Chapter Text
There are things to be said about the lengths Tommy will go to to avoid physical immediacy with the snow.
Because here was the situation: Tommy hasn’t liked it since he was ten, and that was back when he was too young to know what was good for him.
It was coarse, got everywhere, and was impossible to wash off. Or was that sand? That's right: Tommy doesn’t know, because Tommy makes it a point of never venturing out into the dreadful weather whenever it finds the nerve to show up. Typically in November. Or was it December? That's right: Tommy doesn’t know this either, because during winter, he spends every waking minute outside with his eyes closed in protest.
But, Tommy isn’t ten anymore. The newfound maturity and age that comes with no longer being ten has many consequences. Many such consequences include recognition of the World’s Hard Truths. One of these hard truths: protest didn’t always work. Instance one: His foster mother’s favorite season was Winter.
She didn’t have to tell him this—which worked out, because she didn’t. Tommy just figured it when after an entire eleven-months of zero holiday acknowledgment, tacky Christmas lights mysteriously appeared over the doorway. He figured it when she picked him up after school one day instead of having him walk home, refusing to tell him where they were going until they arrived at a Home Depot with a clearance sale on Christmas trees. He figured it when he got up early one morning to piss, and he found her sitting alone at the kitchen window, watching snow gently fall from the sky.
Before, he would’ve never taken her to be the type.
Yet, even with the living, breathing obstacle that manifested itself in the form of his foster mother, Tommy managed to keep his relationship with snow strictly non-intimate.
When he’s forced to retrieve mail from USPS late-December, Tommy speeds. When the duty ultimately falls on him to shovel snow from the driveway, Tommy bribes a guy down the street who owns a snow plow to make a detour to their house. (The bribe had been fifty bucks, and his foster mum wasn’t too happy with him afterwards.).
There was not much he could do about the snowball she threw at his head though, because Tommy hadn’t even caught her in the act. When he’d whipped around to confront her, her mug was as mean as always, and she’d walked off scott-free by the time Tommy realized too little too late there was no one else around to throw it.
So, yes. Tommy and Snow are acquaintances at best.
With each footprint in the snow, this trend is proving to last. The seconds rush by, and with every one Tommy becomes more and more familiar with the snow, but it’s not his.
It didn’t need to be said again, Tommy didn’t belong in the snow in the first place, but this snow he belonged in even less. Much less.
Tommys’ breath burns in his chest as he runs. It doesn’t make it any warmer. And still it burns, and it burns, until Tommy is slowing down despite his best efforts. This doesn’t stop him from running.
At some point, there’s only one thought going through Tommy’s mind as his own cumbersome breaths become deafening in his ears: It’s cold. Colder than it ever got in Philadelphia, Tennessee, Michigan—and he’s beginning to realize, that he doesn’t think he’s ever really felt the cold. Not quite like this.
Because two shirts and a jacket were enough for October in Philly.
Two shirts and a jacket will be what he’s buried in, soon enough. There will only be snow at his funeral, and it won’t be the acquaintance—it will be the stranger.
Frostbite nips at his fingers. It prickles his face, and makes every bit of exposed skin hurt.
Tommy doesn’t know how long he’s been running for, but he half wishes he’d go numb a little faster. So far, it could’ve been seconds. It could’ve been minutes. It could’ve been hours. The time doesn’t matter, because Tommy is growing weary all the same, and his eyes are growing dryer with each gust of wind that brushes against them. There’s a stitch in his side that makes him want to hold it, or to curl in onto himself. He’s beginning to lose the feeling in his fingers, but not in the way he wanted, because they still find a way to hurt regardless.
All of this; red fingers, dry eyes, stabbing pain in his gut, the works—manage to fall second place to something else.
He’d been running at the rate he’s been going so far because he thinks if he stops, he’ll drop dead from hypothermia before he can finish catching his breath, yes, but there has been something more pressing on his mind ever since his sixth step off the ship.
The flurry of snow fall is violent, the sun he can’t see through the storm is blazing and provides nothing but light, and there is nothing.
