Snoflower

by L. K. Scott

  Snoflower

  Snoflower

  Midpoint

  Snoflower

  by L.K. Scott

  Published by Dreadful Notions

  April 2016

  Snoflower

  Copyright © 2012 by L.K. Scott. All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction.

  Cover design copyright © 2012 by Oasis Creative

  Dreadful Notions

  April 2016

  © 2012 L.K. Scott

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  —

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.

  NOVELS

  Massacre’ade Party (An Eric De la Cruz Mystery)

  Nightmare Eve

  She Tried the Window (A Cruz and Holloway Mystery)

  Evilution

  SHORT STORIES

  Frozen Charlotte

  Heretic

  The Spider and the Fly

  End Transmission

  Murder After Sunset (A Penny Holloway Mystery)

  Violin

  Snoflower

  Cyclone Sally

  COLLECTIONS

  3 Minutes to Midnight

  Another Place

  Snoflower

  L.K. Scott

  The mornings after Ben stayed out late, but arrived before the sun rose, he found Kristy still in bed asleep. Or at least she pretended to be. She never slept so quiet, and after he awoke, there would only be enough coffee in the pot for her—never for him. That didn’t stop him from returning late. He never missed an opportunity to kiss her upon his arrival, and again in the late morning.

  Ben arrived before 4:00A.M. The sun wouldn't rise until 11:30 when the icy tundra would sparkle beneath the full yellow sun. Plenty of time to get some rest before chores. Darkness swallowed their austere home. Shedding his clothes he slid into bed beside her, kissed his wife softly on the cheek. She, in return, pressed her warm naked body against his, despite her taciturn behavior towards him the previous night.

  “I love you, snoflower,” Ben said. In the darkness, his face was black like a withered apple, and almost destroyed from the unforgiving winters; his sloping forehead was dark, sun damaged from the long summers when the sun never set and the snowy mountains focused the beams like a magnifying glass across the blustery lands. His sickle-curved posture made him appear decades older than his natural age, and a thick scraggly beard protected his neck from exposure: a secretive, hairy, hunchbacked lecher. She smiled, still half asleep, and said, “I love you too.”

  At 10:30 in the morning, when the skies were dark and hinted the first flush of deep blue dawn, Ben ate breakfast at the table. A dish of salmon and potatoes with leftover bitter coffee warmed on the stove.

  After breakfast, Kristy stoked the fire, adding fresh wood that Ben stockpiled and chopped during their brief Nunavut summer, while Ben gathered warm furs for the long evenings to come. Then, once settled, he retrieved a book from the shelf and settled into his rocking chair beside the warming comforts of the fireplace.

  She leaned against his rocking chair after coffee and when she sat down beside him, her eyes fluttered and he felt her body heat radiating off her body. She was a spirited-looking woman with hollow dimples on the corners of her lips that grew cavernous on the rare occasion she smiled. She had a short stubby nose and big fleshy cheeks, pinpoint, fig-shaped eyes with skin colored to match. But, unlike her husband’s, Kristy’s skin was creamy, like the fluid from a springtime milk thistle.

  She watched him and the dancing flames until the hot water was ready once again. She hoisted herself up to fill their mugs and refill the kettle. As she moved about the room she left a rosy scent behind her, with sage and pine with a tinge of salt and lemon from the fish she had prepared earlier.

  And again, after she retired for the evening and pretended to be fast asleep, Ben would depart until the earliest hours of the next day. Like usual, she would empty the coffee pot until there was serving left for only one. Not just as a punishment, but to show him that she knew.

  The following day, while Ben was hunting for caribou, Kristy went outside to gather wood for their stove. Several hauls would last them through another bitter night. The sun had been down since just after lunch, for which she served a rare polar bear dish they had received from visitors who lived in a small village north, with a side of fireweed and more leftover potatoes. She wanted to surprise Ben with sage tea as soon as he arrived, but upon hearing a strange noise beneath the porch floorboards she dropped the wood onto the permafrost ground.

  Beneath the porch, a dugout had been made behind their normal storage of usual meats and frozen grasses. It was large enough that Kristy could comfortably stand, but not for long, as the air was dry and carried a deep Canadian chill. The ambient glow of the northern lights reflecting off the early snow allowed Kristy to see the round young face of the missing girl from a nearby village. Kristy didn’t remember her name, but the young woman had been missing for weeks. She was approximately nineteen-years-old and very beautiful, though her eyes were ripe with fear. How she had survived the weather, Kristy didn’t know.

  She could only imagine that Ben had kept her alive—fed her just enough to keep her weak and away from death. There was a small heater in the corner, but not large enough to keep out the chill. The girl was alive now. Kristy could see the shallow rise and fall of her exposed breasts, blue from the cold.

