Midnight: A Collection of Short Stories

Let Me Go, Gentle Snowflakes

I remember my last winter very clearly. I remember my last taste of the cold with it, snowflakes that looked soft and harmless but actually cut into my skin, the towering oak trees that I missed when frost crept up their bark and engulfed them in the cold.

There was a tiny little shed in the woods built by God-knows-who that I took residence in, a bunch of wooden planks duct-taped together to give me mild shelter from the elements. It wasn't much, of course—I never needed a lot anyways. As a minimalist, I could live happily with a blanket, some food and water, and a roof over my head (shabby or not). I had what I needed and I didn't see the point of ever wanting more.

The woods were on the cusp of winter, shedding their colorful autumn appearances for the snow and ice that awaited them. I sat in my shed, day after day with my single blanket and notebook, and I wrote. I wrote poems about the wonderland before me, I wrote stories about the delicacy of the fragile (yet cruel) ice, I drew photos of the hidden secrets in this crystallized wonderland.

I did it all with a notebook, two black-ink pens, and my imagination. My inked black words keep me here on Earth, the only thing tethering me to this fragile life I have on this planet.

The next season came in a blur. The colors I loved so much—the reds, golds, greens, browns, oranges, and yellows—they were gone. I watched the last leaf fall from a once beautiful oak tree, and I knew, with a sinking feeling, that winter was officially here.

It was the coldest one of my life.

The stars are so beautiful tonight, aren't they? I sit outside in the cold, frost crawling beneath my blanket onto my skin, but I don't care. I just stare up at the entrancing constellations, twinkling lights in the inky black sky the only thing I focus on.

Suddenly I remember my old life, memories more bitter than the cold outside—my parents, constantly criticizing my poems because they were "foolish."

My siblings, laughing because they knew that I would never be one of them. It'd be easier to laugh at me than to try to love me.

My friend, someone who truly cared about me, trying everything she could to stop the teasing and the mean words. Trying to get a teacher, or someone, to put an end to it.

Then I left.

Dark swirls of memories run through my head and stab me. The pain is so unbearable that the cold has gone away.

Maybe I should stay out here. There's nothing left for me to live for anyway.

I take off my blanket and lay down in the soft, cold snow. Let me go, gentle snowflakes. Let me leave.

The corpse of a young boy is found two months later by a photographer taking pictures of the woods. Ice coats his rotted skin, and the police are investigating the area. They found a broken-down shed nearby, in it a black leather journal filled with poems. They believe it belongs to the corpse—it is signed "J. Malachi Silvers," which just happens to be the name of a boy who went missing two years ago.