Frozen

The witching hour barked at me that night like no other. I remember the other nights, where I sat on my roof, and the cold winter breeze curled around my throat like no other wind I had ever felt. She whispered to me, “Why isn't she with you?” I shrugged in response, then wondered how mentally stable I was to be talking to a wind. “She should be sitting next to you.” The wind said, jealousy dripping in her voice. “I would sit next to you, if only – oh, if only I could.”

That was when I tried to go inside. But the wind beckoned to me, her throaty voice echoing in my ears. She said, “I have been with you every night, night after night. I have changed myself during the seasons. I comfort you, whispering sweet nothings in your ear, and what does she do? She does nothing. She is nothing. And you know it.”

I covered my ears, trying to block the maniacal sound of the wind's voice, but she didn't stop. My cries were drowned out by her unending jealousy.

“She sleeps around when she isn't with you! I could give you so much more. I would sit next to you, and caress your body, something you've only dreamed of doing with her. I could be the woman you always needed. I would change myself just for you.”

“Shut up.” I said, pressing my hands against my head harder.

“Are you listening to me? I said, I would change to be with you?! Don't you get it? I love you!”

“Shut up! Shut up!” I shouted, scaring the wind into silence. I dropped my hands away from my ears while she breathed heavily in my ear. Her voice was growing fainter, and fainter as the seconds went by. She was leaving. I forced myself to smile, but for who, I did not know.

“You want me to shut up?” The wind said. Her voice was calm, but full of remorse. She sounded as though she were on the brink of insanity. I quickly took my words back, but it meant nothing to her. “Fine, then. If I can't satisfy you, I'll leave, and I'll never come back.”

“No.” I whispered at first. “No, please don't. If you leave, I- I don't know what I'll do.” I begged. “I don't know what I'll do without you!”

“You've made yourself perfectly clear, Tony.” The wind said my name in the most lovely voice. “I know what you want, and it isn't me. I won't keep you warm on these cold nights anymore. I will not take this abuse any longer. I did everything for your love, and I just can't stand it anymore....” Then it grew silent. I thought, she couldn't be gone. She could never leave me. The wind always came back.

“Hey?” I called for her, but with little success. “Hey, come back.” I said, panic rushing into my voice. I got onto my hands and knees. “I need you!”

The silence was driving me mad. I couldn't handle being left alone with my own thoughts. They were too much, too much for just one person to take. I tried pushing them away, just as I pushed the wind away. But there was more than one voice, and they all became a symphony of lies, and insults until I finally crawled to my window, and stumbled into my bedroom. I fell onto the ground with a hard thump, but I doubt that anybody heard me. My mom slept in the living room, to scared to sleep in her own bedroom anymore.

My elbows wobbled as I pushed myself up with my hands. I gasped quietly, the voices inside laughing at me. I wanted to scream, “Shut up!” but then they would leave like the wind, and everything would be silent. I wouldn't have anybody anymore.

The leaves outside rustled, but not from my wind. Not from my wind. My wind was gone. She was gone, and I had nothing to look forward to anymore.

And it was all her fault. Not the wind's, but her's. The girl I knew who lived just a few blocks away. The one that said she could make or break me, the one who made me act like somebody I wasn't just so she could look good. What did I care about looking good? Who wants to look good when you live a nightmare every day?

Absentmindedly, I slipped on my shoes, and then reached into my drawers. Clothes fell out of the sides into dirty piles on the ground, but nothing mattered anymore. None of those little things mattered to me.

The cold handle of a pistol greeted me, followed by the light click it gave when I ran my fingers down the trigger. It was missing bullets, but not to fret; I had extras in my sock drawer.

Minutes turned into hours, and hours could have turned into weeks if I had taken that long. I trudged down the steps and into the hall. I looked at my mom, just staring at the TV with no emotion on her face. Nothing. She wasn't even watching, just staring at the stupid figures on the screen. She was jealous of them, every day she was jealous. They had beautiful families. They had a husband, and children. Beautiful children, and not kids like me. Freaks. They had normal families. Why couldn't she have a normal family?

“Mijo, adónde vas?” (My boy, where are you going?) She said. I didn't respond to her, but instead opened the front door. Scattered winds fell over my body, and I shivered in excitement, and fear. “Tony, where are you going?” She repeated in English, her tone angrier than before. “It's almost 2 am.”

“I'm taking a walk.” I replied, hiding the pistol in a loop on my pants. I made sure she didn't see even the smallest bit of it.

“Chico, sentarse por un minuto, por favor? Por tu madre?” (Son, sit for a minute, please? For your mom?) She said. I shook my head.

“Ma, I need to leave.” The voices told me to pull out the pistol as quickly as I could. Just shoot her and get it over with, they said. But I pushed them away. I loved my mom too much to do that. Her little attempts at Spanish (she could speak it, she just sounded like a gringa when she did it), and the way she called me 'chico' all the time made me feel like I was a kid again. A kid with no care in the world, a kid who could play soccer with papi in the backyard, and laugh. I missed my dad, my papi, my pa, whatever I called him. I couldn't remember anymore.

