Snow At the End of The World

I was tak­ing my trash out when a mas­sive sound shook the neigh­bor­hood. In the mid­dle of a snow­storm the likes of which our state had nev­er seen, I was wait­ing for my girl­friend to come home from work when the tell­tale sound of a car crash destroyed the silence of the night.

My bag of rot­ting take-out and used nap­kins went fly­ing across the snow blan­ket­ed ground as I jumped. I spun around towards the four-lane high­way less than a thou­sand yards away just in time to see five vehi­cles come to a smok­ing, screech­ing stop. As sheets of snow began to fall, I went fum­bling through my pock­ets for my phone. I was try­ing to dial nine-one-one with my freez­ing fin­gers when a new sound, the shriek of a woman’s voice, cut through the darkness.

I dart­ed through the slushy park­ing lot in my untied sneak­ers with­out a sec­ond thought, sprint­ing through the snow flur­ries as Drew, the woman I loved more than any­one else in the world, screamed my name, “Kat­ri­na! Katrina!”

The snow had already coat­ed the street in a lay­er of white, the icy slush so thick that I couldn’t see the black asphalt. I guessed the strange weath­er must have been the rea­son behind so much hav­oc, the peo­ple of our lit­tle town were still get­ting used to cli­mate-change relat­ed bliz­zards in the first place. 

All five cars were smok­ing, crum­pled mass­es of debris, man­gled hunks of met­al that dripped liq­uid onto the white snow. In the mid­dle of it all was Drew’s black Maz­da, hit twice with all its air bags deployed.

Drew must have turned in front of the oth­er car while try­ing to pull off the high­way. I was sure she’d been dis­tract­ed, too tired from her shift as a charge nurse to prop­er­ly nav­i­gate the thick snow. Either way, the pile-up had wedged her pre­car­i­ous­ly between four oth­er vehi­cles, smash­ing in her hood and crum­pling her car’s right side.

As I moved past a Dodge-Ram with its wind­shield smashed and an Ama­zon deliv­ery van turned into a ditch, I felt a stab of guilt cut through me. The oth­er vic­tims of the crash were much worse off than I’d thought. Peo­ple were scream­ing and groan­ing, there was blood-spat­tered glass all around the street. I pressed on towards Drew regard­less – she need­ed me first.

At the driver’s side win­dow of her car, I could only see the brown veil of Drew’s hair as she sat com­pressed between inflat­ed airbags. Damn the flur­ries, the snow­storm that had no busi­ness com­ing so far south in the first place, screw­ing up my life and hurt­ing my girl­friend. “Drew, baby, can you hear me?” I called through the win­dow, “don’t move, I’m gonna call nine-one-one.”

Wig­gling like a fright­ened ani­mal, her voice muf­fled behind the airbags, Drew begged, “no! No, don’t!” 

Eyes wide with fran­tic hor­ror, she jerked towards me like a shaky ani­ma­tron­ic, “don’t call them! Don’t take your eyes off me! Just help me get out!”

Too sur­prised to argue, I dropped my hands on the car’s crum­pled door and start­ed yank­ing. When my bare palms con­tact­ed the car’s met­al, an iron hot, burn­ing pain shot through my hands. I screamed and yanked my arm back. “What the fuck!”

At first, I thought I’d been shocked, that some bro­ken elec­tri­cal com­po­nent of the vehi­cle had burned me. As I stared at the sud­den­ly blur­ry-look­ing skin of my hands, I real­ized that some­thing worse was afoot. The melt­ed snow coat­ing my palms was mir­ror-like, chro­mat­ic in the car’s head­lights, like an oil slick shim­mer­ing across my open hands.

As I stared, I real­ized with a gut churn­ing wave of ter­ror that I could see the tips of my soak­ing wet shoes through the pud­dles on my palms.

I shrieked like a wound­ed ani­mal, wip­ing my hands on my legs fran­ti­cal­ly, though the mate­r­i­al of my sweat­pants were already soaked through from the snow. When I rubbed my palms togeth­er, I found that though I could still feel them, I could see direct­ly through my hands.

