The First Installment of a Series

{Author's note: I have decided, since this is taking me a bit longer than I thought to write, that I will post it in segments. This is the first. I hope it causes some suspense...I'm still not sure if I like it yet.}

She used to say that the winters lasted too long; that they were too harsh in their introductions and too rude in their dwellings. She was constantly a prisoner to the cold. Her hands were forever rough and cracked; her fingers split open to reveal the insecurities - her fragile nature. Her hair, the colour of charcoal, was shoved impulsively under a knitted toque. Sometimes, when she went walking late at night, as she often did in the later days, she would come back with cobalt-blue lips and eyes that spoke of sea glass in both tone and severity. In a way, she was right about the winters. On cold nights they would whisper of her demise, and she wouldn’t sleep until the snow stopped falling; an occurrence that often lasted for days and days.

Therefore, when the summer seemed to be swept in by a man with the name of Ernest Sol, the sleepless girl attached herself to his presence like driftwood caught up by a tidal wave, rushing in to shore before crashing in a violent dance of timber and sea spray on the banks.

Sol was a tormented painter, a transient, who fell upon love and luck when he was short of change. He became captured by her hair, and used the medium as inspirations for a few of his later artworks, which he would entitle in ways like, “Dark Misery.” His hand would brush along the insides of her arms, and stroke crosswise along her face, cutting close to her lips and making her tremble in a way she could not cloak. They would sit along the beach, his hand in hers as they scattered the remains for sea glass that matched her eyes. She fell hard for his love. She needed something to cling to.

In a way, it started because of the glass. He would press it close to her hand; enfold her fingers around the edges. He would pressure her fist together until blood dripped from her palm and onto the sand, staining it crimson. He would paint pictures on her cheeks from the red. He would tell her that she was a river goddess; an ancient Aztec princess. She would smile and take in his warmth; the fire that she could never quite grasp. But from the day he first cut her, she began to feel the cold of winter creeping up. She would shiver as she traced the outlines on her palm, feeling where the cold had seeped in through the cracks, and ran through her veins.

One eventual November day, the snow began to drift earthwards in a torrent. A heavy realization fell on the girl, whose days had been numbered since the summer. She panicked in her similar way and fled to the rooftops to seek out the sky. Her summer was leaving, and all she had left was a proverb; Sol, the painter, who, as she was transcending the passage of seasons, was packing his bags and leaving with the summer.

She fled down the creaky stairs just as he picked up the last of his luggage and turned towards the door. Her eyes lit with alarm and she pressed her cheek to his arm, holding it as she fell fast to the floor in an effort to cease him with her body. He reacted to her violent actions sharply, shaking the desperate girl off of him with equal brutality. She hit the baseboards with a crack, her elbow twisting painfully against the weight of her body.

For a moment, Sol paused and bent down, his eyes reflecting remorse. She cried out, but less at the pain than at the ease the cold could reach her now. Cringing to a sitting position, she took no motion to cease the hurt, but, instead, hooked Sol’s jacket, clawing at the fabric for some substance in which to grasp. Her face contorted in a plea for sympathy. Her eyes held her desperation.

Whatever Sol had of regret before had vanished as his disgust for the girl grew, and he tried to pull himself away from her. Her contorted fingers held, and his attempt to free himself from her gravity was futile.

“Please…,” she pleaded. “Don’t go. Please…”

He panicked and grabbed the arm which held him. His fingers bit into her flesh, bruising and piercing the skin. She tried to pull her arm in and away, but he held tight. She winced; the cold was permeating her whole body.

But still she begged him to stay.

He attempted to comprehend her sudden lack of sanity, but his mind was still adrift in the realization that he had to leave now or he never would. He dropped his suitcase of brush strokes and paint, and struck her across her sorrowed face. His fingernail skimmed the depression under her left eye and cut it open to reveal the soft tissue underneath. She fell blindly for a moment; a thud echoing across the floorboards. In one quick movement, she reached with her right hand to the suitcase he had dropped. She threw it across the room as hard as she could muster in an effort to cause him distress, and make him stay, if only a short while longer.

The shock on his face was faded out by the anger that drifted down his features. The paints had broken and oozed down the walls like fresh blood, the brushes snapped, and the paper fluttered down to gravity in a slow circular motion. He fled the house just as quickly as the suitcase smashed against the wall.

The girl howled her anguish and crawled towards the door. As she gasped her way across the floor, she let out tiny sobs and pleas of her fraught nature. She thought he was gone forever.

She was wrong. Sol came back. His face wrenched in rage, he kicked open the door, inches away from her face. Her silence showed the surprise she felt, but he paid no heed. His arms nestled a tool with a long handle and a broad scoop made of metal. She realized too late that he had not left her, but simply that he had gone to the garage in search for a shovel.

The whimper caught in her throat and she scrambled backwards haphazardly. He walked slowly towards her, his feet clad in thick boots. He stepped carefully around her shivering body, stepping cautiously on her fingers, and pressing down with thoughtful force.

He asked of her only one request, “Stand up.” When she hesitated, he bent down and grabbed her broken elbow, pulling her up by the pain alone. She trembled and he traced the back of his hand across her cheek and down to her lips.

“I wish I could’ve captured your face. Your eyes are just so cold…so lifeless.” He said this with a sense of sympathy, although his eyes still spoke of his fury. “Maybe I can still keep you in time. Put you somewhere you’ll never leave. Somewhere I’ll always be able to find you.”

His words ricocheted off the metal of the shovel as it struck the side of her head, and she fell to the floor like a snowflake falling to earth.

(To be continued...)