Breathing hurts. It feels like shards of ice tear her nasals passages whenever she breathes through her nose, and so she tries to breathe through her mouth, hoping the scarf will — if not warm the air — at least blunt its cold edge a little. It doesn’t work, though. The air hurts just as much going in that way. Her lungs burn and she imagines the cold air has scoured them like steel wool, leaving the insides raw and bleeding. Snot runs from her nostrils like water, soaking into the scarf and freezing, making the cloth even colder than it was before. She wonders if the entire section over her mouth will become covered with frozen snot, forcing her to try breathing through her nose once more. She hopes not.
She’s not alone. Her left hand is numb but her husband has been holding onto it ever since they left the house. No, fled is more like it. Soon after plunging into the storm, he’d grabbed her hand, and they’d held hands ever since, only being separated once by an especially strong gust of wind, and even then it had only been for a few seconds. But her hand has become even more numb since then, and if she can’t feel her own hand, how can she tell if her husband is still there? The wind is blowing so hard, she wouldn’t hear him if he lost his grip on her and yelled for her to stop and come back for him. She imagines him losing his balance and falling into a snowdrift, the hole he made rapidly covered by the drifting snow. He could be buried, freezing, maybe even dead already. And she’d be alone, soon to follow him down into darkness. Without his help, how can she hope to survive in this?
She tells herself she’s being foolish, that she’s allowing fear and fatigue to get to her. He’s still there, still holding her hand. She believes it, or at least wants to. But she needs to know, and so she opens her eyes. The sky’s lighter now, not much, but enough to let her know dawn’s coming. The snow’s falling harder than ever, and the wind whips it around, driving it into her like needles of ice. She squints her eyes against the wind’s assault and looks at looks at her left shoulder. She moves her gaze down the length of her arm, sees how it hazy and distorted it becomes toward the elbow until it vanishes into white. She has the momentary thought that her arm is gone, that the cold has numbed her to the point where she didn’t feel losing it. She fears it became solid, brittle, and then shattered like glass, all without her knowing it. Impossible, she thinks, but after everything that happened this night, the word has lost its meaning for her.
She moves her right hand onto her left forearm — the motion taking an effort of will since her body is stiff and uncooperative. She can see a faint suggestion of her left hand now, and she continues sliding her right down her forearm, feeling what scraps of sensation she can. She can feel pressure, but little else. Still, it’s enough. She keeps sliding her hand until it passes the point where her other hand should be, and it keeps going, continuing to register pressure, as if there’s something solid beneath it.
Todd, she thinks. I’m feeling his arm. She tries to smile, but her facial muscles refuse to move, and the best she can manage is a tightening of chapped lips that split the skin in several places. She feels that pain, but it’s so minor compared to what the rest of her body is dealing with that she barely registers it. Convinced Todd is there, she calls out to him, but her voice is lost in the wind’s roar. She then pulls, trying to bring him closer. At first nothing happens, and she fears she’s mistaken and he’s not there. But then she feels him come toward her, sees his silhouette through snowfall that’s finally, thank Christ, beginning to lessen. She watches him move toward her until he’s only inches away and she can see him clearly. His naked skin is dark blue, his eyes glitter like shards of ice, and when he smiles, he reveals teeth covered with frost.
She screams so loud that even the wind can’t muffle the sound.
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