Before I could pan­ic any fur­ther, Drew was stand­ing in front of me, tak­ing my shak­ing hands and scrub­bing them with the dry mate­r­i­al of her under­shirt. Not only had she appeared at super-human speed, but she also seemed total­ly unin­jured despite the mas­sive acci­dent she’d just been involved in. From under the deep hood of her jack­et, she raised her voice over the lunatic yells com­ing from the oth­er cars. “Keep your head down!” She demand­ed, “we’re gonna get off the high­way and under the car ports as fast as we can.”

I didn’t even have the chance to nod before she was yank­ing me by my wrists through the falling snow. The sear­ing skin of my hand in hers was com­plete­ly back to nor­mal, as if some curse had been reversed in the warmth of her shirt. 

As I stomped through the steadi­ly falling snow, I found my gaze drawn to the black hori­zon, a quizzi­cal part of my mind telling me to look into the sky. Drew snapped around before I could look any fur­ther, like she had eyes in the back of her head. “I said don’t look!” She scold­ed, her voice thick with more con­cern than I’d heard in all the years I’d known her, “don’t look at them! I have some­thing to tell you first.”

Reluc­tant­ly, I fol­lowed her into the park­ing lot of our apart­ment com­plex, try­ing to obey her strange com­mands. I remained focused on the ground until we passed a man stand­ing in the high­way. I almost dug my heels in as I stared at the Ama­zon deliv­ery dri­ver, his head tilt­ed up as he stared sky­ward into the snow fall. The man looked to be our age, his hair in long wet locks down his back – when he breathed, the skin of his cheeks shim­mered as if he had pin-prick holes in his head, as unnat­ur­al as my hands had just looked.

I watched the man stand in the mid­dle of the road as falling snow made the low­er half of his face dis­ap­pear in front of me. Tears were welling in my eyes when I final­ly turned to Drew. “There’s some­thing going on.” I blurt­ed fran­ti­cal­ly, “What the fuck is going on?”

When she took my hands in her strong, soap-worn fin­gers, I felt a wave of relief come through me, the warmth of her skin on mine enough to bring me back down to Earth with her, if only for a moment. My hands still worked despite what­ev­er hap­pened to them, Drew was there to explain what­ev­er she could to me, and we’d deal with what­ev­er was going on togeth­er. Drew was a smart, hero­ic woman and I felt my heart­beat slow a lit­tle with her warm, cof­fee-smelling breath on my face. “Kat, I love you so much.” She told me wist­ful­ly. “Do you trust me?”

I was nod­ding with­out a sec­ond thought. “I love you too.” I answered back, “of course I trust you. I trust you more than any­one on Earth. What’s going on, baby, what did you have to tell me?”

Drew’s brown hair was catch­ing snow in the wind and turn­ing invis­i­ble before my very eyes, reflect­ing like iri­des­cent tin­sel in her hair. “I’m gonna tell you – I’m gonna show you some­thing, and you got­ta keep an open mind, okay? Just stay focused and try to hold on.”

She took my tem­ples in her hands before I could say anoth­er word. The world instant­ly turned black around us, as if her fin­ger­tips had turned out all the lights in the city. “Stay calm,” she told me, and her voice sound­ed like it came from inside my own head, “don’t be scared, this won’t hurt, and it won’t be as bad for you as it was for me.”

I couldn’t find it in myself to ques­tion any fur­ther as a wave of weight­less­ness came over me. In the pri­mor­dial dark­ness with­in which I hung like wind chimes secured to Drew’s branch­es, there were sud­den­ly thou­sands of bright dots scat­tered in front of me. Stars, I thought, though as I watched the vision unfold­ing ahead, I real­ized that the black­ened void wasn’t inhab­it­ed with balls of fire but mov­ing images.

My desire to look clos­er was answered instant­ly as I spun through the black uni­verse of open space. Though I couldn’t feel my limbs or my body any longer, I felt a dizzy, ver­ti­go sen­sa­tion as I peered into one of the mov­ing pic­tures, a strain in my mind as what I saw made less and less sense.

A tableau man­i­fest­ed before me, a land of bright blue sky above miles of gray, tan ground. At cen­ter view were two mas­sive, shim­mer­ing shapes coat­ed in the same liq­uid that I’d seen falling from the sky, goliath enti­ties mov­ing in slow motion, their body’s cam­ou­flaged against the dull world. Wig­gling limbs the size of red wood trees were soar­ing through the air of the alien world, each enti­ty swing­ing wild­ly at one another. 

