Hunting

The deer carcass creaked in the wind. The cold had sprung so suddenly in the night that it had flash frozen the meat. The windows to the hunting hut were now more ice that glass and already tendrils of frost had squeezed their fingertips through the cracks in the wood planking. My breath left ghosts of itself in the air.

I pulled the blanket tighter around me. He slept beside me, seemingly oblivious to the frozen air, the icicles forming in his hair, in his eyelashes. He slept on while his sweat formed, froze and fell from his skin with a musical tinkling sound.

My fingernails were turning blue, sea blue, blueberry blue, corpse blue.

I pulled the blanket tighter.

The fire had gone out an hour ago. I had tried to walk across the room to relight it but the floor was so cold it had clutched my feet to its grasp and refused to let go. There were now a few steps of bloody footprints leading from and to the bed. An abbreviated dance, the partner changing her mind at last second, just before the music starts.

The deer carcass continued to creak in the wind.

The walls were fully white now, the fingertips having stretched the holes wider and shoved their entire hand, arm, body, head, mouth, teeth through the gap, clinging to the walls, stretching themselves out, cocooning us in the ice and snow.

The lights went out, he still slept beside me and I could hear teeth grinding together in the dark.

I pulled the blanket tighter and listening to the deer carcass creaking in the wind outside.