7:14PM
It’s all so harmless when you start out, isn’t it? You’re on your own, walking home through the snow.
It’s still not dark, as if somewhere in this hellhole of a winter, you’ve forgotten that it does eventually get lighter. Or is that just the glow of the burning city, its deadline reflecting in your eyes? Even when it’s not snowing you think it’s snowing because you’ve looked at so much white, blowing like ghosts in the desert.
Legs on autopilot, it’s patience that will get you home. Walking, on and on, until you get there. If you don’t make it back by nine, it will be this wind that does it. You lean into it, and the crunching of snow quickens.
7:59PM
Tonight, the world is untouched by man-made things. Here you are, on your own, walking home through the snow. We skate on thin ice, we sail close to the wind; metaphors of humans at the edge of nature, humans fascinated by danger, risk, snowdrifts. No one here is really in danger. Nothing’s going to kill you unless you freeze to death in a blizzard, or don’t make it home by nine.
With the invention of cement, humans eliminated sound from their footsteps. We no longer make an impact on the world around us. On fresh snow, we leave traces, proof of our existence.
The church bells ring out, seconds fall around you like snowflakes. You’d think, if anything, the cold would freeze time in place, but tonight it’s doing the opposite. You’ve got to get a move on. You’ve been drawn in by the snow and the pretty metaphors. Get out of your head. Get out of your head and get a move on.
8:47PM
Behind every door is a pair of eyes, willing you not to make it. You feel them in every car that spits up cold dust, their searchlights asking questions: What are you doing here? Don’t you know?
Voices come to you on the wind: we’re thrill seekers, crunching through the snow towards a precipice of the law for our own excitement. You see lights on lights on lights, but no people. You’ve never felt your watch tick on your wrist like this before.
Excitement turns ice-cold. There remain thirteen unlucky minutes in which to get home. The wind whips another flurry of time into your face, forces it past your ears. You stumble, slip, regain your balance. You feel your blood rushing at the base of your throat. How is this journey taking so impossibly long?
9:05PM
Behind every door, there’s a pair of eyes, waiting for you. The corners of curtains shift: no one alive has seen this city after nine. The ghosts of snow have laid down for the night. You too, want nothing more than a warm bed and arms that will shield you. You’re on your own, walking home through the snow. But where even is home? Everything seemed so harmless when you started out. Now you carry the weight of an unknown burden on your shoulders. Time is a blizzard. Where are you?
9:20PM
You hear the roaring long before your eyes see anything. It builds and builds, and when you think it can build no longer, it builds further, like the bass from outside a club, turned up 200dB. This has to be it. You have strayed too far, not seen the cliff edge for the snow, and now you’re plummeting down it into an unknown world with faceless inhabitants. You feel your blood hot, your hands and feet numb. There is no beauty left in this world, just you, on your own, walking somewhere through the snow. You don’t even know why you’re walking. You just are. As far as you know, you always have been.
