Frozen in the Snow

I woke up today with both a feeling of dread and thrill. The dread was because this was the subject of every unturned nightmare I had been having for years, the thrill being that now I knew the thing was here; now I could kill him.

It was cold today, too cold for a jacket. There was a fresh coat of snow on the ground and trees from last night's storm, but lucky for me the snow had stopped falling since.

It wasn't until I had parked at the station that I realized my mistake in leaving my boss alone for an undetermined time: His office was empty. I was about to write it off as him being late when I noticed the trees outside his window were bent artificially. I wasn't gonna just write that off that easily! Out in the ice of the morning wind, I spotted footprints going deeper into the forest.

I got pretty far in before I saw a tree that had no snow on it, just pure black. I tied a red scarf to it so I would know my way back. It felt warm. I assumed someone had been here already, so I kept moving.

I found my boss with a startled scream, back facing me, seated on a stump. I realized I should keep my voice down; "It didn't know you were here. Now it does." He sounded a tiny bit strained.

I asked him where the sorry excuse for a 'man' was.

"Back there."

I turned and tried to sneak my way back the way I came, hands prepared to whip my pistol out on first sight. I had been training for this very moment for two years, seven months, and four days. I wound up using it on far more than just this bastard, but those others were nothing. They were child's play. This was to be my kill proper; after this, I was to hand in my badge. Those were my plans.

The first thing went wrong shortly after I began heading back. The tree I had tied the scarf to got covered in more snow, so I couldn't tell where my landmark was. Oh well. I wasn't that worried. If all else failed, I'd just ask my boss for help getting back.

I spent a good fifteen minutes looking around for anything out there, but got nothing. And that's when my stupidity hit me like an ice cube to the throat: It wasn't fucking snowing. How could I have lost the scarf so easily?

I spent another good five minutes retracing my steps and looking for my red scarf on every single tree. And that's when I questioned my own sanity. I realized that "no snow" didn't just mean my scarf would be visible; it'd mean the tree would be, too. The only goddamn tree that wasn't covered in snow. So where the fuck were they?

I blinked, and suddenly, the tree and the scarf were before my own eyes. I was about to scream when I remembered my vow to keep quiet, at which point I just mentally laughed it off as being the adrenaline getting to me.

And then I blinked again.

Now the tree was.. a lot shorter. Now I could see that it was never a tree. The black of the bark I had seen was his business suit. I had tied my scarf around the fucking thing I was hunting.

...now, in retrospect, that brings up a lot of questions. How in the world could I get a human and a tree mixed up? Why didn't I realize as I was tying the scarf around his waist that it was clearly not a tree? How did blinking change his size? Was I THAT tired? Of course, at the time, I was too busy pulling out my pistol to contemplate on any of these.

Before I could shoot, I heard my boss say "Don't piss it off more, Veronica." As I was turning around to face him, I remembered thinking he sounded strained on the stump. Well, that made perfect sense when I saw his empty eye sockets and open chest revealing missing lungs.

I was just about to scream when I felt a hand touching my back. I looked up and saw the face of every nightmare looking down at me. I saw the blonde hair completely stationary despite the cold wind, I saw the bloodshot hazel eyes blinking at 120 beats-per-minute, I saw the still and uncurious frowning mouth (lips torn off, looked to be scratched off).

I could never forget that face.