This simple fact cannot be overstated. He runs, and he runs, and he keeps on running, and there is nothing. A great, large sum, of shit-fuck nothing.
Tommy runs. There are no rocks.
Tommy runs. There are no hills.
Tommy runs, and worst of all, what might end up being the death of him; there are no trees.
Trees. Ever since his seventh step in the snow, Tommy has been looking for trees, because he can’t run forever.
Tommy doesn’t stop running, even when the feeling of uneasiness he’s beginning to grow dreadfully familiar with falls like a gavel in his gut.
That, is what’s been on his mind ever since he realized he’d not only run headfirst into a snowfield, but a graveyard.
The reality of it is, eventually he’ll need to stop, and when he does, what he’s wearing will not be enough to stave away the deadly chill of an alien winter.
Tommys’ sorry, unimpressive life is riding on the event trees exist on this god-forsaken planet.
And yet, there is nothing.
Tommy slows. There’s more snow.
Tommy slows again. At this rate, it’ll bury him.
Tommy slows again. And then, Tommy is slow enough to the point where the storm no longer needs to fight to make him sway.
His shoes, still not waterproof, begin to catch upon the layers and layers of incessant, powdered ice.
Tommy has stopped.
The blizzard hasn’t. Might not ever. It’s alien after all.
Tommy lets his hood blow off his head, hand dropping to his side. Then, Tommy kicks up snow in a motion so violent that it hurts his thigh, and drops down to the ground, crosslegged. He holds his face up with his hands, blocking out the light. They do nothing to bring the heat back to his cheeks, or halt the growing tension headache behind his eyes; there is no warmth left in his palms. Impressive, because Tommy runs hot.
Uncontested, the storm rages on.
He wonders if the snow has fallen in town yet. It wasn’t quite November, but he thinks it’s been getting colder earlier. He’s not sure how that works since Global Warming is apparently real. He’d sort of hoped that would mean Winters would eventually cease to exist. It doesn’t quite seem to be looking that way.
The gusts of snow surround him, pushing and pulling wildly in fraying directions, and they almost start to feel warm as he sits there, going through the motions of accepting the fact his coffin will be icy. He thinks he’s going crazy. He thinks it’s probably proof he’s dying.
One time, a combination of winters’ wind and an icy curb planted him flat on his back directly outside of the Gas Station. Tommy had laid there, dignity and will to get back up seeping away ever so slowly as all the struggles ceased. The Gas Station lady had hobbled outside, automatic sliding doors moving faster than she was, and stared down at him. She’d coughed indifferently. Sniffed a bit too. Tommy thinks she’d been expecting something a little more interesting when she’d gone to the effort of venturing outside.
Tommy feels a little bit like he did then. He’d been trying really hard, just like he had been on the curb, struggling against the wind and the icy concrete his smooth soled shoes couldn’t hope to get a grip on. Then, he fell, and it didn’t matter anymore, because all his efforts ended up being for nothing. He’d ended up on the ground anyway, and it was much easier to lay there than get back up again, and resume the fight against Mother Nature, and her sick sense of humor.
Who was Tommy to try and fight her? She probably knew best.
Tommy wonders if the snow this year will be as unimpressive as the last. It still hadn’t been pleasant, but it was nothing to write home about. It’d only lasted for a couple of days—If his coworkers were to be believed. Tommy didn’t know. His eyes were closed.
Tommy wonders what gifts he would’ve gotten for Christmas this year. Probably a pair of craft scissors to go along with the stack of printer paper his foster mother had gotten for him the year before. He could’ve probably figured out how to make something explicit out of paper snowflakes if he’d put a little more time into it.
Tommy wonders if she’s watching out the kitchen window right now. Or if she’s asleep. Or at work. He wonders if she’s realized he’s gone for real yet.
Tommy blows hot air into his hands, and it barely helps. That might’ve been poetic, but Tommy can’t figure it out through the tremors and his wandering thoughts. Truly, it’s never been more “for real” than it is right now. Tommy looks up from between his fingers, eyes unable to take much more of the unkindly massage he’s been giving them.