  She muttered a plea, to which Kristy replied, “I’m sorry, I just can’t.”

  Kristy stood watching the girl, rigid with early signs of frostbite in her fingers. Her wiry, brittle hair covered her face and the dirt floors beside her. Even close to death, she appeared enchanting and fresh, with pure skin like new-fallen snow and white with the natural illumination of the pale moon and northern lights.

  As Kristy looked around the makeshift cell, other frozen bodies came to view. Four other girls, dead and frozen, each perfectly shaped youthful creatures preserved like bluish ice sculptures in the freezing temperatures. Some had perished with their eyes open, their irises frozen over and glassy, as if to be content with watching the shimmering starlight through the open cellar door.

  Ben loved them, Kristy knew. He spent more nights with them than he ever did with her. They were his collection and he chose to be with them. Did he touch them the way he refused to touch her? Did he make love to them, even after they froze? How could he choose them, how could he stray from her tenderness for an ice sculpture that would never touch him back, never love him the way she did.

  “Please,” the girl said. If dirt had a voice.

  Kristy said nothing and returned to retrieve the firewood that had spilled to the ground. She’d burn them in her kitchen stove to warm the kettle that would make Ben’s favorite sage tea.

  Ben arrived home several hours later. Coffee for one again. The tea would be late tonight. She thought of the young woman frigid below, and Kristy wondered if her footfalls could be heard below the floorboards as she moved about the kitchen and into the living room to greet her husband with a kiss. Was the taste of the dead women still on his lips? Would she smell her between his legs if allowed her close enough?

  Kristy served him leftovers from breakfast, with fresh potatoes and bittercress. She spent the meal in silence, watching Ben as he raised the spoon to his mouth and licked the thick meaty drippings from his lips
. His tongue slipped back into his mouth and she watched the muscles in his hirsute neck swallow, his Adam’s apple swell, rise in his throat, then fall. He took a sip of his tea and when he caught her staring.

  He said, “I love you, snoflower.”

  And she blew out the lantern for the night.

  He kissed her, but only on the cheek. She longed for more, to have him kiss her where her where her skin was sensitive, his rough hands in places where her body ached, places he only touched the missing girl. Yet, the only affection she received was from the pet name he’d given her, continuing to echo in her ear long after he went out for the night.

  In the veil of darkness, she listened to Ben’s snores. She imagined packing her only suitcase with the few clothes she owned and trudging through the snow to the nearest village. Ten kilometers east. Donning the warmest caribou and seal skin coats, she could only voyage so far before submitting to a winter’s icy death touch. Beyond the snow-swept tundra, she still could not survive on her own. Even as the guilty thoughts drifted through her head, like the lights that moved through the starry night skies, she felt her betraying body pressing against his. His breath on her neck, the warmth of his bare skin against hers, his fingers which brushed against her thigh, and she knew she could not leave him. She missed him. She missed him like the winter snowflowers miss the springtime sun.

  The following morning, Ben found the coffee pot still warm, its contents enough for one: for her, never for him. There never was.

  The sky was still black and would remain that way until spring. Ben looked forward to the cold season; it preserved the bodies and kept them firm.

  Kristy leaned against his chair, handed him the mug of coffee. A nice change, but what was the occasion? It wasn’t until he drank the last of it, placed it in the wash basin, and then stepped outside when he noticed the footsteps — his wife’s footsteps — leading under the porch and into storage.

  Through the kitchen window, he glanced at her, studied her care-free expression as she prepared the last remaining bits of polar bear for their evening stew. Below, he saw his latest girl, dead from hypothermia. She would still provide release for him all winter, but he was never truly satisfied. Not with them. The intimacy that he wanted was unobtainable and he suffered from a lust that could not be filled by any but one.

  What he wanted, what he truly wanted, was to love his wife in the most intimate way he knew.

  “I love you, snoflower,” Ben said, though she could not hear him from the window. He disappeared from her sight, following the bank of snow under the porch.

  In the kitchen, she heard the storage door creak open on rusted, frozen hinges. He was gone no more than a minute this time, instead of all night, long enough to see the frost over her dead eyes. Again, she heard the storage door groan and he emerged from outside. He stood in the doorway.

  “How old is she?” Kristy asked.

  Ben swallowed hard. “Eighteen.”

  Kristy brought the spoon to her lips, her eyes blinking away the tears. The polar bear stew burned her tongue, yet she still felt frozen.

  “Is it because she’s prettier than me?”

  His expression crumpled and his eyes filled with hurt. The feeling that she had done or said something wrong made her feel heavy and ashamed in her chair. She let her eyes droop to the floor in hopes that he hadn’t seen her tears.

  Ben crossed the room and dropped to his knees. His hands reached for hers and rested in her lap. They felt like snowballs around her molten fists.

