Chapter 14

14

On my first morning without Jamie, Winter decided to knock on my door, loudly, rapping his cracked knuckles three times and then, after realizing I would not be answering the door, decided to let himself in.

He makes his way into the kitchen, rummaging the shelves, looking for my last remaining cup of Ovaltine. He turns the canister over the sink and the flakes fall like a chocolate Christmas. He does the same with the rest of my box of Cheerios and a steak I was saving for dinner.

Winter can be a real bastard sometimes.

His feet are wet and unusually covered in motor-oil. He wipes his feet off on my ottoman, leaving a stain I'll never bother to clean. He sits in my favorite chair and lights a cigarette, careful to put the match out on the seat cushion.

Taking my only bestseller off of the shelf, he begins to thumb through the pages, landing, finally, somewhere inside of my favorite chapter. He rips out the page on which I had penned my favorite sentence:

"The rain turned the streets inward, like drowned lungs, upon themselves and I was hurrying to work, meeting swollen gutters at the intersections."

That was a damned good sentence and I'm going to miss it. Winter balls it up and tosses it into a corner. Winter is dressed like a gravedigger.

The son of a bitch finds himself at the foot of my bed, picking his teeth with a bit of chewed fingernail. He spits it out onto the floor before lifting the sheets.

My toes go numb, my lips start to crack. I feel the cold of his touch as he slides in next to me. His leg brushes against mine and causes the hairs on my neck to stand at attention. I start to shiver, he starts to laugh.

His laugh is insidious, mocking, waking me from sleep, daring me to look him in the eye. I do and he laughs. His gaze chills my spine.

I am in bed with December, the longest month of the year.