Dark spots dance in his vision. He accepts that he’s done for when there’s one dark spot that refuses to fade away. The wind makes Tommy sway a little. He keeps staring at that dark spot.
That dark spot.
That dark spot, that the longer he stares at, begins to resemble a spot less and less.
Tommy squeezes his eyes shut over and over again to get the dryness out of his eyes. Blink. Dark. Open. Light. Tommy’s tongue is stale in his mouth.
There’s a black square sitting atop the snow. A heartbeat goes by. Then, it’s suddenly been several heartbeats, and it’s still there.
Tommy leans in closer, gingerly reaching his hand towards it, and that’s when recognition hits him like a truck. That’s a phone. That’s his phone.
But somehow, that’s not the most interesting thing about it anymore, because when he snatches up his phone, there’s something underneath it that breaks apart the illusion of a relentless glacier.
Tommy looks back from his phone in his hands, to the small splotch of red that peaks out from beneath where the snow has been disturbed, revealing that it’d been hidden beneath at least an entire foot of ice. Tommy first thinks of blood.
His hand spikes with prickling pain when he flexes it, but through his wonder, he can’t seem to find it in himself to care. He’s on his hands and knees when his pink fingers reach the red. They glide through the strips of crimson, and as they do, he thinks: this looks like grass.
The realization happens, and the feeling that comes after is almost immediate. It makes him drop the soft blade he’d been holding between his fingers, hand pulling back like it’d been burned.
Tommy stares, and stares, even when flakes of snow begin to get stuck to his lashes.
Then, Tommy shoves his reunited phone into his pocket and dives his hand into the patch of unburied grass. The spread of warmth that tickles his skin is pleasant, and alarming. Tommy thinks he must be dead or near it, because he’s hallucinating.
In his brain’s last ditch efforts at coping with an icy death, it’s conjured the fictitious idea of warm, inviting red alien grass that lies just beneath the lethal torrent of snow, cheekily waiting for Tommy to discover its hiding place. The patch of red grass sits there, mocking him and his declining mental state the longer it decides to stay.
Snow collects in his hair, and it’s not melting like it should.
That’s enough to get him to start digging. Using his hands which are shielded by his sleeves, he shovels more and more snow away, until the small patch of red has evolved from the size of an iphone to the size of a trash lid. The snow he’s on begins to feel unstable beneath his knees, and for the life of him, he can’t imagine why.
Then Tommy slips. The ground beneath him had shifted. His swearing is all but drowned out by the wind, and when he holds out his arms to break his fall, he thinks, this is it.
For possibly the seventh time this day, Tommy thinks he’s died.
But, strangely enough, when he looks up, instead of dead, he finds that he’s torso deep in the red grass. Not in the way he’d like to be, because Tommy is not upright. He’d managed to twist himself to stare skyward, but his legs are still propped up on the snow, and blood is quickly rushing to his head.
His back is alight with warmth. It feels real enough that Tommy is starting to think it isn’t one big hypothermic hallucination. If it was fake, he’d have made the warmth reach further than his backside, and also hallucinated himself a blanket while he was at it. The wind wouldn’t still be threatening to take his nose via frostbite.
Huh, Tommy thinks.
Tommy sluggishly goes to drag the hem of his shirt to cover the lower part of his face, and he lays there. The position he’s in isn’t comfortable. He thinks there’s a tiny rock digging into his kidney. And frankly, he’s still cold. But, here’s the thing: Tommy is really, really tired.
He’s exhausted, actually. He doesn’t know how far he ran, but if the way he can’t catch his breath is any tell it was probably more than four-hundred meters. Tommy was humble enough to admit it—he was terrible during the annual mile run. He used to think a mile was a lap around the track. One could imagine his horror when he found out it was four.
Tommy grips a handful of alien grass between his fingers. He doesn’t know how, but there’s faint heat tracing the pads of his fingers. Bunched together like this, they sort of feel like they’re burning his palms. He thinks because, in comparison, his hands are frigid.
