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'Could the number of snowflakes falling, amount to the number of tears that might also fall this night?' He wondered.

"Why is it snowing in the first place?" he asked aloud.

It was the night of Halloween, and for the second year in a row, the snow had fallen heavily on the day of the dead.

"Stupid ******** snow," he muttered, but his tone was unconvincing.

He actually loved the snow. Loved to watch it twirl, flutter and glimmer as it fell to it's death, on the ground below. He would watch it building up slowly, the tiny white flakes, like fragile corpses piled in a mass grave.
Yes, loved it.

He adored and despised the cold at the same time.

His belief was that, watching the snow or rain fall, was like watching tiny dreams falling around you, enveloping you, into a blanket of comfort. Yet the cold that gives birth to the snow, drew you deeper into yourself, in search of warmth within.

Perhaps his hatred of the cold, was in all reality, a reflection of his hatred for himself, as he believed that no warmth could be found within himself.

He sighed, and looked once again towards the sky, which always turned a certain color when it was going to snow. If you could envision an image of an orange, bleeding red, perhaps that is the only description he could have given for the color of the night sky.

For a night that was supposed to see the spirits set free, he could feel nothing in the air around him.

Not an inkling of love, hate or fear... no feelings of remorse, or sorrow, or joy. Only the cold nothingness of the coming winter.


The snow had started falling harder, eclipsing any vision of the night sky.
He set his pen on his notebook, then pushed the notebook aside.

Reaching across the desk, he picked up the silver cigarette case and opened it slowly.
As he took the cigarette from it's case, he gave a bitter smile. Placing it to his lips, he leaned forward to the candle which gave light to his desk, and lit the cigarette. As he took the first drag, his thoughts wandered once again.

Drifting through memories, through dreams and hopes, through failures and scars.
The faces of so many girls, still hung by bleeding nails, throughout his soul. Each holding their own special place. Each, perhaps, a nail in the coffin of his heart. So many beautiful faces... all now lost, save for in his memory.

He still loved each and every one of them, in many different ways, for many different reasons. Some he taught, some taught him. A few of them, he hated to love.. but loved, nonetheless. But while all of them he loved, few returned the feeling.

But ah, yes, a few.

A couple of glimpses of absolute happiness, written in the book of past; a book which he never seemed able to close, no matter how much he despised reading his failures and broken dreams.

"Are you there?" he whispered to the night, exhaling grey whisps of smoke as he spoke.
To wonder where they all might have been on that night, how they felt at that exact moment, brought him to the edge of insanity.

Some of the faces, he had not seen in reality for many years.
Some of them existed now, perhaps only in his mind.

He often wondered if it was better or worse not knowing of their destinies and fates and lives.
It made him bitter and sorrowful, that some people would argue with him on these subjects.

'You can only truly love one,' they would say.

He adamantly disagreed.

'One can love all, if one allows themselves to,' he would reply.

He took another drag from his cigarette, then crushed it against the marble ashtray. Blowing out the candle on the desk, he rose from the chair and walked across the room to the sofa. It had long replaced his bed, as he could no longer sleep in such an open space. The feeling of emptiness, tossing and turning, waking from nightmares to find only a cold, empty space beside him, led him to sleep only on the leather sofa. And though his nightmares still woke him often, at least he could cling to whatever lay inside of him, instead of the nothingness of shadows and the gentle torment of empty sheets.

As he laid down on the sofa, the chilled leather brought a sliver of calm to his mind. And while the snow still fell, he watched and let out a whispered prayer.

"I'm searching for something which can't be found.. but I'm hoping."

On the following eve, the snow had let up little, and he had even seen the neighborhood kids building snowmen and throwing snowballs at each other, earlier in the day. But his mind was more occupied by another event.

While driving home from work, he had seen someone, walking on the side of the road.
One of them.

One of the faces buried in his heart.

The first time he had seen her in nearly a year, but he recognized her instantly.
Strange, it seemed, that he would recognize her so quickly.

'Perhaps,' he thought, 'recognition is not in the faces of those around us. Maybe it's in the feelings we get when those faces are around us.'

He had not stopped.

After all, what would, or could, he say or do?

She knew where to find him, if finding him was something she ever desired.

So he had driven on, lingering somewhere between comfort and torment.
The confusion of his emotions wore on him more and more as he had walked into his empty house.

Not empty, exactly.

Full of things that meant something at some point in time. Yet, empty in a sense that noone occupied it. He didn't consider himself an occupier.. but more of an onlooker. A stranger in his own home.

Shaking off such thoughts, he wandered into the kitchen, and took a bottle of vodka off of the shelf. After he poured it into the crystal shot glass, he lifted the glass up and toasted the air.

"To forever," he said to no one, before raising the glass to his lips.

