I sit here grasping Shane's hand in both of my own, looking into my husbands' eyes I see the trace of fear that used to be a constant in our lives up until a couple of years ago. The bitter chill in the air, cuts at my skin as it whips around the room despite the tightly shut windows and the layer upon layer of blankets. It again comes to this, the fear of the unknown something seen from afar never as focused on destruction as it is now.
Amelie and Oliver sit heads close together, a conversation of breaths between them- a faint whisper of noise. Amelie's face is set in a mask, her hair piled high on her head in a crown with a pale pink suit fitted more to the sixties then twenty-first century America. They've been together a while now, and it really was the start of something new for Morganville but now… maybe there isn't going to be a Morganville to go back to.
It's been a whirlwind, and yet now we're trapped in the cold matrix of Morganville.
It started off just a normal day; I'd given blood with Shane, went to class and even stopped for a coffee in common grounds… that's where it all started. It was when I was collected our coffees, a women walked in wondering aloud about the weather. The sky outside was a wall of heavy white, making the air feel thick and heavy with every lungful. Winter in Morganville was on normal occasion chaotic winds that torment with every step and bite -yeah pun intended- any bare skin it has the ability to find. Its normally four weeks of heavy winter coats, awkwardly placed hats and scarves with knee high boots; until some random day the sun rises and the sidewalk is again steaming but not this year.
It was only after the woman's complaints that I felt a shiver down my spine, something unusual in the 'new' Morganville. Me and Shane walked home, gloved hands clasped together against the cold, the wind whipping so fiercely our eyes burned. It was just as Lot Street was coming into view that the snow started to fall, not the slight dusting of white that normally falls in this part of Texas, which has turned to slick ice by the next morning but a heavy rain of snow, flake after flake of white- that hit the ground and stuck- by the time me and Shane had made it to the gate the ground already had a coating thick enough to crunch under foot.
That night we'd all crowded onto a couch, mine and Eve's feet curled around each other's as we both laid against our men, watching some cheesy classic about high school romance. We were all already wrapped in afghans against the cold, sharing the precious heat we could find. At some point in the movie we'd all drifted off to sleep, waking only when a thump near our door echoed into the living-room startling us all awake. The room was dark, not midnight in the middle of nowhere dark but trapped in a bottomless pit dark.
It was when we looked out the bay window at the mountains of snow, piled high enough to graze the window panes; we saw it first. A shadow… a shadow prowling. The scream echoed then.
We've been trapped since in a blizzard…