It’s Christmas Eve, so naturally the first thing I thought of when I saw the below photo prompt was a horror story. Enjoy it or not, happy holidays all! ❄️
I woke up in a frozen forest my head face-first in a lump of snow. Head pounding, body aching I struggled to pull myself up and get my bearings. A white evening sun shined through the leafless trees, the sun’s light bending and refracting through the layer of ice that hugged the bark of each and every tree giving the forest a warm orange aura. It wasn’t until a cool breeze rolled through that I realized I had been strapped down to nothing but my underwear. I shivered, and yet the air around me wasn’t that cold. I touched the snow, neither warm nor cold the white powder felt as if it had no temperature at all. Like it was the thing that was numb, not me.
The last thing I remembered was an office Christmas party. Too much to drink inevitably lead to a karaoke “sing-off” against my boss and me. The rest of the night was a blur, a blending of hazy memories like mixed paint.
I opened my mouth to call out for help or anything. Nothing answered, not even an echo. I called out again, and silence answered once more. I did what you’d do in that situation, I pulled at my hair and groaned. I curled into a ball and coward in the numb snow. I begged that this was nothing more than a nightmare, pinching myself until my arm was covered in bruises. After I had gone through all the stages of grief the sun whispered to me. I cannot tell you what it said, for it spoke in a language too foreign to even be of this Earth, and yet I intuitively understood it. I realized then that I didn’t need the sun for warmth, but the sun needed me for my warmth and I wanted to help. I stood up and hobbled myself towards the ball of white light and smiled.