He poured the clear liquid across his tongue, and into his throat, savoring the soothing sting. Repeating the process, he felt the familiar numbing calm, creeping over his body.
He thought it sad that he still remembered a time when he despised alcohol. He had once condemned it, believing it to be a way to avoid reality, signifying weakness.

'Ah, but I have never claimed to be strong,' he thought.

And such was true.

Others had claimed it for him, and somewhere along the beaten path of his life, he had wandered into a forest of disappointment, realizing he could never become what others had once seen in him. Much like a marionette, he felt. Painted up to be something he wasn't, pulled by strings he could never seem to grasp or control; both grotesque, and alluring. Intruiging the viewer, drawing them into the macabre stage act, until finally, the viewer feels nothing but repulsion and horror.

'If only they'd cut me free,' he thought, as he lifted the bottle of vodka to his mouth, and drank.

Hours later.

Lying on his sofa, he stared at the shadows dancing across the ceiling, cast by the single candle slowly dying by its flame. He was envisioning what summer used to feel like. In his mind, played a dreamscape of sunshine, flowers... of days when it felt wonderful to breathe in, and out, the scent of life entering and escaping his lungs. He had nearly forgotten the blizzard outside, when a sharp knock on the window above the sofa brought him to reality.

Mere seconds after the knock, came a whispered call of his name. He jumped at the uninvited and haunting sounds, opening the window quickly. Peering out the window, seeing only the frozen world outside, he realized he was asleep, only to be awoken by noises of which he dreamed to hear.

"Goddamnit!" he screamed to the smothering snowflakes. "Get out of my dreams!"

He brought himself to his feet too fast, forgetting the numbness the alcohol had brought him, and nearly fell to the ground. Regaining most of his composure, he reached for the open cigarette case, which he had laid on the desk.

After lighting the cigarette, and quickly taking a few deep drags, he picked up the remote control to his stereo system, and turned it on. Moments later, the speakers gave birth to a song of harmonious despair. In between inhaling the smoke of his cigarette, his voice carried the lyrics of the song into the winter air outside his window. The tears once again came in a powerful rush of shame, but his voice did not fail.
"God damn ye, merry gentlemen.. God damn ye all..."

Shaking his head to try and rid himself of his pointless crying, he opened the drawer on the side of the desk. It was the drawer that he had opened only once before, to deposit its contents. His hand grasped the cold, metallic object, and though it weighed little, as he pulled it out of the drawer, for a moment he felt as though he lifted the weight of his world with it. Shoving the object into his pocket, he closed the drawer slowly, thinking about what he had just done.

Suddenly, he realized he was trying to smoke the cigarette too much, and the heat of the cherry ember concentrated against his lip.

"********," he muttered, flicking it out the window.

Reaching for his jacket that laid on the floor beside the sofa, he pulled it up around himself and put it on. He picked up the cigarette case and stuffed it into the jacket pocket, almost forgetting to also grab his lighter. Then, unsure of his intentions, he pushed the window open completely, and climbed up into the frame, staring at the bed of snow below, before jumping out, barely landing on his feet.

He took a few difficult steps around, before staring off into the distance. The snow resembled a blanket, punched full of tiny holes that offered you no vision beyond.

'Ah, so this is what beyond forever means,' he thought.

No vision whatsoever of what it may be, only a reminder that it's there. He reached into the jacket and pulled out the silver case and his lighter once again, blindly removing another smoke, twirling it in his fingers a little, then lifting it to his shivering lips. The lighter sparked noisily, as he lit the cigarette.

It brought his attention to the fact that despite the heavy storm, it was extremely quiet, standing the middle of the snow. He stood there for a few minutes, the snow collecting in his hair and upon his shoulders. Thinking, perhaps, about the world looked like, not beneath, nor above, the snow.. but inside of it.

Was there something hidden deep inside the frozen hills? What could be seen from inside that white world?

A fragment of a noise brought him to attention and he turned his head towards the far side of the yard, searching for its cause. Finding nothing, he felt more than ever he had somehow lost any touch with reality. After years of trying to cling to some hope of a real world, perhaps he had finally drifted so far into the forests that there was no going back.

"Only one way to find out," he whispered.

Reaching into his pocket, wrapping his fingers around the metallic object, he drew it out and studied it for a moment.

'It's so small. How can it take away so much?,' he mused.

Suddenly, he was hit with a torrent of images. Things from his past, things from a once possible, but long lost future. All of the faces of the girls he loved, some smiling, some angry, some in tears.

"No, stop, go away!" he shouted. "You left me, leave me alone!"

In one quick motion he brought his hand to his head and pulled the trigger on the gun he held in his hand. An explosion of quiet brilliance echoed against the falling snow.


And as his lifeless form laid peacefully in the snow, the falling crystals still continued to twist, flutter, and dance their way down to their own deaths.. or rebirths.

Like tiny white flowers, covering his frozen grave.