He’s not sure how long he lays there, catching his breath, but when he finally finds the will to do something about the rock making an indent in his back, the wind is still whistling, and the sky is still a dull white.
Tommy grunts, wrestling his arm out from under his backside, and then holds it up. The thing in-between his fingers is most certainly a rock, but perhaps more of the pebble variety. There’s orange rings running across it, the rest of it is near black. Even blacker against the stark white of the sky.
Tommy turns it side to side, marveling. Then, something tickles the back of his hand. Tommy’s first thought is the wind. Tommy’s second thought is that the wind here didn’t really do a lot of tickling.
…
It was probably the wind.
…
Tommy whips his hand around, and just about screams.
There are several obscenities trapped in his throat, threatening to escape as he stares wide eyed at the red thorax, and the six legs that stubbornly cling to his skin.
It can be said, that Tommy is not afraid of bugs.
Its tiny mandibles tap together, indifferent to his turmoil. Tommy is so still it’s beginning to hurt.
Tommy takes in a deep, deep breath. The alien bug slips, dangling by a singular leg from his hand for a short, helpless moment before recovering in what manages to be a completely silent endeavor. Tommy finds that despite the show of humility, he is still not quite pleased with it.
Slowly, stiffly, Tommy maneuvers to lay on his side. The bug is inexplicably docile. This either means it lacks predators, or it is exceedingly stupid. Tommy hopes for the former.
It’s fuzzy. Like a bumblebee. It looks like a bee too, a little. Its eyes are dark and oval-ish. The similarities grow smaller from there. Firstly, it’s red, with small streaks of white along its fuzz here and there. Tommy thinks its beady black eyes are rather inquisitive. It’s almost too easy to forget it’s an alien.
It’s very. Normal. It’s bigger than your average bee, sure, but for an alien Tommy was expecting something a little bigger. A little weirder looking. Perhaps even mutant. Secondly; he doesn’t understand why it’s just sitting there, on his hand, not in any sort of hurry in the slightest.
Tommy could kill it. It would be easy.
He could crush it beneath his palm. He could bite its head off. It’d probably crawl into his mouth if the way it’s acting is any sort of indicator of its intelligence.
It cleans an antennae with a small leg.
Tommy lowers his occupied hand to the forest of scarlet grass—the parts he hadn’t flattened. Tommy stares into the growth, and comes to the unsteady understanding that the grass bed is made of layers upon layers of itself, dense enough to hold several layers of snow atop of it.
The bugs make sense now. This is most certainly a utopia for insects if he’s ever seen one.
Tommy wiggles his hand, impatient. The alien bee makes no move to disembark. Tommy pokes its behind with a finger. Disgruntled, the bug finally seems to get the memo, and shimmies off his hand, gingerly finding its way onto the grass.
Huh.
Tommy isn’t so cold anymore. Whatever he’s feeling still isn’t very pleasant, but for a moment, he could pretend he wasn’t stuck in the middle of an alien blizzard, on an alien planet. Tommy finds himself glaring at the bug that still sits there, for being further proof of where he is, and for being stupid. Its mandibles move indiscernibly, touching up against the blades of grass. After a moment, it disappears between them, wiggling its thorax to get through.
Tommy stares after it.
Surrounded by things that aren’t his, Tommy pulls out something that undeniably is.
There’s one more crack in his phone than there was before.
He presses the button on the side, and the screen lights up softly, just like it would’ve back home. The only sign that his phone knows they’re somewhere where they won’t be found is the “No Service” symbol projected in the corner of his screen. He’s on fourty-two percent.
That’ll last him three days at best, if his phone usage is sparse. It’ll be easy, because his phone is effectively useless.
Another alien bug crawls around in his peripheral. He doesn’t know if it’s the same one, but it seems just as unconcerned about him as the first.
The time reads: 12:26 AM. The stupid catfight his foster mother had instigated was sometime after four-something in the afternoon, which meant it’d been something like…seven hours. Just how long had he been out?
