I wrote this a few years ago, finally got around to typing it, and am posting it mostly for the hell of it. Enjoy (or don't):


There is a pervasive silence that settles as the snow stops falling. It is heavy as we walk through it. Each step seems to echo off the houses’ cold walls and the black sky itself. With no moon as an ally, street and porch lights are defeated in their attempt to rid the darkness of its disingenuous approach.

Most houses huddle under the shell of snow; they are indifferent or simply awaiting its expiration. Others have residents what have taken to an amusing modification of the cold and invasive substance. From (presumably children's) hands, balls of it have been rolled and set atop one another. Found objects are crudely skewered into it, and the effect is what we perceive as a body with arms, a forced grin, and two black, soulless eyes. It is a misnomer, hardly resembling the name it bears, the Snowman.

It sits outside the house, the porch light keeping an eye on it, its shadow stretching, trying to escape. Hasty glances wouldn’t linger on this snowman, but I slow. A closer look exposes features contrary to its popularized connotations. Its rotund mass is sagging and leaning slightly forward. The sunlight has tortured it for as long as it could before the cyclical revolution of the planet sought justice and extinguished the pain with the cold arrival of night. The contrast of shadows clearly define the broad grin of malice on the snow creature's broad, hungry face. Its obsidian gaze is ablaze with dark fury in the flicker of light, mutely agonized and dying to move, a blatant juxtaposition and impossibility to its fat, immobile body. Torn wood limbs outstretched, it awaits vengeance on the children who brought it into existence.