The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

Sometimes, You Can’t Stay Inside
by Melissa R. Mendelson 

Snap.  Snap.  Snap.  Crack.  The ice finally fractured.

“I see it!”  The little girl wiped the snow away with her gloved hands.  “It’s right below me.”

I kept my back towards her, but part of me wanted to look.  She had been at it for a long time, maybe hours, maybe even days.  If I saw it, I might want to hope, but hope was a dangerous thing to have.

I kicked at the snow beneath my boots, my hands shoved into my pockets, fighting to stay warm.  The hood over my head almost blocked my eyes, but I kept my gaze trained on the entrance/exit in front of me.

“You could help,” the little girl said.  “If we did this together, it wouldn’t take so long.”

“Who said I wanted to help?”  I snorted at my statement.  Help.  None of us got any help.

“I don’t want to give up!”

I flinched at her words.  “If I gave up, I would be dead right now.”  I glanced over my shoulder at her, flinching at the look in the little girl’s eyes.   “I’m still here,” I said.

“I am too, so please, help me.”

I turned toward her but stopped myself.  No, it was no use, and it didn’t matter.  I need to stop hiding inside.

“What are you going to do?”  The little girl asked as she returned to working on breaking the ice.  “You going to return back out there?”

“There is nothing for me out there,” I said.

“Then, stay in here.  With me.”

I wanted to, but I could already feel the pull from outside.  I did my best, but I failed.  We failed.

“I think I got it.  If I work more at it, I could slide my fingers through.  I could reach it.”

If the little girl succeeded, she would open old wounds, painful, razor-sharp old wounds.  I can’t have that.

“What are you doing?”

I shut my eyes, allowing the cold in, seeping through every part of me.

“Stop that!  You’re hurting me!”

This is the only way to survive.

“Please, stop.  Stop doing what you are doing.”

“I have remained inside for as long as I can, but I can’t shut out the outside.  For me to survive out there, I need to do this.”

“But you are broken without me, without this.”

“So be it,” I said.

I turned around and stared at the little girl.  Her gloved hands were raised up to her chest, her skin blue.  Her gaze was fixed on me, but her lips were frozen shut.  She blinked and shattered into pieces of snow and ice.

I walked over to where she had sat.  I knelt down, gathering her pieces and pushed them over the cracks that she had made in the ice.  For a moment, I saw the heart frozen beneath me.

I opened my eyes and sat up on the burnt ground, the heat beating down on me.  A rotten stench filled my nose, and my gaze soaked in all the twisted bodies that lied around me.  My body screamed with every movement, every torn flesh, my bitter blood, but I would survive.  I just wouldn’t feel anything inside.

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Fiction © Copyright Melissa R. Mendelson
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com.

About Author Melissa R. Mendelson:

Melissa R. Mendelson is the author of the Sci-Fi Novella, Waken.  She also has a prose poetry collection called, This Will Remain With Us published by Wild Ink Publishing.  Her short story collections, Better Off Here and Name’s Keeper can be found on Amazon/Amazon Kindle.

If you’d like to learn more about Melissa, you can visit her accounts here: www.MelissaMendelson.com