Radical Antifreeze

Jenn Violetta

Winter settled upon his soul like portent; a blanket for his melancholia, keeping it alive and allowing it to eat away at the thin veneer of optimism that he liked to hold up to the world.
Snow-covered roads disguised the face of the system; gave it a mask of calm; as if it wasn’t collapsing under the weight of its own greed; as if the cracks were repairable with mere frozen water.
Passers-by hiked their collars and avoided eye contact in the vain hope that their anonymity would protect them from the future; from the moment when they would have to be truthful with themselves; from the day when no object would afford solace.
To top it all, nature had declared itself unreliable: birds became entangled in overhead wires or trapped down chimneys where they fluttered and struggled for days, bringing uncomfortable dreams to suburban bedrooms; domestic pets failed to turn, watched from their cages as their captors whittled away at themselves with the blunt knives of ignorance; sheep broke free from the herd and set up radical political enclaves, their wool-gathering dreadlock-thick and matted.
In the hallowed traffic jams the cars muttered to themselves, resentful of fact that their days were deemed numbered, while their operators gesticulated and genuflected at random intervals, their thoughts by turns murderous and hopeless, their actions futile against the onslaught of winter.

Tales for the attention deficit reader