White
The snow was cold around my neck, bunching up and freezing into sharper chunks of icy white. I slid, face down, over a lip, not caring what was below. Sliding faster and faster through the silent night air, until shoved sideways, by a tree.
The snow is cold, but does it feel any warmth from me? Bouncing from rock to tree, existing, but not knowing. The trees are white, the rocks are buried in white, the sky glitters white, and the ground passes in white as a dark blob bobs up and down and in a void world.
A flash of heat as a car drives past on the road down below. Will they see Tanya? What are they doing in the void of white? Are they part of the white? Will they stop and check the fences? Like earlier that day, in the color-light, I tried to blend in.
"Hey, Tanya, how's it going?" Sam said.
"It's going, good! How are you?"
"Good, good. Hey there's a party tonight down in the basement, should be a good time. You should come."
"Oh yeah, cool, rock it out! I dunno, I got some stuff to do still for that project, maybe, I'll see; I'd like to." I would like to go.
"OK, cool, see ya there."
I'm one of them, I'm one of them. I could go. Nobody would know? They would know. Maybe I'm not one of them? I am though.
I sat down to get some work done. The screen stared back at me. White, solid white, with black borders. The walls stared back at me, too. The world stared back at me? I could see characters being typed but I wasn't typing them and they weren't appearing on my screen. I know they come out of Sam but they don't come out of me. I did not sit down to get some work done.
I'm back sliding down the hill, dried tears freezing on my face. The car drives on, the engine noise swallowed into the silent void. I don't even care. They should have stopped and investigated. I wouldn't care, I wouldn't respond. I don't care about that white screen in a white world. Who says it gets to define me?
My head cracks into a sharp rock buried just beneath the surface of the snow. The rock pushes back, unbudging. Some new warmth oozing on my head. My legs slowly droop to the side, pulling me down the hill after them, and extracting the snow-ice from my neck. I realize I was sliding head first to see what was going on. Now I can't see anything but the white sliding beneath my nose.
A sharp crack, a stick breaking? Or was that a person? Should I have joined Sam and everyone else in the basement? We all know that wasn't for me. That was me breaking, again.
The sliding stopped. I laid there. Face down in the snow, face burning, head oozing, thoughts frozen. Can I stay here forever? Will this put characters on the screen and my body in the basement? If I lay here long enough, it will.
