Winterfold

Expressions 2

Hypothermia seemed to me like a weird way to die. While the cold kills you, your body starts to feel tremendously hot, and lose your grasp of the situation. People have been reported to take off their clothes to cool down as they freeze to death, to take away the feelings of immense warmth.

It seemed dubiously ironic and cruelly conceived. A human becoming delirious and blind as they slip away into death, acting against their own survival with faulty instincts.

Hypothermia has killed so many people recently. The climate change of which people worried about for years went in an interesting direction— as the world grew too cold. A harsh winter with sub-zero temperatures swept across the land. I remembered the news coverage, segments on how to stay safe from hypothermia.

It wasn't as if we were plunged into a new ice age, but things were very different. Eventually, things balanced out. Life returned to a bit of normalcy.

However, our hopes of a bright future were in vain. A bizarre virus that thrived in the cold began ripping through the population.

With our immune systems weakened by the cold, and the bizarre properties of the virus, it quickly became the most deadly epidemic in history. The alarming mortality rate of the virus lead people to come up with crazy conspiracies. The most popular ones were that it was judgement from God or that it was an ancient virus awoken by the shifting climate.

Like a true force of nature, our speculations and vain efforts failed to imperil its progress. It cut ruthlessly through the brightest of scientists, the most pure of heart, and corrupt scum at equal rate. Free from biases, it did not relent to kill every human, striking them dead within days of infection.

I recall sitting down in the living room, huddled in front of the TV with my family as we anxiously watched the news. Day after day our hope died further, with reporters highlighting the hopeless scenario. All of the precautions they suggested seemed pointless.

And we watched. As everything shut down. The economy froze. The White House fell. Next thing we knew, we were bunkered down in our house, trying to hide from the end. It was far too cold to go outside. And if you did, you put yourself at risk of infection.

Everybody else seemed to have the same idea. The entire neighborhood settled into hiding. We hid as the phone lines went down, and all the news channels became static, and as everything faded around us.

The first to die was my mother. The disease hit her inexplicably. We all stayed inside, portioned our food, and avoided the outside. Yet she began to show the signs. Her skin grew cold, her eyes heavy, her heart slow. And worst of all, the deathly pale blue tint to her skin. She was like an icy princess, cloaked in her bath robe and confined to her bed. My father took care of her as best as he could— but we all accepted it. We were all going to die. The virus was in our home. Mother would not recover, and when we fell ill neither would we.