Let it Snow by Holden Wennekers

He watches the snow. Night cold like the blood of the killer. Snow white like the skin of the ghost.

He stands along the interstate waiting for his buddy, in the dead of the night in the vicious cold. He has about the worst suspicion over this meeting his buddy has arranged rather out-of-the-blue. He knew he’d be in deep shit if he skipped town now, so he waits for his buddy standing there in the cold. Cheeks red, cold, his black winter puffer jacket covered in snow. Stood like some dark yeti-man in the unforgiving cold.

His buddy had told him they needed to meet and speak about “things” somewhere far the hell away from town, out in the boonies where no one would hear them, where they could speak on things freely without having to worry. Anybody could listen to anybody in the city.

He stands along the interstate by the abandoned petrol station in the middle of the desolation of this winter no-man’s-land, no way to see past the snow as the wind blows it’s storm in the cold, making it impossible to feel or see anything but snow.

He says fuck it and heads back to his ‘03 Suburban. Gets in. Where the hell is that idiot? Goddamn prick.

If his buddy didn’t show in the next hour or so, he’d pull out of there and go the hell home. Pack his shit up and go. Where? He didn’t know.

He had nowhere to turn. No friends, no family. All he had was his SUV and a tank of gas. He could go anywhere, but it didn’t matter where he went, for the sorts of people he and his buddy worked for could find you and kill you no matter where you went, where you were, wherever you chose to go.

He turns his engine on and cranks the heat on blast mode as he shivers with his frozen blue hands and Rudolph nose. Switches on the radio to his favourite radio show. Some talk-show he’d listen to many years ago.

“So what was it? A gang killing?” asks one of the radio hosts to the other.

“Yeah, something like that. Mafia related. They shot every one of those sorry sons-of-bitches in the club. Everybody, even the bottle girls.”

“Yeesh.”

“Doused the place in nitroglycerine, lit it ablaze and made their escape.”

“Jesus…”

Where the hell is that idiot? It was 01:13 am and his buddy had arranged for them to meet at midnight. Goddamn prick.

“Did you hear about the guy who got shot out of his car?”

“No, I didn’t—actually, maybe I did. Was it the guy who got shot on the L.I.E?”

“Yeah, that was the one.”

“While the guy was driving?”

“Yeah.”

“How’d the killer even get in the guy’s car?”

“Must’ve been a buddy of his. He was sitting in the passenger seat.”

“Who? The buddy?”

“No, the killer.”

“You know what, I did hear about that. He shot him in the head while he was driving, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Then pushed the car door open and pushed the corpse out at like 75 miles an hour, slithering behind the steering wheel like some satanic serpent creature mashing the gas pedal and taking off, just like that. Left the poor guy’s corpse to tumble and lay out on the road, in the cold. Police still haven’t found the killer, or the guy’s car.”

“But they found the guy?”

“Yeah. All ripped up from tumbling along the road.”

“Someone said on the news that it wasn’t the shot to the head that killed the guy, but the ejection from the car”

“Makes sense.”

“So I guess the killer didn’t eject anybody’s corpse.”

“I guess so.”

He sees headlights of some car approaching down the interstate, faint headlights foggy like lightbulbs in the cold.

His buddy, finally.

Headlights turn into the parking lot of the vacant petrol station, some beat up old shit-box his buddy only ever let out of the garage if he needed to get his hands dirty, parking next to the Suburban. Both cars roll their windows down, engines rumbling, exhaust pipes blowing black smoke in the cold.

“Took you long enough,” he says.

“Sorry,” says his buddy. “I had to take care of something, before I saw you. Hop in.”

“Why don’t you hop in my car?”

His buddy looks worried. “What’s wrong?” asks his buddy.

“What’s wrong? Nothing’s wrong. Get in the car.”

“You get in my car.”

“No, I don’t think so. You get in my car.”

“What the hell difference does it make?” asks his buddy, indignant, confused, trying not to show it.

“All the difference,” he says. “I got snow tires and you don’t.”

“Well, I got here fine, so it really don’t make no difference.”

He stares at his buddy. His buddy stares at him. They stare at each other. He studies his buddy’s face, but he can barely see his buddy in the dark past the snow, like white swirling TV static in some black eternal world. He knows his buddy is a hot-head prone to flying off the handle at the drop of a spinning dreideling hubcap. He takes a deep breath in his mind and he looks at the glowing red digital clock above the radio. Thinks about it. Says Fuck it.

Rolls his foggy windows up and shuts his engine off. Hops out and shuts the door but doesn’t lock the van.

Gets in the passenger seat of his buddy’s car.

“We’ll circle right back. We don’t got much to talk about,” says his buddy.

“Well what the hell was so urgent you needed me out here so speedily?”

