It was a terribly snowy night; you could barely see your hand in front of your face. Daniel looked out his windshield with his usual caution as he got onto the highway with such ease; it seemed to him to be completely empty, void of life. There was only the single lane on the highway available which made things even easier for him.
“I guess people can’t handle a little snow.” Daniel said to himself with a smile as he speed up to the set speed limit.
Now, most people would call this little snow storm a white out but not Daniel, no, he’d call it a regular old winter’s night in upstate New York. This wasn’t his first experience with a little bit of snow, and it sure wasn’t going to be his last; he loved the snow, he loved the way it fell so lazily, the way it felt when it hit your face as you looked up into the sky, the way it made everything look so beautiful and angelic. No, he wouldn’t call it a white out, he would call it heaven on earth, and the only thing he could imagine to make it better would be an angel to accompany him on his trek.
As he sped down the highway he watched as countless millions of snowflakes came to their doom as they impacted his windshield. For some reason, this made him began to think about his day, his seemingly endless day that began early this morning with his classes, all the way down to his soul-crushing shift at work. He became seemingly hypnotized by the snow falling and his thoughts of returning to his nice warm home, his nice warm bed, and his pillow which was just waiting to cuddle with him. But he had to snap back to reality, he was driving home now and that was most important above all else.
Daniel was young, probably around twenty, but his age didn’t reflect his wisdom and his intelligence, for if you could put a number on that, he’d be closer to a fifty or sixty. He was a tall man, on the heavier side but nothing he didn’t know about and had accepted a long time ago. He wore his brown hair short, minus his beard which he allowed to grow to excess and on the unkempt side. His emerald eyes peered through the wall of snow in front of him and concentrated on the slow brake lights of the minivan ahead of him.
The thought of passing the car only to make his trip that much shorter shot through his head, but he knew that it was too dangerous and he was in no true rush, his bed and pillow would be there waiting for him if he got home now or an hour for now, that’s why he loved them so. As he peered at the brake lights he then brought his eyes to inside the minivan, barely visible in the snow was a mother, probably around forty, clearly at the end of her rope with her two children in the back who were just being complete little demons. The two kids were just balls of energy and havoc as they threw all sorts of snacks and toys around the car, and appeared to be screaming at the tops of their lungs. The two kids made Daniel chuckle, reminded him of stories he heard about his childhood; he lightened his foot on the accelerator.
Daniel allowed his brain to return to its thoughts of his home to make his trip that much more enjoyable. He imagined laying in his bed, wrapping up in his huge blanket, reading some pages of Alexander Dumas’s “The Count of Monte Cristo”, his favorite book. He kept on imagining what would make his dream better, perhaps a cup of hot chocolate maybe even a little music in the background to soothe his hardened soul.
Just as Daniel allowed his imagination to get the best of him again, he snapped back to reality when he thought he saw something he knew he shouldn’t have. Down the road, perhaps a couple miles away were a pair of headlights, high up off the ground, and on the wrong side of the road. You could barely see the lights through the wall of snow; they were just a pair of dim fireflies in the distance for all he could tell, but as Daniel focused his gaze on those fireflies, he saw what they truly were, and what they were a part of; the headlights of a big rig barreling down the highway. The thought sent a shiver through his body worse than any winters night ever had.