Whatever the case was, he’s definitely past curfew now. Curfew, Tommy thinks the word with no small amount of repulsion. Tommy was sixteen going on seventeen, not five. They didn’t live in Gotham. It was literally just Philadelphia.
But, for whatever reason, something Tommy did today had to have been her last straw. Which was mind-numbingly stupid. In the entire duration of his stay at his foster mother’s house, not once has there been a singular mention of curfew. How was he even supposed to know? Even with all the fucked up shit he’s gone through today, he really thinks he should count his blessings; at least he doesn’t have to listen to another minute of her coked up nonsense.
Tommy opens every app on his phone. He doesn’t even care that it’s burning the battery. The heat that would’ve otherwise been a warning is something he now grips onto like a vice. He drags his palm against the blackened screen. It’s nice.
Tommy makes eye contact with compound ones. They’re perfunctory. The bug they’re attached to only seems to care for the blade of grass it’s prodding with its mandibles. Tommy thinks of different compound eyes, unmoving and inexpressive just like the ones in front of him now. Tommy thinks of hands, familiar and distinct. Tommy thinks of mandibles clicking together, anything but indifferent.
Tommy thinks, this close to it, he’s beginning to realize he doesn’t know how to go about coming to terms with death. He’s been trying not to think about it.
But when he does, the single thought rings through his mind. Where else is there to go from here?
When Tommy first sees them, he thinks they’re fucked up clouds. But the sky gets dimmer, and then dimmer, and then dimmer, and that’s when he sees them for what they really are. It looks like creamer poured into coffee, with its cloudy swirls. Not quite mixed enough. Except, instead of warm browns and egg-whites, it’s greys, dark blues, and bronzes.
A galaxy, Tommy concludes. Just a single part of it. Not his. It’s streaked across the gradually darkening sky. Tommy doesn’t know how he could’ve mistaken this for clouds.
The stars that dot it are vivid, despite the presence of the still-setting sun. The stars probably haven’t shone this clearly in Philadelphia for a long time, but he’d never been much of a star-gazer.
He thinks the little lights might be twinkling. They’re foreign, still not his, and to put it simply enough, Tommy can’t look away. The murky spirals of the galaxy nearly take up the whole sky as he sees it. He thinks he’d seen something like this before, during a unit in his science class. At the time, he’d sort of thought it was edited. Tommy blows an icy breath in front of his face, and he decides that he’d like to describe it all as “serene”. He thinks this might be the quietest it’s been so far.
The storm has long since soothed. When Tommy sits up, the last remnants of wind tickle his hair like a goodbye, before disbanding into coltish wisps. He didn’t think the wind here knew how to be gentle, but he supposes he hasn’t known it for very long. The air is more breathable than it’s been since he landed, now that it’s not trying to force its way into his lungs.
He thinks over the course of the time between sun-high and sunset, Tommy has sapped the warmth from the grass like a vampire. When he looks back down, he half expects the blades to be grey and shriveled, bloodless.
They’re as red as ever. Just a bit flattened.
The alien bugs are gone. They’ve been gone for a while now. Maybe they’re hiding. It makes Tommy feel a little bit like he should be hiding too.
Tommy sits up further. Tommy’s phone screen is bright against the growing dusk. The time reads 1:34 AM. His battery is at twenty-nine. So much for lasting him three days. He did say it’d be at the very best. It was pretty clear that right now Tommy wasn’t nearly at his best.
Tommy monotonously swipes away each tab until they’re all gone. Then, he lets his arm fall down in his lap. God, he’s tired.
Tommy cranes his neck to the sky. He doesn’t have to squint to look upwards anymore. He never thought he could prefer the night to the day. It was too quiet, when most people were sleeping. If you weren’t part of that lucky bunch, you were left with your thoughts, and sometimes the sound of drunkards fighting each other with broken bottles on the street.
He’d never thought he’d also be left with the sky. It doesn't make any noise, and it takes up space in his head anyway. He doesn't know how that works. Maybe star-gazers were onto something.
Tommy blinks.
Tommy's eyes strain as he stares skyward.
