health
Three figures walk out into the snow. It's falling harder now, wet thick flakes, and the girls are shivering and struggling in their nightgowns. The third is taller, bulkier in his warm winter gear, but he sags under the weight of the duffel bag.
The field would take a day or more to cross, but it's not a complete clearing. Here and there they pass a tree or bush, and once the hollowed-out shell of an old farm, all blanketed in white. No one has been here for quite some time. Every so often, he looks over his shoulder at the car falling fast behind them, at their footprints disappearing beneath the ceaseless fall of the snow. He sees this and his expression seems to deem it good.
Both the girls are blonde and colorless, their cheeks bloody against their gags and their ankles red with the cold. Surely this cold, the threat of exposure should be enough to make them stop their course, but it does not. There is an air of inevitability here, the sharp tang of a predator just behind them urging them forward.
Once, the girl in front trips over a root hidden by a snowdrift, and the arms tied behind her back fail to break her fall. There she stays, the second standing silent vigil, till the third catches up to them. The man bodily hauls her to her feet again, all without a word, and they resume their limping pace. The ankle twisted in the fall turns a darker red, then purple. Still, they do not stop.
Eventually they pass beneath a cluster of trees, whose branches lattice the brooding gray sky above with their skinny black presence. Nothing is around for miles. Here he stops them, laying down his bag, arranging the girls in a position that holds significance only to him.
While he digs, the girls sidle closer together, letting their arms touch. In their closeness exists a tenuous solidarity, an understanding. There will be no clemency, they seem to know, no hope for mercy or even reason. Their eyes are flat, not even betraying the primal state of fear. Fear has been sublimated, swallowed, pissed into the snow. Fear no longer has its hold on them.
When everything is how he means to leave it, he lowers the shovel and comes to stand before the girls. No words are exchanged, yet a tension lies between them taut as a piano wire, a new understanding between the captor and his prey. They watch soberly as he draws the pistol, focusing on the gleam of the metal, the pendulum-like way he waves it back and forth, teasing.
There they stand in the swirling snow, shivering and waiting.
The first pull is always the hardest. But there is no way to shout, no way to raise the hue and cry. The shot comes out muffled, as if traveling through layers of cloth, or flesh, before it takes off half her head. Blood and brains explode across the snow in latticework as the girl falls dreamily to her knees, as if in prayer. There she stays for a moment, a rarity, before falling away from all his careful precautions to spread her bloody mess.
The other doesn't take her eyes away the entire time. Only now does fear creep into them, the uncertainty building for hours cruelly ripped away. Her gaze slides from the corpse to her murderer, pleading and accusatory at once, and she starts to cry, and the tears freeze on her scabbed and bloody cheeks.
He considers for a moment before he shoots her too. One of her arm jerks against her bonds and her eyes open wide, but that's all. The first shot takes her squarely in the chest, sending her stumbling backward into the shallow grave, but he keeps shooting until he's emptied the entire clip into her. When the last echo fades he approaches her, kneels down beside her. Smoke rises from her body, a helix of misery and blood slowly twining, and then unraveling to disappear imperceptibly in the cold winter air.
The field would take a day or more to cross, but it's not a complete clearing. Here and there they pass a tree or bush, and once the hollowed-out shell of an old farm, all blanketed in white. No one has been here for quite some time. Every so often, he looks over his shoulder at the car falling fast behind them, at their footprints disappearing beneath the ceaseless fall of the snow. He sees this and his expression seems to deem it good.
Both the girls are blonde and colorless, their cheeks bloody against their gags and their ankles red with the cold. Surely this cold, the threat of exposure should be enough to make them stop their course, but it does not. There is an air of inevitability here, the sharp tang of a predator just behind them urging them forward.
Once, the girl in front trips over a root hidden by a snowdrift, and the arms tied behind her back fail to break her fall. There she stays, the second standing silent vigil, till the third catches up to them. The man bodily hauls her to her feet again, all without a word, and they resume their limping pace. The ankle twisted in the fall turns a darker red, then purple. Still, they do not stop.
Eventually they pass beneath a cluster of trees, whose branches lattice the brooding gray sky above with their skinny black presence. Nothing is around for miles. Here he stops them, laying down his bag, arranging the girls in a position that holds significance only to him.
While he digs, the girls sidle closer together, letting their arms touch. In their closeness exists a tenuous solidarity, an understanding. There will be no clemency, they seem to know, no hope for mercy or even reason. Their eyes are flat, not even betraying the primal state of fear. Fear has been sublimated, swallowed, pissed into the snow. Fear no longer has its hold on them.
When everything is how he means to leave it, he lowers the shovel and comes to stand before the girls. No words are exchanged, yet a tension lies between them taut as a piano wire, a new understanding between the captor and his prey. They watch soberly as he draws the pistol, focusing on the gleam of the metal, the pendulum-like way he waves it back and forth, teasing.
There they stand in the swirling snow, shivering and waiting.
The first pull is always the hardest. But there is no way to shout, no way to raise the hue and cry. The shot comes out muffled, as if traveling through layers of cloth, or flesh, before it takes off half her head. Blood and brains explode across the snow in latticework as the girl falls dreamily to her knees, as if in prayer. There she stays for a moment, a rarity, before falling away from all his careful precautions to spread her bloody mess.
The other doesn't take her eyes away the entire time. Only now does fear creep into them, the uncertainty building for hours cruelly ripped away. Her gaze slides from the corpse to her murderer, pleading and accusatory at once, and she starts to cry, and the tears freeze on her scabbed and bloody cheeks.
He considers for a moment before he shoots her too. One of her arm jerks against her bonds and her eyes open wide, but that's all. The first shot takes her squarely in the chest, sending her stumbling backward into the shallow grave, but he keeps shooting until he's emptied the entire clip into her. When the last echo fades he approaches her, kneels down beside her. Smoke rises from her body, a helix of misery and blood slowly twining, and then unraveling to disappear imperceptibly in the cold winter air.