Fiction

OutThawing

Brendan was freezing. Not in the exasperated way people say “freezing” when they want their husbands to warm the car up, or the way kids use it when they “need” some hot chocolate. No, he was actually feeling the blood turn solid in his veins, feeling the heat drain from his body and seep across the stony earth until it was absorbed by dead leaves with no use for it. He thought he could actually see things dying around him, or maybe it was his state of mind projecting outward onto his surroundings until they were one and the same. The grass, the roots, the battery on his cell phone. All dead.

He forced himself to move his joints. Keep them functional as long as possible, he thought. Maybe someone will find you. Yeah, right.

Maybe it would be Meghan. That is, if she even knew that he’d gone camping in the first place, cared that he’d been missing for a few extra days. She’d find him curled up around himself in a pile of dirty snow in a worn-out forest and she’d think, God, I’m glad I left him, or I’d be there, too. It was this above anything that kept him alive.

Brendan cracked the knuckles on his left hand, one-by-one, then the right. He used his wrist to brush the snow out of his eyelashes. With some effort, he raised his head and cocked it to listen for signs of life in the dark woods.

Nothing.

He lay his head down again, exhausted. If he wanted to, he could stick his tongue out and taste the snow on the leaf in front of his face. He could suck in every last bit of moisture that leaf provided, and drain it. He was good at that. He’d done it to Meghan, he knew. Drained her with his promises and scattered ideas and crazy plans to run away to the woods and live, just the two of them. So she left. And here he was in the woods, what he’d always wanted. A mocking tribute to Thoreau.

He wished it could be a simple death, but there were too many thoughts clouding the situation. The job he’d quit, the life he’d quit, Meghan. He missed her now with a last healing fire deep inside his chest, but it was not enough. Still, the fire spurred him on. He lifted his head and then his shoulders, arms, torso, knees. He couldn’t let her find him like this. He hoped for some little gift of dignity, some last bit of his will that would keep him from giving up and letting the earth pull him into its shivering arms.

The piercing cracks of a falling branch echoed violently. Brendan headed in that direction.

The bang at the door was less of a knock than a slump. Talia cursed as the book she’d been skimming fell on the wet floor of the cabin. In a panic, she grabbed her flashlight keychain and a fishing pole resting in the corner and inched her feet toward the sound.

“Hello?” she whispered, as though speaking to the wood in front of her. “Hello?” Louder. “I heard you; I know you’re not an animal!” Finally, fingers clenched, she opened the door and squealed as a man fell inside. He looked almost rabid, lying on her rug, with frosted hair and eyebrows, ripped jacket, sneakers with laces in frozen knots. But to Talia, poised with her fishing pole ready to strike, the worst and most humane part about him was the eyes. The man stared at her ceiling as if it didn’t exist. He was seeing something else, she was sure. A kind of frantic hope?

She suddenly felt ridiculous with her pole in hand, prepared to defend herself when minutes ago she was scanning a chapter on the nature of depression. The Nature of Depression, like it was a state of living as simple as life on Walden Pond. So easy, so pure. WAKE UP, TALLY! What were you THINKING??? Her mother’s voice from her memories. I’m sorry, Momma, she thought. I felt so lost. I wanted to be with you. Talia took a step closer to the frozen man in her doorway and knelt down close to his face. Fearfully, now that her life mattered, she laid a hand on his neck. His heart was beating. He had a chance. So did she. ■