He doesn’t want to look down. Problem: something down is vying for his attention. Something, is glinting in the distance, closer to the ground than anything. Not a star in the sky. In reach.
Tommy blinks again, head dropping down to stare forward. Snug against the horizon, far enough away that Tommy would’ve had no chance of seeing it through the blizzard, is an even row of lights. For a moment, they seem otherworldly. In the next moment, this is no longer the case. Tommy’s beginning to lose trust in the idea of a mind that plays tricks on him, but he doesn’t let go of it. Not just yet.
He keeps staring, closing his eyes once, opening them, then closing them once again. The lights only seem to get more clear. Distantly, Tommy recalls the angler fish from Nemo.
Tommy gets up anyway.
1:48 AM. 1:52 AM. 2:00 AM. Tommy checks his phone three times in total. He hates looking up from it to still see snow.
He doesn’t feel like he’s getting any closer, but he must be.
What used to be strange, indistinct lights, neatly lined up beside one another, begin to resemble something more intentional. It’s contemporary. It’s industrial. It’s man-made. Something-made. Tommy doesn’t know how to explain away the way his breath is caught in his chest. He’s not running anymore, so that can’t be it.
One leg in front of the other. That’s all he has to do.
The hand that isn’t tight around his phone has his knife in a vise. It doesn’t provide the same warmth his phone does. Tommy can’t make himself let it go regardless.
Despite his initial beliefs, Tommy is getting closer.
White, blinding stadium lights wash the entire impending structure in an eerie, neutral grey. It’s inviting. It’s imminent. It’s mystifying. It’s ugly. It shares uncanny likeness to a desert oasis, in the way that he’s not sure if what he’s seeing is real. It fills him with uncertainty.
The snow that sits at the base of its walls sparkles with the radiance. When Tommy looks up, the walls stretch taller and taller, before they eventually blend in with the darkening sky. Or, his vision is just getting blurrier. It’s hard to tell.
It’s getting harder to put one foot in front of the other, but Tommy isn’t tired of walking.
Even so, each step is lumbering, and it feels closer to shambling than walking. He was colder earlier. It was colder in general, earlier. Small blessings: Tommy thinks he’s reached that numb feeling he was searching for when he first arrived. Better yet, he’s adapting to the frigid climate. It’s not a friend, but they’re coming to an uneasy truce. He’s not sure he’s happy about this.
The snow crunches beneath his shoes.
The cold isn’t unbearable anymore, but the matter of what’s beneath his knees is a different story. His socks are soaked. It wasn’t hard. The snow comes up to Tommy’s shins when it isn’t packed enough for him to walk on. Tommys’ shoes are made of cloth. It’s an unfortunate combination.
2:21 AM.
This building was further away than he initially thought. This is troubling, as he’d estimated it was about a million miles away to begin with.
Tommy thinks the walls are metal. He’s pretty sure, actually. They shine with the lights attached to them, making their dull greys somewhat less boring.
Somehow, the sun is still setting.
Snow crunches beneath his shoes.
He stops.
The sound stops with him.
His knife isn’t exactly cold anymore. With how Tommy’s been holding it, it’s become pleasantly warm. Somehow, Tommy thinks his palms have grown clammy. The inside of his mouth is dry. He refrains from eating snow.
The end is nearly there. He thinks….maybe….four-hundred meters. It looks like it’d tire him out to run the distance. Maybe more than four-hundred meters then.
Snow crunches beneath his shoes.
It’s the only sound he hears.
He stops.
When the crunching stops, it’s late.
It’s late.
Tommy is so still it’s beginning to hurt.
Tommy turns around.
Making eye contact with it is something he does without meaning to.
He almost can’t find them in the growing darkness. Its white fur expertly camouflages it against the snow, but its black, beady eyes give it away—just barely glinting in the dusk.
It’s not moving. Tommy is frozen in place. There is no wind. There is no snow-fall. There are no sounds. Tommy wonders for a moment if it’s really there. His heart is constricted in ice, and he knows it is.
