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It was snowing out that night. The wind whipped through the crisp air, stirring the car. He drove at speeds over seventy miles per hour. He didn't care. He had been crying. He was working on his book again for the first time in months. The one about her. He kept erasing lines and starting over, never understanding why he chose to suffer. Why he bothered to put it down on paper, why he bothered to let it swallow him up so fully. He had been drinking, thinking about her, opening his work despite his foggy head. Furrowing his brow, scrunching his lips. His thoughts full of murk, mud…the lines blurring like the smallest line on an eye chart. He had finished two and a half bottles of wine by the time he left the book, open on the table, and took a drive. He switched from red to white after bottle two. Then, he got in his car. Thought it’d be nice to be out in the snow. To watch the billowy flakes bounce off the windshield, sprinkled through the air like fierce fairy dust. To see any image other than the one of her body nearly riven in half. The blood and gore when he found her. When he saw the scythe lying next to her motionless corpse. The way she did it so deliberately, so viciously, so cold-hearted. He couldn't bear to think about it, let alone write it. So, he stopped. He knew he shouldn't have been driving, but it didn't matter. Snow was coming down in violent thrashes of white. The three dimensional, full moon should have been dazzling in the sky and illuminating the city, but it was barely visible through the thick layers of powder and dark night. He couldn't see anything anymore. Just snow, failure, tears, and affliction. It didn't stop him from driving. He was afraid that if he stopped, he would really have to face himself. Face the memories. Nothing to preoccupy him when he was still. Why didn't she want to live? Not even for him. The car spiraled off the icy road. Sent into the atmosphere, swirls of white dust were all that existed. Then, it hit a tree, tangling its metal body around the trunk, skidding underneath piles of cold, hard sop. He didn't move. His heartbeat fizzled into the Earth. Blood and snow. Red and white. Silent road. Not a single sound. Not of owl or chirping crickets or coyotes beyond.
Shay Siegel is from Long Island, New York. She received a B.A. in English from Tulane University in New Orleans where she was a member of the Women’s Tennis Team. She completed an MFA in Fiction at Sarah Lawrence College. Her writing has appeared in Pamplemousse, The Opiate, The Writing Disorder, Belleville Park Pages, Black Heart Magazine and others. Her website is www.shaysiegel.com.
