In Progress

I actually have not attempted this in years, but I'm giving this another go. I'm about halfway done with this short story. I started writing it in early August. Then, I began working on it again in early September.

I welcome (constructive, I guess?) feedback. 

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She awoke with no expectations. Her scattered brown hair covered her pillow. She opened one eye and saw the snow, that had been going on for days, had stopped falling. This was what propelled her to rise.

“I could take a walk today,” she said to no one. Entranced by the scene outside the frosted window of her cabin, she nodded. The cabin was empty, save for her.

                Far away from her apartment, a different scene was playing out.

                “Where are you going!” an enraged woman snarled. She had opened the door he had slammed shut to show him her face, which was red from anger; her expression was equally livid. Spittle flew from her lips. “I’m not done speaking to you!”

He was done, though. In his heart, like a disgruntled job candidate, he had resigned.

                I will walk until my legs give out. I will walk until I feel nothing anymore.

                Several miles and hours later, he got his wish. His knees buckled, and his body collapsed. He fell into the snow, quiet and unknown.

She found his body lying in the snow. He was a fully formed man, causing a dent in the fresh snow in the shape of his body. Six odd feet or so and a head of dangerously blonde hair. His appearance had elicited a small gasp from the back of her throat. A gasp that threatened to become a squeak if she let it linger longer.

She thought – let’s give her a name; her name was Vanessa – Vanessa thought “He must be about 26 or 27. He can’t be that old.” She was the same age, but her hair wasn’t as light.

He was not dead; he was not even ill. He was just asleep, as peaceful as a baby in the snow. He was in the middle of a field that was surrounded by trees and wilderness. It was like he, too, had fallen from the sky.

Vanessa was out for a walk, and since she lived on the edge of town, this was where did she did her walking. She enjoyed the silence; she savored in the solace. Of course, she was alone now. So solace was no longer a novelty. She never expected to meet a slightly comatose man lying in the snow.

Her knees hit the ground near him, softly. She watched him for a moment before taking action.  She observed he had no signs of hypothermia and seemed very much alive.

“Hello?” she asked. Essentially, she was asking air and the slight movement of his lips. No reply came. She thought there for a moment, watching him, oddly entranced and mesmerized by the sight. He had no expression on his unconscious face.

Vanessa got up. And with all the power her fragile-seeming body had, she dragged the young man by his limp arms, covered in a matted brown coat. She left a trail of his and her feet behind them in the snow.

She took him to the cabin where she lived. It was old-fashioned in nature and quaint by some standards. Her husband, Scott, had built it. Her late husband- Scott was dead; he had been dead for a little over a year now. And yet it was still something she failed to fully digest. There were moments in the night where she’d open her eyes and turn next to her in bed, only to discover nothing. Just piled-up blankets and a pillow.

                The door came open with one full kick of her boot once she had unlocked it (struggling with her keys, struggling with the man who was much heavier than her). She sighed, irritated while her teeth chattered from the cold.

                The cabin had only the basic rooms- a bedroom, a kitchen, a sitting area and a bathroom. The sitting area was huge and functioned on multiple levels. Study, dining room, guest bedroom. Albeit, Vanessa didn’t have many guests over these days. This man was an unknown exception.  

                Once he had entered her modest home and once she had placed him on her couch (again, using all her God-given strength), it was then he woke up. His eyes opened wide. The look in them was that of a frightened animal.      

                “What…” he started.

                She coughed.

                “How are you feeling?” she asked. He struggled to rise, only getting part way. She made a motion for him to stop- a desperate swipe of the hand.

                “Don’t.” He stopped. He felt like he had been obeying her voice for his entire life.

                “Okay. What’s going on?” Vanessa shrugged her shoulders. The man seemed totally at a loss, just as she was. His eyes were both accusing and demanding. They were blue, but not just blue: cerulean, really. She was, all for a moment, lost in them.

                “I found you in the snow. It’s a miracle you’re not in a worse state.”

                “Do you have any idea how long I was there for? I’m freezing, so … I guess this all makes sense.”

                “Let me turn the fire on.” She went over to the electronic fireplace that had once belonged to her and her husband to get the cabin to warm up faster.

                While she did that, he took a spare blanket from the couch (that was cross-stitched and really not that warm) to wrap around himself. And he thought about the events that had led him to that strange cabin with this nice, unknown woman.

                He was frightened to remember nothing, except that morning when he had woke up. And he had stared at the cream-colored walls of his room with so much ambivalence in his heart.

