The snowstorm is soft. It settles across the roads and fields, white and fluffy like mashed potatoes. The fuel in the truck ran out almost an hour ago, and whichever idiot was on shift last forgot to refill the spare tank, so now I have been stuck on the side of the road for hours. My breath freezes in the air, and I wrap my coat tighter around myself to try and keep any remaining body heat on my skin, but the fire in my heart is extinguishing itself slowly, and no one is coming for me anytime soon. Not with the amount of snow that has been burying the world.
I wipe at the condensation on the window, but some of it is already frozen onto the glass in little bubbles of ice. It isn’t like I can see anything outside of the truck anyway. It’s difficult to tell where the sky ends and the earth starts, as everything is a blinding white. Is this what the light is like? Or perhaps purgatory, or even Heaven? Hell wouldn’t be this cold. Although, I would happily take an eternal bath in fire right now, anything over this frigid and endless white that will drive me to madness. This is the last time I’m covering John’s shift for him. Even if his grandma is in the hospital, it isn’t worth all this.
I pull out my phone once more. Still no signal. Great. I have to call someone to come and get me. No one knows I’m here, and the snowstorm came down so quickly, with no warning, so the company probably thinks I made it to a service station or a drive through or somewhere that isn’t the middle of nowhere. Or maybe they just don’t care.
Yeah, now that I’m really thinking about it, they definitely just don’t care.
I rummage around in the back of—well, what I can get to anyway with the crates of books all jammed together. I have already looked back there three times, but I’m hoping that a blanket might have miraculously appeared, or a can of fuel could have materialized. But no, just hundreds of stupid books in the back of a stupid truck in a stupid country never prepared for a snowstorm.
I scream as I honk the horn over and over.
I grab my phone and open the door to the outside world. After a few bruising shoves with my shoulder, it opens with a crack, like the sound of a can opening, and a flurry of snowflakes blows into my face. They stick to my cheeks and clump in my eyelashes, but I just need to make it to the top of the hill to send a text or call for rescue.
It is strange, the silence that comes with snow. It blankets everything in serenity, and it is beautiful, there is no doubt. I would just prefer to be watching it from inside, preferably with a mug of hot chocolate (with mini marshmallows, whipped cream, and chili flakes– yes, it is delicious) and under a warm knitted blanket with my cat. Yet, here I am, instead of John, marching through snow up to my thighs to the top of a hill, and walking up hills isn’t an activity I partake in usually anyway, so I am not currently enjoying myself in the slightest. I heave in a lungful of ice and cough as I choke on it. My limbs are stiff, and if I move too quickly one of them will snap in two. My teeth chatter, and my lungs ache.
And still not a single bar.
I stand at the top of the hill, soggy and chilled to the bone. The wind teases my hair, and my yellow rain jacket clings to my flesh. I can hardly see the truck from all the way up here. The snow falls in thick globs, and I wonder if this is what a cloud feels like looking down at the world in a haze. I wonder if it feels a sense of superiority, sending down rainfalls and thunderstorms and watching the people scatter.
It is hot up here. Oh god, it is really hot up here. I’m prickly and itchy and… I have to get it all off, right now.
I start with my fingerless gloves, then my raincoat, my green wool jumper comes next, followed by the white cotton vest. My skin burns as I remove each item and dump them unceremoniously next to me in a pile, but it has to come off. I struggle with my boots, and I fall onto my back as I wrangle them off my feet, then lifting my hips, my jeans tear at the flesh on my legs and I give up trying to untwist them from around my feet. As I lie here, my skin melting, I cover myself in snow, hoping to cool my body, and I can’t help but think it shouldn’t be me staring up at the snow dancing gracefully towards the earth. It looks like ash from a fire almost, twisting in the air. I hold a hand up, mottled with blue and purple, and each flake sticks to it. If only I could see the uniqueness, the intricate design assigned to each one at its birth.
My eyes are glass and heavy in my skull, and it takes everything in me to stretch both arms out to my sides, sinking my fingers into the snow as I watch the white sky.
This is the last time I ever take John’s shift.
Eliza Wilson has always had a wild imagination and a need to share it with the world. Now in the final year of her Creative Writing degree, she is honing her skills on the page and working on her fantasy trilogy, Secrets of Pinewood. You can usually find Eliza sitting in a cozy corner of a cafe, oat milk, iced vanilla latte in hand, hunched over a notebook, and escaping into the world at the tip of her pen.
Featured image by Craig Tidball on Unsplash.
