Frozen Purgatory

There was 0nly one rule: don’t open the door. Ice rimed, cracked, frost bitten windows. Encroaching wind a miniature arctic blast. Fingers aching - blue, brittle. Cupped hands raise to mouth… Frozen lungs puff breath. Warmth. No. Arctic breath - frozen vaporous lattice - envelops my clenched shut frozen hands.

There was but a single source of warmth in this frozen hell hole. The door. That door. Eight feet high, five feet wide. Solid, ancient, petrified wood. Rust pitted iron bands cross it’s length. A forbidding X - a warning: Abandon hope all ye who enter here. Yet, from the minuscule cracks around the edges emanate slight warmth… Tiny gusts of life affirming heat.

My captor had dragged me here to this frozen prison in the lee of a mountain of ice. Is this the ninth level of Hell? Purgatory? I don’t know. All I know is that I will freeze to death - turn into a blue personsicle - if I don’t do something.

When my car broke down on the trail I had screamed, cried, yelled. Turning the key until the battery finally died. Only sounds the click of a dead battery, the howl of an arctic blizzard. Is this my punishment? I had left her lacerated crimson corpse behind. Never again would she harp on my every action. The butcher knife, gore smeared, sat on the seat next to me.

Then he appeared. A ghostly specter through a shroud of swirling night. “I’m here! Help!” He came. “Thank you God.” Then his fist shattered the window. Arctic wind blasted through me. He dragged me from the car. Bloody gouged trail on window frame.

Here he left me with only the order: “Don’t open the door.” Fuck that! Scootch, grasp, turn. Flames roar. My final warming. Bones crack - melt. Eyeballs liquify.