The Great Frost

I stood at the edge of the bridge, watching the man pull threading blue gloves over his stiff fingers. He cupped them to his mouth and rasped the last bit of warmth he could afford them before settling his back against the railing, letting his neck slump backwards so that his profile was outlined by the fog rolling in. From my vantage point he looked like a ragdoll slumped above an arching sea of white fabric, the type grandma used to cover her antiques in the attic.

"What's he doing?" I asked, only eight years old at the time.

"Settling down for the night," mother replied, her breath visible. "We are done for today as well. Let's head home. Only bad people freeze."

It was common knowledge that it only snowed at night. Why hadn't occurred to me until that moment and even then only upon what my mother had insinuated through coffee stained teeth. The man I'd seen hadn't looked like a bad man to me then. Years later, I thought him merely a dweller of unfortunate circumstances. Undeniably, he had been real. But even that was debated by manila files in government nooks on some remote office nowhere.

People went missing at a regular pace, the Frost taking anywhere from zero to five in our home town per night. The average for states like California or Texas reached the thousands. No one really knew what to make of it. Under the best circumstances you walked around avoiding bad thoughts and lived your life quite normally. Intrusive thoughts were certainly allowed, the magnitude of evil only became a dangerous tightrope if you acted out on your dark fantasies.

According to those who had nearly walked out into the Frost, the symptoms consisted of a plunging sense of guilt so overwhelming it vibrated your bones and made your blood weigh like lead, followed by echoes of your consciousness reciting your grave offenses, repeating and repeating until you felt you had no choice but to leave the safety of your home and walk out into the nightly white inferno to atone.

It was hard to compute what exactly The Great Frost was. The socially accepted definition relied heavily on the dominion of morality, that is to say, it was the cleansing of the malevolent, the wrongdoers, the pestilence that marred noble societies. Since The Great Frost's establishment, crime rates had become ghosts of the past. All murder, robbery, rape, prostitution, and plenty more judicial offenses were at an all time low since the Frost's first run twenty years previous. There was a division of those who believed it to be a government made weapon and those certain it was the holy hand of God forewarning the End. Not knowing what to make of it, I put it on the backburner to simmer until it blew up in my face years later. Maybe that night with the man turning himself in to the white reaper was all the warning I needed, many are rarely so lucky.

I grew up in Idaho, surrounded by great peaks, hills, farmlands, and the knowledge that any attempt to move outside of it would be a travesty for my mother. She liked the peace and so did I, but at times when all that was left in the night was myself and the blanket of silence across the moors it became evident I would grow insane if I stayed. I saved what I could of my apprenticeship money and moved to Massachusetts, Provincetown, a quaint town with quaint people, quiet enough to suit my tastes but also loud enough to be a demo for my later move to New York. I was young, and eager to make a name past my provincial life, unaware of the great misdeed I'd committed. The last I heard of my mother, was her distorted breath on the phone line, moments before a neighbor saw her small form silhouetted in the freeze before she vanished from the face of the earth, as they all did.

The mourning phase never arrived for me, in fact it rarely did for anyone who knew of someone that'd stepped into the Frost. It left me confused, but perhaps it had something to do with the fundamental idea that there was no use lamenting someone you couldn't even bury.

At present time I was twenty-five years old and doing volunteer work for the Frost Research Division Program(FRDP).

The facility was a cinderblock of a building, plain and grey with the occasional blue accents in the minimalist furniture.

I flashed my I.D. batch to Micheal at the front desk. He flashed a cheeky grin as he raised a powder donut in offering.

"No thanks, Mike, I'm already running late," I called as I rushed past.

"That's four times this month. You better watch out or the head honcho is going to get angry, Little Bee!"

I laughed as I entered the elevator, turning around just enough to retort as the doors closed, "It's not like he pays me! He should be grateful."

Once the elevator arrived at the fourteenth floor I could finally slow down. Several were already scurrying around the area excitedly. I took in all the noise and talking with a content smile, I loved working with the crew.

"Oh Bella, you're here!" Anne rushed up to me as fast as she could within the parameters of her restrictive pencil skirt and heels. They were calico cat themed, to match her earrings.