                “No, to answer your question,” she returned, taking a seat next to him. “I have no idea.”

                “Me neither,” he admitted. 

               

                “Oh,” Vanessa said. There was no other response she could think of. “Oh.”

                “I know I got up this morning and I didn’t feel anything this way or that,” he rehashed. “I must have decided to take a walk then. I don’t remember, but I get that impression. I’m sorry. I’ve never had an episode like this before.”

                “Don’t apologize to me.” Vanessa paused. “What’s your name?”

                “Peter.” Peter Price. He remembered that much. It wasn’t like he didn’t remember anything. Albeit- it was challenging. He saw faces in his mind, but he couldn’t put names or roles to them.

                “I’m Vanessa. Where do you live?” They exchanged hands. His was clammy and hers was warm.

                “Out by Finishers’ Way,” he estimated, trying to remember the tangle of numbers that comprised his address.

                “That’s quite a distance. You think you walked all that way?”

                “Yep.”

                “Then I guess you passed out from fatigue,” she said.

                “I guess. Do you think I hit my head?” She touched his forehead, then the sides of his brow. Peter found himself distancing from his muddled thoughts to live in her graceful touch for that moment.

                “No. Does your head hurt?”

                “No.”

                “Then that solves that one.” He ‘blushed.

                Vanessa made him food and tea, and gave him some of her dead husband’s warmer clothes. Plaid flannel that made him look like a lumberjack. He took it and changed into it, since his other clothes were somewhat damp.

                They didn’t speak a great deal, but Vanessa talked. She told him about herself, the cabin that her husband Scott was prompted to build from a dream.   

                “He was an architect,” she elaborated. Peter just nodded. As baffling as his own thoughts were at that time, he decided she really needed someone to hear her out. He could wait. “We were married for three years. We moved here shortly before he died.”

                Peter then broke his vow of silence.

                “How did he die?”

                “Car accident. It was a big mess- there were no survivors.” She hid her wince. “We had to use dental records to identify him.”   

                “I’m so sorry.”

                “It is what it is,” she swallowed, and got some more tea. When she returned, she changed the conversation’s subject altogether. Scott’s picture hung on the wall. He was alone in the picture with his arms crossed, grinning. He had a trimmed beard and inviting eyes, and a smile like a toothpaste model’s. Peter noticed it once, and felt warm having seen it. There were no pictures of Vanessa and him together to be seen.

                “I should drive you home soon,” Vanessa said later as the winter day grew darker. “Do you have a wallet on you at all?”

                “There was nothing in my pockets. I think I could find my way home, though. Not from here, but in that area. I lived there for years.”

                “That doesn’t sound exactly promising.”

                “I don’t want to go home, anyway. Not tonight though.” Peter shook his head. “My mind doesn’t make sense right now.”

                Vanessa cocked her head at him, from one side and then to the other. You don’t make sense to me, she seemed to be thinking.

                “Okay,” she let out after some time. “You can sleep on the couch.”

                “I’m fine with that.” Peter gazed at her, and wondered maybe, if he could think clearer, if he was indeed falling in love with her. Similarly, Vanessa had the same notion about him. And it unsettled her. She still wore her husband’s ring.

                “I’ll make some soup. Take it easy,” she rose up and went to the kitchen. Her footsteps were so soft on the wood floor Peter could not hear them.

                “You will only do what you want, Peter,” she snarled. “You barely think of me. Do I even register in your mind? Ever?”

                Peter knew she was digging for a fight. She was craving one. Her eyes, which he delighted in when she wasn’t under a mood, were frozen over like fishing ponds. He reached for his jacket.

                “I can’t do this now. I need to take a walk.”

                “You can’t do anything,” she spat.

                “Yes, I actually can.” He opened the door and left the house, slamming the door again behind him. He did not bother looking back.

               

                “Peter? Peter?” Vanessa’s questions snapped him back to his present reality. He was startled. “Are you all right? You looked upset.” She came across as genuinely concerned. Peter shook his head.

                “It’s nothing. I had a bad thought. It’s nothing at all.”

                “I have those a lot, too.”

                “They kind of suck, don’t they?”

                “Yes. Yes they do.”

                That night, sleeping on her couch (covered in a warmer quilt she had lent him; it had been knitted by her grandmother), he believed he was sleeping the best he had in quite some time. He drifted off, like he had in the snow, with a content smile on his face.

