3 AM

***

I have lost track of how many days have passed since the ice storm, how long it has been since my animated world was suspended, covered by glistening, unmoving sheets of frozen glass. Global warming didn’t happen the way they said it would. Far from the dustbowl Los Angeles was predicted to become, she is now a city of hard and dirty snow, of stillness and loneliness.

I only started counting when I noticed there weren’t any people left. That took a while. So many had frozen to death, or been impaled, in those first few days of relentless wind blowing knives of ice. Many others fled once the wind stopped. Some made it east, their cars piled high with belongings, children and pets. Others came staggering back with tales of marauders, murderers and thieves. But they had nothing to come back to. Those of us that stayed shut our doors to them. We couldn’t be burdened. We had our own problems.

When the wind stopped, it was only a matter of days before stores were looted, picked clean of food and clothing. I was lucky, living by a market, clothing stores and cafes. I could fill my truck in those first few days with all it would carry, fending off my neighbors with the shotgun my uncle left in the garage. Never mind I’d never touched it before; fear taught me how to hold it.

Nothing works, not electricity, or running water, no gas, no public services. We were cut off. Our cell phones became useless lumps of plastic and wire, our flat screen televisions murky mirrors reflecting gaunt faces and purple lips. I tap on the keys of my sleeping computer, hoping that somewhere somehow someone can see my words. But I know this is madness.

I don’t know what has happened to my family. My parents lived four miles north, my brother three miles northeast, but ice formed impassable mountains and the air is too cold to stay out in for more than a few minutes without your lungs freezing. The cold sun’s reflection burns your eyes.

I have now counted 327 days since I last saw another person. And that was probably about 150 days since the ice storm. It took about that long for people to begin to starve and wander off in search of food, or die. Like I said, I didn’t start counting immediately.

I don’t know how much longer I can last. I wasn’t raised in the cold, but in the sunny smog filled air of last century Los Angeles. I couldn’t fathom how people lived in colder climates, or why they’d want to. I would be freezing (or so I thought) if the temperature dipped below 70.

I don’t know why I am still alive. I am nothing but bone and weak muscle. My heart barely beats. Most of my hair fell out long ago. My beautiful hair.

I don’t know what day it is, or if I am counting correctly. I don’t know why I bother. Countdown to my own death. The crystal silence is getting to me. There used to be crows in my magnolia tree. There used to be music. I hold my CDs in my gloved hands, running fingertips over surfaces containing melodious secrets. Songs play in my head. Bob Dylan says “you left me standing in the doorway crying in the dark land of the sun.”

My cats died early on. I couldn’t bring myself to eat them. I should have.

It must be 3AM.

I am lying on my living room floor, wearing three pairs of pants, five sweaters over four long sleeved shirts, all the socks I could find beneath my Ugg boots, gloves, and a hat I stole off my neighbor’s dead frozen head with flaps that come down over my ears, like Elmer Fudd. I giggle. You wascally wabbit! I giggle some more until I start to cry.

I cry until I am too exhausted to cry anymore.

I decide to burn the last of the wood. I have already burned the dining room table and chairs, antiques from two centuries ago. I have burned the portrait of my grandparents’ wedding day and watched their smiling young faces curl and disappear. I burned my mother’s christening dress. It burned so quickly I shouldn’t have bothered. I have burned everything that ever meant anything to me.

I roll onto my side and slowly muster the energy to push myself upright. I’ll burn the last of the interior doors, the doors my lover stripped, sanded and stained before he left me, long before the ice came, back when the world was alive.

I listlessly heave my uncle’s rusted ax over my head and bring it down over and over again onto the last door from my lover. I place the splinters into the fireplace, use a few old concert t-shirts I used to sleep in as kindling, and strike a match from my last box. The door begins to glow, flames reflected in the crystal knob.

I sit in front of the fireplace I never used to use. I was concerned about making a sooty mess, nor did I want to contribute to global warming. So much for that. I hug my knees to my chin and stare into the flames, unblinking. I think I see my face reflected in the crystal knob and see tears I don’t know I’m crying slipping over my cut glass cheekbones.

I wish I had someone to talk to.

There is a knock at my door.

Tears freeze on my cheeks. My heart stops beating.

“Halooo!” calls a voice. A man’s voice.

Other than my eyeballs sliding toward the voice, I don’t move.

“Hey! Anyone in there?” Pounding on the door.

I have always hated the snow, hated being cold. This hatred was sealed on a trip to Big Bear when I was seven, lost for hours in the forest, blue to the bone.

I have always known I would die in the snow.

“Hey now, I know you’re in there. I could hear ya’ cryin’.”

Perhaps it is Death come for me. Perhaps I should let Him in.

The doorknob rattles.

Dylan sings in my head. “I’ve got no place left to turn. I’ve got nothing left to burn.”

Better get it over with.

I creep towards the front door. When I moved into my uncle’s house, the door was painted an antiseptic turquoise. Now it is the color of a ripe fall pear, the green of my dead cat’s eyes. My lover didn’t understand why I painted it this color. I couldn’t understand why he didn’t want to stay.

I unlock the door and before I can even let go, it bursts open and the man is upon me. He hits my head with something heavy. I feel hot blood caress my cheeks before freezing. I fall to the floor with my face toward the fireplace. He hits me again and I can no longer see.

I am sinking. Going underwater. I can’t hear you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

***

About the Author

Megan has been a writer all her life but only recently started writing her stories down; an apparent requirement of the Antioch University B.A. in Creative Writing. A Los Angeles native, Megan enjoys staying home, the drive-through car wash and avoiding the sun.