Page 39 of Snowman

Josh stirred, a low groan escaping his lips as his head lolled. His bleary eyes slowly opened, and as they focused, he froze, staring at the snowman, the hands, his mutilated friend bound against the tree.

"Look," I said, smirking, "it's your girlfriend.".

Josh's confusion turned to anger, his body tensing as he shouted, "I'll kill you!" His voice was strong, raw with fury, but as he took in the scene of blood, the snow, the lifeless limbs, he cracked. He fell silent, his wide eyes darting between me and the snowman.

"Well," I said, tilting my head, "you can try."

He did not say another word. His silence said it all.

I hunched down, tugging loose the knot that bound him to the tree. The rope went slack, and his body collapsed to the frozen ground with a muffled thud. He'd barely shifted before I was atop him, straddling his chest, my weight pinning him down.

"Why did you do it?" I growled, my gloved hands clamped on his collar as he struggled beneath me.

A sneer contorted his face, his voice spewing words with hatred. "I wanted to taste the bitch," he spat. "And I don't regret a thing."

My jaw clenched, my anger bubbling just below the boiling point. But he wasn't done.

"I fucked her three times," he said, his laughter cruel. "And she didn't even fight back."

She didn't fight back.

The words echoed in my mind, haunting me.

She didn't. She couldn't.

My vision blurred for a moment, tears threatening to fall, but I bit them back. I couldn't let her melt me, not yet. I needed to stay cold, just a little longer.

My hands rose to his face, thumbs pressed into the soft flesh below his eyes. He fought it, his laughter faltering, but that only fed into my determination. I dug harder, my fingers sinking into his skin. His blood leaked from the corners of his eyes and seeped over onto my gloves, but I didn't care. I wanted everything gone, all taken away from him, even his sight, his strength, his memory of her.

His screams rang through the silence of the woods. Tears mingled with his blood as I kept on and on, unmerciful, till both eyes came loose. Two soft, slippery globules lying on my palm warmed.

"There," I said, my voice cold. "Now you've got a better point of view."

Josh crawled on the ground, writhing and screaming, blind and broken.

I dropped his eyes into the snow at my feet, the red staining the white. Ignoring his cries, I knelt and started rolling fresh snow. The crunch of the icy flakes under my hands was so satisfying, almost soothing.

One ball. Two. Three.

I stacked them, forming another snowman beside the first.

Dipping my thumb in the bloodied snow and painting on crude buttons and a jagged grin across the face of it. Then I crouched again, picked up the eyeballs, and pressed them deep into the snowman's head, where they stared blankly. I stepped back to overview my work.

"Perfect," I whispered, a crooked smile tugging at my lips.

Josh's broken sobs echoed through the air now, as he crawled forward, hands outstretched and feeling his way upwards through the snow.

Staggering forward, I picked up two sticks that were lying nearby and then stuck them into the snowman, completing it.

"There you go," I said, stepping over him. "Now you've got company."

If you hear voices, they'll call you mad. Treat the voices, and they'll call you sick. Take them to your grave, and they'll call you a man who's endured too much. I never heard voices—never feared them—but I had an image. It floated in my mind until I made it real. That image took me, dragged me through endless loops, breaking me in ways no one could fix. No one truly knows what hides in your head, what monsters you wrestle with, or the weight of a story you never said. People pretend they understand, but they don’t.

The world sees the cold monster I've become, the mask I wear, and deep down, I am afraid of it too. Not that I will be found and punished, that is easy to accept. What really terrifies me is that one moment when the mask slips and Bree sees the real me behind the mask. That she'll leave, treat me like the monster under her bed, and one day I'll disappear from her life. I'll fade to nothing more than a whisper she carries to her grave.

I pulled the phone from Josh's pocket. He'd had it all along, tucked away like some kind of secret he thought I wouldn't find. I wasn't worried that anyone would come looking for him; his father, Chief Jan, always cleaned up his messes. But he never cared where Josh was or what trouble he got into.

Before I could bury them, I had to melt the frozen ground.

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