A dance, I guessed, though as I saw an arch of mir­rored liq­uid slash through the for­eign sky, I real­ized that the beings before me had great, blade-like tips fash­ioned to the ends of their many limbed, blur­ry-tex­tured appendages. The enti­ties were no more locked in a dance than two prized fight­ers in a box­ing match. I was watch­ing some vio­lent, inde­scrib­able war take place between two mon­strous indi­vid­u­als in a void-like space too alien for me to comprehend. 

On the sandy ground of the bat­tle­field, the liq­uid exer­tion of the war­riors cre­at­ed pools through which I could see strange stars shim­mer­ing through the sun­light. I stared hard at the mir­rored pools, try­ing and fail­ing to under­stand that I was see­ing por­tals opened to even more dis­tant and impos­si­ble worlds. 

Before I could ful­ly digest what I’d just seen, one of the fight­ers used two of its opaque limbs to chop into the sand beneath it. My mind reeled as I saw the being move through the open­ing in the plan­et it had just cre­at­ed, flee­ing the bat­tle­field as soon as it had been injured. It tele­port­ed, I real­ized, as my aware­ness moved like a gyro­scop­ic cam­era through the fis­sure in space and time, fol­low­ing direct­ly after the brawl­ing warriors.

My aware­ness was deposit­ed on a mas­sive plane of misty, over­cast skies, as the anti-enti­ties stomped uncar­ing through deep green forests, a world where dark jun­gles dom­i­nat­ed the land as far as I could see. From my arbi­trary place far above the war­riors, I could only see their bat­tle through the mas­sive gauges of for­est flo­ra where­in they tum­bled. Blad­ed ten­ta­cles swung around and pressed one anoth­er down into the foliage, as if to drown each oth­er with faces full of plant life and for­est biome.

Into yet anoth­er desert plane I was trans­port­ed, where anoth­er void in the world had been cre­at­ed, and I was pulled along with the war­riors like water through a cos­mic drain. I real­ized that when the beings injured one anoth­er, they fled through escape-hatch por­tals, retreat­ing in a nev­er-end­ing battle. 

In the next world, a yel­low-skied place of green fun­gi car­pet­ed ground and teal tipped moun­tains, I squint­ed to see one many limbed war­rior wrapped in the mul­ti-blad­ed grasp of the oth­er. So tight­ly coiled togeth­er were they, their mas­sive, shim­mer­ing bod­ies looked like one gar­gan­tu­an being.

As I watched the bat­tle esca­late, I had the oth­er­world­ly sense that the war I was wit­ness­ing had been fought for longer than my human mind could com­pre­hend. As the celes­tial fight before me con­tin­ued, I real­ized that even though the war had been fought for mil­lions of years, the alter­ca­tion was com­ing to an end.

 In reac­tion to my rev­e­la­tion, I was trans­port­ed back into the black void, where thou­sands of worlds could be seen through thou­sands of win­dows in the sky. Like can­dle flames extin­guish­ing in the wind, I watched the celes­tial fight­ers depart one world and enter the next, their pre­vi­ous des­ti­na­tions van­ish­ing as they went. I felt sick­ened at the sheer num­ber of worlds I saw vom­it­ing up the two fight­ers only to cease exis­tence after­wards. When one fight­er fled through their slash in uni­verse, the afflict­ed real­i­ty winked out of all existence. 

 From the great height of my van­tage point, I found my atten­tion drawn to a new world, a plan­et whose con­ti­nents and oceans I couldn’t help but rec­og­nize. Soar­ing through the sky in my mind’s eye, I felt my heart­beat return inside of me, the breath in my redis­cov­ered lungs gasp­ing in pan­ic as the war­riors fought furi­ous­ly in the gray blan­ket of a famil­iar night sky. 

Being thrust back into my body felt like falling from a tree. I found myself scream­ing when I regained aware­ness of my throat, my stom­ach turn­ing in nau­sea as dizzi­ness engulfed me. I lost my bal­ance on the snow and went to my knees in front of Drew.

