Winter- a quick short story exercise

Winter is a cold, unbearable season. It’s the time of year that I dread the most. The chills, shivers and the sleepless, aching nights. It’s the time of feeling haunted and bitter. Every time winter comes crawling around the corner like a disease that won’t leave, I immediately feel myself detach from reality and sink into a bleak persona.

In the town where I live, it snows every year. Every year that it snows, I wish that I could go away to sleep and hibernate like a bear. When I sit alone in my small, shadowy home I’m consumed with dreadful and distressing feelings and thoughts as I stare out into the icy atmosphere through the frosted window.

Winter… I hate everything about it. I remember the times, when I was younger, when I would go out and play in the wet and slippery snow. I’d take a sled and meet up with all the neighborhood kids, then I’d sled down hills until my butt went completely numb.

There were times, when winter was tolerable. There were times, when I was at ease.

I am, now, completely resentful.

When I moved to a new home, I thought that would solve the problem. I thought, foolishly, that if I was away from the home in which the nightmare occurred, I’d feel safe and at peace. That was not the case, though. The cold and the snow, the mere season, it follows me like a shadow. I can’t escape it and on someday, insanity grips me. It grabs a hold of me, just enough, so that I feel as if I’m on the verge of losing everything and breaking.

During the night, when everything is quiet, and the temperature is at its lowest, sleep never comes easy. When I do manage to somehow fall asleep, I’m haunted by night terrors of the past.

Sometimes, at night, when my mind is in a fragile state, I can still hear the screams of my mother; crying out in agony and pain while the stranger pierced the knife into her skin and cut her so deeply the stains never came out of the hard-wood floor.

Guilt gnaws at me, it takes me by the throat and squeezes until I feel as if I can barely breathe. I lay awake, thinking of how much of a disgrace that I am. Shame, it overpowers me, and I feel as if I don’t deserve to be under the blankets in the cold weather. I deserve to lay outside and rot just like my mother as the snow covered her body years ago.

I think of what I should have done, and scream at myself at what I did.

The man, he came in unexpectedly. Fear had made its way through me, and I didn’t want to face him. I didn’t think he’d do what he did. I didn’t think things would get so out of hand. But they did, and now I had to live with the deadly consequences of my cowardliness. I am a coward. I am not a hero. I will never be anything good, all that I am is scared.

Never will I ever be able to redeem myself from what I had done. Or, for what I hadn’t done.

I run away from things that seem intimidating and frightening. It’s in my nature, and it is my downfall, my weakness.

The whole time the brutal murder was happening, I was hiding in a closet listening to every cut that he made, listening to every cry for help as my mother choked on her own blood. Fear is a dangerous and weak emotion, because it caused me to become paralyzed and helpless. I did nothing, all because of fear. But, even as I tell myself that, the knowledge that I am to blame always seems to drift into my mind. It is, in fact, the truth. I am at fault, and that is something that haunts me.

My psychiatrist, she tells me that I didn’t directly kill my mother, therefore it’s not my fault. But, I tell her that it is my fault, because I was there and could’ve stopped it, but I didn’t. She could have survived, if I had just done something. Anything. I believe that, if for some bizarre reason, my mother came back alive, she’d accuse me and tell me that I am the reason that she is dead. Then I, would accept that as the truth, and shatter to crumbling pieces.

When I had crept out of hiding in the shadows, it was too late. The man was dragging my mother’s corpse through the front door, leaving a trail of blood behind her.

He dragged her outside, staining the snow with red, and left her body out in the cold.

I tell myself, I was only a teenage girl. What could I have done? All these excuses, they barge into my mind and for a short moment, I feel as if there really was nothing I could have done. But, realistically, I could have done so much more.

Now, my mother is dead, and my father no longer speaks with me, and blames me because of my cowardliness; all because I was too afraid to do something.

I am reminded of that every-time winter appears as it always does, especially tonight, on the anniversary of her death. Winter really does live up to its grim reputation.