mechanism is to turn to the man again. It is a malevolent cycle. She’s sure that if her feet touched the frozen surface, the salt wouldn’t be necessary, all would melt, and the ground beneath her would open like a trapdoor down to the depths of the heat’s true home.

Knowing herself, she would probably take Satan as a lover as well, being the counterpart to the virgin, her name of Maria being paralleled yet just so slightly off, just as she was made. Though named after the sinless, her actions led her to have the sins of two, to make up for it. Yet somehow her intense melodramatics within this patterned thinking have not led her to reform. She promises herself that one far-off but soon day she will return to the normal, the pain, the intense struggle of one who is honest. Truly, she believes herself so selfish that it is borderline genius; her actions weaponize others as a shield against her own demons and the truth they’ll whisper in her ears through the hushed landscape. She indulges in losing herself in an imaginary world, free of sin, but of course, it’s not really, because then it would be free of her.

Beyond her anguished guilt, the man feels nothing but culpability. He is one of the wishy-washy types who justifies emotions through fate, skirting around blame like it's the only way to emotionally survive. It might as well be. Yet, the narrative of true love meeting against all odds and differences is so romantic to him, allowing him to justify nearly all his sins. He jokes to himself ‘Your honor, it was meant to be’ before he goes to sleep every night, either next to his wife or the woman he actually loves. Either way, he sleeps like a baby, the responsibility of being a romantic weighing less than the liability of the self-assigned satanic pawn who lies next to him.

Her eyes blur against the hazed background again, and she begins to torture herself once more. Her justification of self-persecution is to achieve balance in the moral scale. She only dares to do this internally; she can never bring herself to punish him for an act that is half his fault. She doesn’t see him as a villain, just as he doesn’t see himself as one, the very reason they are still within this situation.

She then internally designates the snow as the metaphorical ashes of her morality and as a final godly attempt at a baptism. Then he awakens to the sight and smiles. He believes that the snow represents their love, the years they have spent together, piled and compressed together into a beautiful ice statue. He claims that they should have had an ice sculpture at their wedding, even though they never have and do not plan to get married. It will remain a fantasy within his head, much like the romance he has crafted almost entirely within his head.

“Oh, look, it’s snow,” he nudges her. She freezes within the heat of his embrace. He believes this is her waking up, taking in the sight.

“How pretty,” she responds breathily.

“What a good way to wake up.” He is jovial, somehow as airy as the tufts falling from the sky. “A whole new day of choices. What a gift.” He adds, nuzzling his face into her hair. Then he laughs, “Too bad, we’ll make the same ones.” A sob escapes that he takes as a laugh. She closes her eyes in hopes of blinding herself from her sin.