I watched flur­ries drift side­ways in the wind, the image of cos­mic war and plan­e­tary geno­cide fresh in my mind. I thought of the war­riors’ size, how they tow­ered above the clouds, how the vio­lent spurts of their cam­ou­flaged blood must have been falling on us in frozen snow. The liq­uid holes in the head of the ama­zon dri­ver sud­den­ly made per­fect sense. “Oh my God!” I cried, “Drew! It’s not snow, it’s their blood!”

Drew nod­ded sad­ly as I tried to stand. I under­stood why she’d come home in such a hur­ry, to tell me what she knew, to be with me at the end. She helped me to my feet and took my hands stern­ly, her face in a mask of seri­ous­ness. “But don’t you feel it? They’re almost done fight­ing, one of them is about to win.”

Wrestling the con­fu­sion from my mind, I nod­ded as Drew stared at me wist­ful­ly. I was shak­ing too heav­i­ly to form words, sob­bing too wild­ly to answer, though I remem­bered the epiphany I’d had while in the mael­strom of my vision. “All we have to do is wait.” Drew told me, her voice an airy whis­per, “one fight­er is run­ning from the oth­er, but they’re about to be caught. If the fight­ing stops, they can both leave peace­ful­ly, and every­one will go back to nor­mal. That’s what they told me ear­li­er tonight, that’s what I must believe.”

Before I had a chance to react, the man­gled vehi­cles behind us ignit­ed in an explo­sion of flame, shoot­ing fire through pud­dles of spilled gaso­line. I jumped back at the burst of sound, flumes of black smoke sprout­ing instant­ly in the air. The snow berms began to melt around our feet, cre­at­ing craters in the ground where the falling blood of the mon­strous war­riors made the illu­sion of holes in the world.

In the orange light of the flame, Drew slid her icy hand into mine. She was drag­ging me to the edge of the car­port before I could ques­tion her, a hope­ful grin on her face. “The war­riors ask the unwor­thy not to look upon them – if they do, they go cata­ton­ic, like the Ama­zon guy.” She told me as she shrugged towards the man who still wan­dered the debris strewn street. “We’re dif­fer­ent. I made a deal at the hos­pi­tal. We can watch all we want.”

I imme­di­ate­ly felt appre­hen­sive, my eyes shot to the man in the street whose entire head had van­ished off his shoul­ders. Stand­ing near the met­al pole of the car shel­ter, Drew looked wist­ful­ly into the black night sky, too close to the fire and the war­riors for my lik­ing. “Drew,” I called wor­ried­ly, “why would they want to talk to you?”

Drew took a deep breath, her eyes wide and focused, “we had ten patients for every nurse less than an hour into my shift tonight and I was start­ing to pan­ic. I mean, peo­ple were com­ing in with what looked like lit­er­al holes in their heads, and the patients were so con­fused that they couldn’t even speak. How do you treat some­thing like that?”

With a shrug, Drew turned to me, her face speck­led with holes through which I could see the laven­der mate­r­i­al of her jack­et hood through her rosy cheeks. “I start­ed pray­ing.” She told me with a chuck­le, “I know – I’m not reli­gious! But I asked why some­thing so awful was hap­pen­ing to so many peo­ple, and sud­den­ly, I had this ridicu­lous wak­ing dream. I was fly­ing through the dark­ness in front of hun­dreds of these lit­tle open­ings. It showed me what I showed you.”

Though her answer made sense, I still had the feel­ing that she was keep­ing some­thing from me. “But why are you still here?” I asked her gen­tly, “I mean, why aren’t we both brain­dead? Why are we … worthy?”

Drew looked away from the bat­tle, strange sad­ness flood­ed her face. “It’s noth­ing to wor­ry about, baby. When they win, every­thing will be fine, and if not –”

“No, wait,” I inter­rupt­ed her tired­ly, “Drew, please tell me, you have to tell me.”

She threw her hands up tired­ly. “When I was pray­ing, I asked for the both of us to be okay, I asked for us to live long, hap­py, healthy lives until we’re both in our hun­dreds. I didn’t know what would hap­pen if the bat­tle was lost. And before I had my vision, before it told me any­thing, it said that it would only let me return to you if I agreed that we both would be its wit­ness­es.”