“It’s hard to explain,” says his buddy, as he backs out rear-end first onto the interstate, straightening out and heading back the way he came. They sit in silence, the rumblings of the engine and the snowstorm outside muffled by the muted insulation within the car. His buddy gazes on him, smiles.

“Did you talk to the police?” his buddy asks.

“What?”

His buddy repeats his question.

It’s warm in the car, almost hot, and his buddy’s got Sympathy For The Devil playing low on the radio. Snow pours viciously whooshing on all sides violently outside past the fogged windows.

“Why the hell would I do something stupid like that?”

His buddy shrugs. “Sometimes we don’t got a choice choosing what we do, when it comes to the law. Sometimes it comes to us. Shows up at our front door in the middle of the night.”

“Did they come to your front door?”

“No,” his buddy laughs.

His buddy has his right hand on the wheel and his left arm bent awkwardly with his hand on his hip. He keeps his discrete eyes on his buddy, both hands in the pockets of his black winter puffer jacket.

“Why are you asking me this?”

“I need to know.”

“Well, no. Nobody came to see me.”

“No one? Not the cops? FBI?”

“No.”

His buddy nods, slowly, intrigued-like.

“Coconut Jack was talking to the cops, you know.”

“Well, Coconut Jack is a fucking moron.”

“Was a fucking moron. And that’s why he got his club torched up. Only a moron would talk to the cops.”

Cautious, intense eyes on his buddy, who smiles, looking out through the windshield at the fog and the snow, obscuring the road, wipers working overtime to clear the snowy blankets. No one else is out tonight. The interstate is empty like a rail-yard in some snowy war-zone. Only a fool would want to drive on this road in these conditions.

Dean Martin’s Let It Snow! plays on the radio. He lets the opening notes pluck at his heart strings. The song reminds him of times when things weren’t so fucked up beyond reconciliation; or perhaps they always were; he didn’t know.

“Can I tell you something?” His buddy says.

“Do I got a choice?”

“No.”

“Well then, go ahead.” He moves his hand around in his right pocket.

“You’re not a very good liar.”

He laughs. “Neither are you,” he says to his buddy. His buddy laughs in a mocker’s tone. “What do you mean?” asks his buddy.

“I don’t know,” he says.

He spots a faint pair of headlights approaching in the distance. His buddy looks right at him, no longer smiling.

“You’re a bad fuckin’ liar, you big mouthed fuck.”

His buddy pulls his pistol. He pulls his .38. The car lights up. A bright flash rattles the windows, like an exploding 900 watt lightbulb.

“FUCK!” He exclaims, holding his ears, drums bursted, smoking gun now pressed up against the side of his head, warm cylinder rested below the side of his eyelid.

His buddy sits with a hole in his head, hole vomiting blood on the steering wheel, lifeless hands gripped limply on his pistol. The car rolls 70 miles-an-hour veering leftward towards the on-coming headlights. He yanks his hand off his ears promptly grabbing the wheel.

Too late.

He see’s the headlights shining as the car’s horn shrieks. They plow into one another fast, hard, smashing to bits, sparkling in a bursting explosion all over the road. He smashes his face on the dashboard as glass slashes and rips at his eyes, blood pouring out his mouth, face and nose.

Dean Martin on the radio singing Let It Snow, Let It Snow.

He wakes up much later. No one’s come across the crash. He staggers out the car, past the smoke, shuffling against the car, bleeding, slipping, nearly falling in the snow.

An old woman lays covered in blood behind the wheel of the other desecrated car, lifeless as a doll, propped up on the airbag like some angel on a pillow. A smoking mess, the cars, engines running, fire brewing under the hoods.

He looks off into the night, blood pouring down his face, out his nose, stood there like some scarecrow looking out at the cold. There’s nothing for miles but blackness and snow. He’s bleeding all over and beginning to feel faint, slow, aching all over.

Knows it’s over. Fuck.

He shuffles limping and bleeding like some ghoul to the snow covering the meadow along the road, towards the woods. Blood droplets melting in the snow. He leaves a trail of red behind.

Expels the last of his life half way through the meadow.

Takes a knee, falls in the snow, laying lifeless with eyes open out on the darkness, and the snow, falling, fluttering, in the wind and the cold. White pellets in the millions spin swirling in the blackness, shooting and gliding and whistling all over, like some faint ghostly choir taunting the world. His eyes begin to flutter, to close, looking up at the sky, the blackness, and the snow. His eyes begin to close. He fights to keep them open, as the blood pours down his face in the snow. He sees nothing but the blackness; returns to the blackness.

No more horrors to see or feel in this world.

He lay in the snow and the weather is frightful, as the snow blankets over him white after nightfall, as the wind whirls on in the night in the cold. His corpse lay hollow. He watches the snow.