                He would stay with her for days. Not out of necessity, but simply because he wanted to. He could have left at any point.

                Vanessa didn’t do much during the usual day. She had once been a photographer, but since Scott had passed, she had given up. I’ll start again. She thought, looking at her forlorn and abandoned high-priced camera, since gathering dust.

Right?

                With the presence of Peter – who, for whatever reason, still refused to reveal his last name – she was somehow at ease. It had been a long time since she had lived with anyone, and as strange as it was, him being around was a comfort to her. Sometimes, when she woke up she could hear his gentle soaring on the couch, and it soothed her.

                She would read, do chores, sometimes run out to the store and retrieve groceries. He assisted her with household labors that, traditionally speaking, were better for a man to handle.

                “Thanks!” Vanessa would chirp when Peter shoveled her small walkway or something to that effect. He, in gentlemanly fashion, would nod.

                “No problem.”

                Vanessa wondered if there was someone looking for Peter or someone waiting for him back home. But as each day passed, he seemed more comfortable there, with her. And he started to fancy the idea of never leaving, something he would not vocalize to her.

                His thoughts began to progress:

                Maybe I can grab her hand at the dinner table…

                Maybe I can put my arm around her…

                Maybe I can hold her as she falls asleep.

                But he didn’t know where to begin. And secretly, Peter knew someone else was waiting up for him, wondering what exactly had happened to the man she thought she loved.

                “Do you have any plans to go back to where you came from?” Vanessa spoke to Peter one morning, two weeks in. “I imagine someone must miss you. Someone must be worried.”

                Peter was wearing the clothes that had once belonged to Scott. They were a little too roomy for his body, but he didn’t mind.

                “Eventually,” he replied. But first, he had hesitated. He was starting to love Vanessa, and the closeness to her he had while living with her like some non-paying boarder.

                “Do you have a family?”               

                “Somewhat.” Peter reflected. “My parents have been dead for a while.” That was something he could never forget.

                “I’m sorry,” Vanessa nearly whispered.

                He echoed her sentiments from earlier.

                “It is what it is.” He didn’t conjure their images often in his memory, before or after his incident in the snow. But he saw brief flashes of them both at that moment. His mother’s cinnamon-tinged hair. His father’s hardened face. So gone and so far away. When he saw them in his memory, he couldn’t take his hand and touch them. His heart twisted and ached.

                “Do you have siblings?” Vanessa’s soft voice shattered the silence.

                “I have a sister who’s married and lives out of town. When my parents died and the estate had been settled, she got out of here as fast as she could. She lives with her husband and new baby. I only hear from them at Christmastime.” She nodded then, her hair bouncing with the graceful movement of her head.

                “My parents divorced when I was very young. I never see my father. Ever. My mother never remarried. She’s dated, but she refuses to marry again. I can understand that.” They were both quiet then, briefly. “I have three siblings, all much older than me. Two live here, one lives in Georgia. They’re all sweet, though, and genuinely concerned about me, how I’m doing, what I’m up to. It wasn’t always like that.” She coughed.

                “It just happened when Scott died. Do they come over very often? No, not particularly.”

                “Do you wish they were around more? That they weren’t just the phone calls of people too busy and too wrapped up in their own existences?” He made a phone gesture with his hand and held it up to his face.

                She swallowed and shrugged.

                “I don’t know.” And, very fleetingly, she cast away her tears. Then, she resumed her previous interrogation. The next question had been one she had been dying to ask.

                “Are you with someone, Peter?"

                He flinched. As if she had hit him with a pack of ice.

                “I don’t think so,” he replied.

                “You don’t think?”

                “No.” He shook his head. His full blonde hair fluttered in the wind he had created.

                “So there’s no one waiting for you?”

                “No.” The conversation came to its abrupt death.

                “I’m going for a walk now,” Vanessa announced, heading to grab her coat. The snow hadn’t fallen in days.

                “Why?”

                Vanessa went for her camera next.

                “I feel like taking pictures. I’ll be back.” The door closed behind her without a slam.

                The next day, there was a blizzard. The snow fell so hard that when Vanessa or Peter cocked their heads to gaze out one of the frosty windows, all they could see was pure white. Like, in the clouds above, all the angels were having some full-out, sorority-style pillowfight.

                “Oh wow,” gawked Vanessa. “It’s certainly back again.”

                “Yep,” Peter agreed. They stayed inside together for the next three days.