“Okay,” I said to keep her talk­ing, “and what does that mean?”

Drew licked her lips, “It means that we remem­ber what hap­pened here, we keep the fight­ers in our thoughts. Then, we both get to live in per­fect health for at least anoth­er eighty years.” 

I’d reached the edge of the car­port and Drew’s words were burn­ing in my mind as I final­ly saw the true scope of the bat­tle above. The night air was blurred in orange hues around the many long, ten­ta­cle stalks of the mon­strous war­riors, even more mind bend­ing in per­son than in my wak­ing dreams.

The humon­gous fig­ures emanat­ed a low, vibrat­ing hum as they moved in slow-motion through the sky. Too large to thrust their limbs any faster, I thought that the fighter’s jilt­ed motions were some­how more upset­ting to see than if they moved in human time. 

As the war­riors shot jets of shim­mer­ing blood in great frozen waves down on us, I real­ized that even in all my coher­ence, I couldn’t tell one being from the oth­er. That was, I didn’t know which God-like enti­ty Drew made our deal with and which would destroy the Earth in its selfishness. 

I real­ized, grim­ly, that it didn’t mat­ter so much who won or lost. How could we trust either enti­ty in the first place? What was one being’s word com­pared to our human con­cepts of agree­ment? Drew and I were so tiny, our real­i­ty was so frag­ile. There was noth­ing any­one on Earth could have done to have changed the out­come of the fight above us. I won­dered if any­one out­side of our coun­ty knew what was going on. Was the world moments from end­ing while the rest of human­i­ty was none the wiser?

I couldn’t fin­ish my thought as a sud­den, soul-split­ting sound rang out through the night. The mur­murs of pain from the vic­tims gone mad in their cars went silent as the noise thun­dered and quaked around us. Drew and I fell to our knees, try­ing to cov­er our ears though the sound was inescapable. 

Squeez­ing at my pound­ing tem­ples, I real­ized that the fight was over, that a vic­tor had been crowned. High above us, I saw the blurred out­line of one fig­ure stum­bling as it shout­ed its death, waver­ing as grav­i­ty began to pull it to the ground. Through the pain in my skull and ears, I pulled myself towards Drew. “It’s over!” I yelled, “Drew, they stopped!”

When she looked into the sky, her face con­tort­ed in ter­ror at what she saw. I real­ized that though I could not tell one being from the oth­er, Drew cer­tain­ly could.

She start­ed scream­ing as soon as she saw, her hands claw­ing across her face in hor­ror. “No!” She screeched, “They lost, they lost! Kat­ri­na, oh my God, they lost!”

I didn’t have time to answer as a chunk of sky as large as the mid­day sun erupt­ed into black dark­ness, a void more oppres­sive than any storm-cloud­ed night. A pock­et of noth­ing­ness opened over the Earth, an anti-mat­ter force which came bar­rel­ing through the night and down into the fresh snow some miles away. In a mat­ter of moments, the crust of the plan­et was being devoured, the clouds in the sky were con­sumed, great bits of the high­way were being bro­ken apart at mind melt­ing speed.

And the war­rior who’d won was nowhere to be seen, though the mas­sive body of the oth­er fight­er, pre­sum­ably the being who’d promised us safe­ty, was falling slow­ly through the void which was set to devour our entire universe.

I found myself scream­ing again, a wild shriek of hor­ror as the void devoured the high­way in front of us. When the dark­ness engulfed Drew and I, a great wave of numb­ness came over me, though I flinched as if the void could hurt me. Instead, I felt noth­ing at all as my voice was extin­guished by the black­ness all encom­pass­ing. Though I’d been hold­ing onto Drew for dear life, I found that in the void I could no longer feel her either, could no longer feel any­thing at all. 

With no voice to call her and no hands to hold, I could only sense Drew’s pres­ence next to me as the dark­ness of non-exis­tence closed around us.

I’ve hung in that same veil of noth­ing­ness for an eter­ni­ty. Noth­ing exists in the void I inhab­it with the love of my life. Noth­ing is here but the shad­ow of our souls in the soup of pri­mor­dial anti-exis­tence. How can our eighty years of promised life pass in a place where not even time exists?