One
evening in mid-December, the temperature fell below freezing.
In the middle of the night, I awoke to find Melanie gone from
our bed. I could hear a repetitive rapping noise coming from somewhere
in the house. Cautiously, I tiptoed into the kitchen. Melanie
was not there.When I turned the light on, I saw her nightgown
lying in a crumpled heap by the door. I hurried over and opened
the door. The screen door had been left open, and the wind was
causing it to slap against the door frame. A heavy snow was falling,
and there were three or four inches on the ground already. I saw
a path of wide depressions in the snow leading from the kitchen
door. Clearly, they marked the imprints left by Melanie's footsteps.
I ran to the coat closet and put on my coat and boots. If I hesitated,
the snow would cover up her path.
Once outside, I moved along quickly,
tracing the footprints. When I reached the edge of the woods,
a wave of panic swept over me. I ran back to the house and got
a flashlight so that I could attempt to trace her footsteps in
the pitch black woods.
When I returned with my light and
began to follow her footsteps, I was slightly relieved to see
that they moved from one white ringed tree to the next. She had
followed the white trail; I would be able to find her and get
her back to warmth.
We fashioned our trail to end at
a clearing graced with a broad flat stone. I found her there,
pale and naked, sitting on the stone and looking up calmly at
the falling snow.
"Melanie," I said, running over
and covering her with my body - in my panic I had forgotten to
bring a coat for her.
"Isn't it marvelous, Dear?" she
said, gently moving away from me.
"What's marvelous?" I said angrily.
"What are you doing out here?"
She glanced at me emotionlessly.
Her frustration and anger of the last month had been replaced
with a cruel nonchalance. "I hunger for it." she said.
I noticed that her voluptuous form
had wasted away. She was pale and thin, and I could see her rib
bones protruding through her flesh. I was inexplicably attracted
to her emaciated, sickly body.
"You hunger for what?" I said.
She looked at me straight in the
eye. "The cold," she said, in a weak, raspy voice, that was oddly
seductive. Once again, when I should have dragged her home, I
made love to her, pressing her fragile body against the cold hard
stone.
The next day, I made a feeble effort
to convince her to see a doctor.
"You look weak," I said pathetically,
unable, now that the incident was over, to confront her with the
fact that last night she had been wandering naked in the snow.
"I feel fine," she said. She looked
at me with tired, sunken eyes and smiled the same seductive smile
that I had seen on her face in the clearing the previous night.
"Besides," she added, "you like me like this."
"No, I don't," I insisted.
"Yes, you do," she said. "Face
it, Dear, you can't keep your hands off me."
That evening, I forced myself to
stay awake late into the night. To my surprise, Melanie remained
in bed and slept. Foolishly, when it had passed the time when
she usually left the bedroom, I let myself relax and fall asleep.
Thinking back, I'm certain that's what she was waiting for.
I awoke in the early hours of the
morning and stretched my arm across the bed to make certain she
was there. I was alarmed; her half of the bed was empty. I rushed
into the kitchen. She was not there. Quickly, I put on my parka
and boots and grabbed her long wool coat, her winter boots, and
a flashlight. There were no discernible tracks outside. The wind
had blown the snow over any footprints that may have been there.
But I knew where she was. I ran across the yard despite the deep
snow and my heavy boots and entered the woods. I followed the
white trail, hoping that she had returned to the clearing again.
But when I reached the end, I found myself alone by the stone
where Melanie and I had made love the night before. I paused for
a few anxious moments, and it was here, I discovered weeks later
when I returned, that I left Melanie's coat and boots.
My memory of the rest of the long
evening that I spent in the woods is a blur. For hours, I crawled
this way and that through the snow and trees, shining my flashlight
wildly around, looking for some sign of her. The sun began to
rise, casting an eerie light over the snow covered trees, but
I remained unsuccessful. I continued searching until the hour
that Gwen usually rose. Reluctantly, I decided to return home,
although I had no idea which way to go. Defeated, I picked a direction
and walked. In a matter of minutes I came upon Melanie, lying
on some fallen tree trunks, and partly covered in snow.
Next
Page> In the Cold 3
In the Cold © 2004 Jennifer
Perkins
Illustrations © 2004 Pam
Marin-Kingsley
