Copyright © 2023 by Bert S. Lechner
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The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.
What drove him to dig in the icy clearing he did not know. Into the bank of firm snow he thrust his shovel, the crunch of uncountable ice crystals against metal pelting his eardrums. Without care he tossed the snow back behind him, eagerness to witness what lay below gnawing at his joints: or was it the cold? What did it matter? He had to dig. The sky grew only more gray, the sun hiding for fear of what he might uncover. Hibernating, skeletal trees looked on out of morbid curiosity, little more than shadow puppets backlit by the pallid light.
Knee deep in his excavation he expected soil, but there was only snow. He kept digging. Speckles of crimson strewn within the icy mass rewarded his efforts. In a moment of panic he checked his face for blood, finding none. Murmurs reverberated under his boots: why did you stop digging, the snow whispered, the words crawling up his legs, pricking at his skin with the icy brambles of their needle-sharp consonants.
He kept digging, flinging shovels full of red snow out of the pit, laughing at the way the veins strewn through the ice quivered and flailed as though releasing compressed air. His heart fluttered, exhilaration soothing the ache in his arms as, neck deep in the pit, something firm stopped the tip of his shovel. Throwing the tool away he fell to his knees, sifting through the last layer of snow. Corpulent flesh pulsed in his grasp, webs of veins spewing from the raw muscle to constrict his hands. With a mix of panic and joy he locked eyes with the eyeless mass, its ravenous hunger crawling out of every corner of his consciousness.
The solemn trees alone stood witness to his final, cackling screams of terror, themselves shuddering as if tossed by the wind until his final cries died upon the pristine snow of the icy clearing.
Bert S. Lechner Indie Horror Author 