  “No, honey, you are the prettiest one of all. Whenever I’m with you, I fall more in love. You are my soul mate. I love you more than anyone in the world, snoflower.”

  He stared into her eyes, but that look of hurt remained.

  “You don’t love them?” she asked.

  “I love you and only you,” he replied.

  Kristy stood up and moved to the coffee pot. She placed a mug next to it and faced Ben, her eyes pleading for affection, her mouth pleading for his. To be kissed passionately like how he kissed those girls.

  “There’s coffee for you in the morning,” she said.

  Ben kissed her, on the lips, but still just a peck.

  “I love you, snoflower,” he said.

  “I love you too.”

  Even after his confession, his reassurance, he still did not show her the affection she desired. She began to cry.

  Ben raised the coffee mug over his head and smashed it into her skull.

  —

  The frozen air forced Kristy awake. Each breath filled her lungs with temperatures that crystalized in her throat, her breaths becoming shallower with every inhale. Drums and bone mallets, like the ones she saw at the village equinox festival last year, resounded within her skull. With each beat, explosive white and brown veiled her sight.

  Thick, coagulating blood spilled from her ears and dripped across her face, sealing the right one closed. She reached out, her fingers scraped against frozen dirt. Darkness surrounded her. Above her husband’s heavy footsteps shook the icy cavern. The hinges creaked as the door opened. Beyond his silhouette, the sky gleamed a curtain of emerald from the northern lights. The door shut and all became black again.

  “I’ve always wanted to know you this way,” he said.

  Kristy clawed at the dirt, her arms weak, and her legs refused to move.

  “Even more than the others. I never thought I could have you this way. I’ve wanted it for so long.”

  Ben smelled of pine chips and sour bear meat.

  “Is this how you made love to them?” Kristy’s voice cracked. Her throat felt like razor blades in the dehydrated freezing air. She was naked, caked with dirt and dotted with bruises over her bluish skin. The other girls stared wide-eyed and envious. Kristy could give Ben what they couldn’t.

  “I wait a week. They are usually dead by then. The winter preserves their body in perfection and it helps with the smell. There’s almost no decay at all.”

  Ben stood over her, wrapped in the warmth of his elk hide, blocking the hatch door.

  “You’re almost there. Another day, maybe two. You’ll die of dehydration if the temperature doesn't kill you first. It will hurt, but only for a little while, and in a few days it’ll be over. Then I can have you just like I've always wanted. In the summers, we can travel to the permafrost territories of the north, where you'll stay preserved. Think of it as a vacation. Just the two of us. When winter comes, we'll return."

  “Except I won’t be there for it.”

  “Sure you will. You just wont experience it the way I will. I’ve never brought any of the others there. Now that I have you, I won’t need them ever again. We'll be intimate, just as I always wanted. Just like you’ve always wanted.”

  Kristy’s body relaxed as she gave in to a new kind of warmth that overwhelmed her body. Her limbs fell still and her eyes stopped seeing.

  Just as she drew in her final breath, she heard her husband say with a heartfelt resolute, “I love you, snoflower.”

  “I love you too,” she replied, and succumbed to the icy winter's night.

  Included here is a sneak peak of Cyclone Sally by L.K. Scott

  Cyclone Sally

  By L.K. Scott

  My head felt as if it had been cracked open, my eyeballs pushing themselves out of their sockets. I had woken up on the coarse wooden floors. I wish I hadn’t woken up at all.

  An empty wine bottle lay on its side next to me. Not a drop left. The sun, if such a dark and dreary a thing could be called a ‘sun,’ had risen, but the change from night to day was imperceptible due to the grit permanently embedded in the room’s only window, a shade of jaundice. I had been sick for several days, not with a virus, but headaches caused by shame and by the wine I had promised myself I wouldn’t drink. The digital clock blinked 12:00 in bright red numerals. Flashing. Always 12:00.

  I don’t feel guilty drinking anymore. It’s supposed to be a lovely weekend. TGIF. That’s what the apartment manager, Bill W
illiams, had said when he welcomed me in for the first time last night. I sensed a level of sarcasm in his tone. If I was back home with Seth we might have gone for a drive through the oak fields or toured one of the vineyards and tasted some wine. I had promised him I wouldn’t drink, but that was then and this is now. Living like this, the way I’m living at the moment is harder when I’ve lost my closest friend, a lover, my soul mate. The brightness in my life is gone. I wish I could turn off the sun. It’s exhausting when others are so flagrantly happy as I imagine he is now. In my home. In my bed. Having a drink on a patio where my roses brought a splash of scarlet against the russet backdrop of a mountainscape scorched by sun and withered by drought. It makes me feel bad I’m not joining in.