"I'm here," I parroted. "Hope I haven't missed too much of the fun. What's got everyone worked up?"

Her chocolate eyes grew grave before going shiny again. "Oh Bella!" She threw her arms around me.

"What?" I said, slightly dumbfounded.

"It's Kevin," she sniffed. "That reckless boy doesn't know when to stop!"

"He's thirty-three," I said wryly.

Still, Anne continued as if she hadn't heard. She was fifty herself but already she'd mother-henned all of us in the team.

"Well, this morning Kate, you remember Kate, the sweet girl with the tattoos?"

"Yes I remember Kate," I said patiently.

"Well yes, I think her in Kevin are maybe dating. K and K, it's really very cute I wonder if- I'm getting off track." Anne returned to herself. "He told her he was going to 'put an end to our biggest curiosity and try to stake out the Frost himself' because he had 'no sin he was particularly ashamed off so-" Anne paused, a little disgruntled, "Well then he used a very impolite word, which I'll be sure to chastise him on once he's arrived-"

A loud commotion of applause erupted behind me. I swiveled around just as Kevin walked in, a bit blue but all the more proud, waving his hand around like the queen of England.

Everyone -including Anne- rushed past me to congratulate him, each member vomiting an essay's worth of questions.

I found myself also drawn in, waiting to see what Kevin had to say with a held breath.

"Well?" Someone demanded.

"I don't know where to begin," Kevin said, laughing as someone brought him a seat. He collapsed onto it with the air of a famous retired celebrity. "Last night, if Z's predictions on the Frost's mortality pattern are to be trusted, was supposed to be another big haul for it. I got out my dad's stool, I wouldn't go too far, just sat myself right there on my porch with my buddy CJ watching from the window to prevent me from doing...anything rash. And waited."

I frowned thinking, that's it?

Kevin seemed to notice my skepticism and continued, "It was subtle at first. The not-so-good thoughts I mean. Mostly I was focused on how fucking cold it was."

I could see Anne pursuing her lips out of the corner of my eyes.

"The storm was already rumbling through a few blocks down, and then it began. The thoughts. I began thinking of this time I stole from my street corner's liquor store at age ten. And then about the time I thought about cheating on my high school girlfriend, Mary. I'd only thought it though. Overall I have no guilt over the mistakes I've done in the past. But then my thoughts took a change for the worse, I began thinking I was a coward for not stealing more than a candy bar. That I should do more. That I should rob a bank. And then I remembered sweet Mary again, and how devoted she was to me. Suddenly I was thinking about calling her up again and lying to her. I wanted to tell her that I did cheat on her, if only to hear her sweet voice, her sweet crying voice."

The excited talking had died down. We were all fascinated though a little off-put.

"From there I..." Kevin's eyes got misty. "I thought about doing bad things to her. Things I would never do, that I had never thought of ever doing before."

I don't know when I'd retrieved my notepad from my bag, but by the time I looked down I'd already written half a page.

"The storm was blazing past me at that point, all around me was a film of white fog. I could distantly hear CJ screaming my name but I refused to budge. The wind was strong but somehow I knew it would not lift me off my feet despite how light I was beginning to feel. My tears froze, and I-"

Kevin paused. He was full crying now, sobbing out his heart with a pain I'd never once suspected Kevin could experience. We were all eerily silent around him, not knowing what to say.

"I saw her! I saw her there, in the middle of the storm. Mary, she was dead. She was dead and I'd killed her!"

My own eyes were wide, and still, I was enraptured.

"I spent a few hours more outside, CJ kept insisting I go back inside." Kevin calmed himself down. He met my eyes. "Eventually I did. This morning I reached out to Mary, called her up to make sure she was really safe. She is. That was all."

...

I couldn't get Kevin's words out of my head. Every morning that followed since that conversation was spent in a limbo. I wanted to know, I wanted to see. It was as if someone had unveiled heaven and presented it to me on a platter. Could I daily look at my reflection and sense that there was more to be completed without going insane?

I wasn't sure. My days became shorter and my nights became longer. Spent sitting on my window ledge and watching the snow fall, a flower of frost blooming across the window frame like a fractured kiss from the great Thing that lingered outside.