snow

Depressed, he stumbled out of his front door into the freezing cold night. The crunching sound of the snow underfoot almost brought a tinge of pleasure to his drunken, miserable haze. It all seemed too much to bear. Everything from passing a field full of sheep in the morning to the atrocious usage of corporate wallpaper and screensavers at work drove him to despair. Where once a field of sheep would bring him a sense of peace and pleasure, Max was now simply saddened by their hopelessness; innocent creatures peacefully lazing in a beautiful field of green, surrounded by trees, were nothing but a symbol of humanity’s need to feed the masses. Innocent creatures to be brutally snatched, slaughtered, butchered and sold for consumption when the need saw fit. With these thoughts Max had arrived at work and listened to his colleagues laughing and joking in the kitchen on the other side of the thin, useless wall that had been erected to bring some form of privacy to those attempting to work whilst others gathered in the kitchen to chat and make drinks. They laughed and joked and spoke of celebrities and of the Olympics and of holidays and shoes and handbags and so on; seemingly oblivious to suffering and poverty and man’s inherent cruelty. At lunch time he had walked to lunch with the woman of his dreams... but she had seemed sad and distant. They sat in the park and drank milkshakes and spoke but there was no feeling or warmth in it. Max had listened as she spoke of her child for whom Max felt a lot of love even though he very rarely saw her and had no involvement in her life. Listening to the tales of innocent events from the home Max started to pity the child for what the future held; school, work, heartache, illness, struggle, fear, uncertainty, exploitation, war, shortages of water and other resources... the mess of now and of the future. He felt sad for the financial struggle that this mother would have to go through... the sad look in her eyes... the things that she was not saying.

And so he had come home and started to drink to try to erase these morbid thoughts from his mind. After a few hours of drinking he had decided to go outside for some air and here he was, trudging through the snow, miserable, forlorn, and suffering. Approximately five minute’s walk from his house he passed through a quiet copse where the snow lay untouched, perfectly smooth and virginal in its purity. Max decided he wanted to write a message in the snow. As he searched for a stick with which to write his message he suddenly realised a great need to urinate and decided to write his message by pissing into the snow. ‘FUCK THE WORLD’ was the desecration he decided upon... ‘a fine literary academic and upstanding moral citizen’ he thought... ‘fuck it and fuck these tidy-lawn bastards.’ He started to urinate into the snow and managed something that may have resembled an F followed by a U when he suddenly felt very ill and weak... he needed to lie down and did so right next to the FU he had just created.

‘If you pass out here in the snow in the copse you will not be found and you will die.’ He said to himself.

‘Good. It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter.’ A second voice answered the first. He closed his eyes and black nothingness crept in.