The details of its face are defined by the shapes Tommy’s mind forms in the dark. They shift and morph, getting fuzzier, but it’s not moving.
Its eyes stare straight ahead.
Tommy is frozen in place.
It’s looking right at him.
Tommy is frozen in place.
This proves to be a mistake.
Tommy is on the ground. Tommy is not alone when he falls. Tommy is screaming, and he is the only one doing so. The air is forced out of his lungs, and suddenly, he can’t breathe enough to fill them back up. Something sharp is digging into his side. His back is alight with the feeling of frost soaking through every single one of his layers.
Something really sharp is digging into his side.
Tommy shrieks, a sharp, brief noise. His fists flail wildly. They land somewhere, hard, and it doesn’t let go. It doesn’t make a sound as it bares its teeth, jaw widening. Tommy’s arms fly up to shield his face. Its teeth are visible around the sleeve.
Tommy can’t feel his right arm anymore. Tommy’s left arm is moving.
The cloth does nothing to stop it. It bites down further. Small grunts, the sound of struggle, and his own beating heart are the only things Tommy can hear.
Tommy’s left arm is somewhere he can’t see. It grips around something cold.
Tommy can’t hear it when it unsheathes. Tommy can’t hear it when it finds its way into flesh. Tommy can’t hear himself think when the burst of warmth coming from the entry point doesn’t end up being enough.
Tommy hears it when the knife plunges into the side of its head. Tommy hears it when it does so again. And again. And again. And again, and again, and again. He doesn’t remember when its grip around his forearm loosened.
When Tommy sees the red splattered across the snow, he thinks of grass.
Then, he thinks of nausea. Tommy thinks he’s nauseous.
Tommy shakes, uncontrollably, turbulent. It's not very cold anymore. An arm, his arm, is around his middle. The other is holding him up. It’s cold.
Tommy curls further into himself, muttering indiscernible expletives. He can’t quite hear them over his own rushing blood. It’s loud amongst the quiet.
He’s not sure where his blood starts—how much of it is his. How much of it isn’t. Blood oozes from a body in the snow. White fur is stained with red. The arm around his middle is throbbing with warmth, and he’s not sure he wants it to stop. The lights just ahead look like eyes. Small, beady eyes; watching him. They don’t get any duller, even after what it saw him do.
Tommy takes a shuttering intake of air, leaning closer to the ground. He breathes.
Tommy stops shaking.
He flips the knife closed.
Tommy stands on the edge just where the light doesn’t reach.
His arms hang limply at his sides. The seconds continue to tick by. Tommy’s cheek is itchy. The threshold remains unbreached.
Tommy gazes ahead, eyes going over the sparkling snow, then the walls. Up high, where he can’t see the walls end, there's a blinking red light. He wonders what that’s for.
The seconds continue to tick by. His limbs feel quite heavy. With how loosely he’s holding it, the knife in his hand feels as if it might slip and fall into the snow—but the knife in his hand is unconcerned. The only thing it is is a weight that reminds him he isn’t floating.
Tommy wonders how long he can stand here before it starts to get cold again. At some point, it had stopped.
In the dark, Tommy can hardly see the way the red on his shirt stretches further than it should. In the dark, he isn’t someone with a body, someone with sticky fingers or a mind. In the dark, he doesn’t have to squint to see.
But, who is he kidding. There’s blood drying on his face, and it’s not his.
Tommy steps into the light.
Tommy drags his palm against the cool metal. A streaky trail of red is left behind. When Tommy kicks the snow away from the base of the structure, there is no red grass underneath it. The longer his hand sits on the wall, the more it starts to hurt. Tommy pulls his hand away and bunches it up in his sweatshirt, because you can’t see stains on black.
When he finds it, its four screws sit there, irresistible. In the grand scheme of things, the vent grate is a low tier obstacle.
When Tommy flicks open his knife, blood is stubbornly stuck to the metal. When he looks down at it, he grimaces. Tommy thinks; Jesus. This is gross.
The tip fits into the gash in the metal perfectly. When Tommy twists his arm, the screw gives, easy and painless.