The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Yuki-onna 
by Elaine Pascale

Ari woke to a paralyzing cold sensation.

The air was flooded with a glacial energy that pricked her skin.  A wave of panic overtook her when her eyes would not open. Touching her face, she felt particles of ice cementing her lashes shut.

Ari remembered the door bursting open and the woman in white breathing her icy breath over everything inside. Ari’s husband had fallen to the floor: a frost-covered corpse.

And the baby. The woman in white had taken Ari’s baby.

As Ari remembered this, she cried and her warm tears released the icy shackles on her eyes.

She bundled more layers on top of the endless layers she already wore and followed the sound of the baby cries that were carried by the wind.

“The baby,” Ari whispered. She tried to say the baby’s name, but fumbled to form it on her cold lips.

There was a cackling sound, too. It was the woman in white, weaving her enchantment so that Ari felt blinded and confused as she pushed through the maze of snow.

“The baby,” she whispered again. Only this time, she could not recall the baby’s name. She remembered the woman’s name, Yuki-onna. She was a trickster. Ari remembered hearing of others following the yokai until they died of exposure. Ari had looked upon those victims with disdain; they deserved their chilly end for being so foolish.

She was not foolish; she was trying to save her baby.

She tried to picture the baby, hoping the memory of soft skin and milky breath would warm her, but she failed to conjure an image. She was embarrassed to admit that she could no longer remember if her baby was a boy or a girl.

Yuki-onna’s singing harmonized with the baby’s cries. Following the devilish song, Ari was led to a polar tunnel.

Despite the shelter it provided, the tunnel was colder than the air outside. Ari pushed forward, following the song and feeling a sense of triumph when she saw that there was no exit at the end of the tunnel. Yuki-onna would be trapped by the far wall.

What Ari failed to realize was that she was the one who was trapped. The entrance to the tunnel  had been sealed by an avalanche of snow. Yuki-anna turned to face Ari, her arms empty.

There was no baby. There had never been a baby. That had been a frosty mirage planted by Yuki-onna to get Ari to follow her.

Yuki-onna smiled and blew her breath over Ari, sealing her in an icy tomb.

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Fiction © Copyright Elaine Pascale
Image courtesy of Pixaby.com

More from Elaine Pascale:

The Kitchen Witches

The women of Cape Cod have a story that is dying to be told. If only they could live long enough to tell it.

When Fiona Walker is contracted to write about a party attended by her social circle, her friends begin dying. She captures the competition and misery of the women around her through three different stories.

In Wishes, Melanie Voss discovers a Time Between Time where nothing that happens counts. Initially, Time Between Time is a welcome escape from a life spent watching the clock while doing chores for her family. But something sinister is in the Time Between Time and it is headed straight for Melanie.

Death and Taxes tells the story of Nashville DeCota, the Cape Capo. Nash swears that she is not the Island Impaler, nor the Tooth Snatcher, but she has just as many skeletons in her closet. When her husband, Derrick, is kidnapped, she has to come clean about her crimes if she ever wants to see him again.

Fiona tells her own story in Hazing, where she finds that the real source of evil behind the deaths of her friends is worse than she could have ever imagined.

Available on Amazon!