“Por favor? Necesito saber lo que sientes, Tony. Te amo demasiado como para no preocuparme por ti.” (Please? I need to know what you're feeling, Tony. I love you too much to not worry about you.) She said.

“What I'm feeling?” I replied. She nodded quickly, hoping I would open up to her. But the voices closed me off to people like her. The people who were sane. “You want to know what I'm feeling about what?”

“You know.” She said with intimidation. “Sabes lo que estoy hablando.” (You know what I'm talking about.)

“That papi is dead?” I said. My mom looked taken aback, but she nodded sadly. “That he's gone, and I'll never see him again? And now I'm left with you?”

“No hables así.” (Don't talk like that.)

The voices grew more vivid, and more violent as she stared at me. Kill her! They yelled. Kill her now!

Without warning, I threw my hand around the doorknob, and sprinted out of the door. I couldn't stand looking at her anymore. The look in her eye made me feel bad, but I knew in her heart she was just a shell of a person. My dad was everything for us. I loved my mom, but I never felt that from her as well. What did I feel from her? I felt... I don't know what I felt. She was just my mom. She wasn't the wind who comforted me every night. She wasn't my father, who taught me everything I know now. But she wasn't like the girl who lived a few blocks away, so I thanked God for that.

As I walked down the cold sidewalk, brutal winds wrapped their cold fingers around my body. I couldn't feel anymore, but it was good for me. The voices were dulled, even if they were only like that for a while. The winds now whispered, but I didn't pay attention to them. They weren't my dear, my darling, my one and only.

The girl blocks away drove the one and only away, and she would pay.

* * *

I stared through her stained glass window, just peering at her distorted face. She was so beautiful, too beautiful, too beautiful for me. Why did I ever pretend that I had a chance with her? She was never interested in my, or what I had to offer. She probably felt pity for me, and that's why she said we were together.

Well, I didn't need her pity. I had the wind. I had her, and that was all that mattered. But now that she was gone, what did I have?

Her window slid open easily, and I slipped inside while I held my breath. I barely made a sound as my foot touched the floor. She rolled herself over, hiding her face from my view. Then she yawned heavily, reassuring me that she was still asleep.

My hand didn't move for the pistol as I crept my way over to the side of her bed. I stared at her, trying to imagine how she could imagine even looking at me. I was not cute, not to her anyways. Didn't even have a good personality. I was like a giant piece of coal, and she was a diamond. No matter how many people say I can make a diamond out of coal, I can't.

She shivered at a wind that slipped into her room, and curled around her body. It caressed her face and her arms, almost making me jealous because she let him do it, just as she let other guys do to her. My anger and jealous got the best of me, so I walked to the window and slammed it shut. The wind hissed, and died out into nothing more than just another warm breath from her and I.

“Hey.” I whispered to her. She barely moved. I said it again, and she rolled over quietly. “Wake up.” Her eye opened just a little, then she rubbed her eyes and opened both of them. The shock in her eyes was almost offensive. Was she expecting somebody better?

“Tony?” She mumbled. “What are you doing here?”

Cat got my tongue, because I stood in silence as she stared at me. I didn't expect her to wake up so quickly. I wanted to stare at her some more, her beauty, her wrong personality that drew my wind away.

“How did you get in here?”

“It doesn't matter. I'm just here.” My voice was strange compared to hers, especially under whispers. I felt like a monster, and she, an angel.

“I...” She started, but trailed off without an answer. What was she going to say? “Look at yourself, Tony. You're all wet.”

I looked down at my shirt, and sure enough, it was drenched in water. When did it start raining? Did the wind make it happen? My love wasn't there anymore, so maybe they all hated me for making her leave.

“Aren't you freezing?” My first love, Fallon, asked quietly. Her voice was sweet and lace.

“Don't – “ I stopped myself short. “Stop being so nice to me.” I tried to add some force to my voice, but the look in her eyes stopped me short. “I came here because, because you forgot about me!”

Fallon was taken aback at first. She didn't respond, other than a few short stutters. My breath grew intense with every second that passed here she didn't answer me. I mentally kicked myself, trying to find the words to express my anger.

“I only forgot about you because you said you didn't want to talk to me anymore. Remember? After your dad died, you told me that we shouldn't talk anymore.”

“Only because you started treating me differently!”

“Don't yell.” Fallon said, hushing me with her soft voice. “Try to stay calm.” She finally got enough courage to move off of her bed and towards her computer desk. Her back turned to the wall, she reached for a small drawer.

I couldn't hurt her now. The voices were so loud, so ridiculously loud, yelling and shouting insults at me, and taunting me in her voice. Fallon was taunting me, without even knowing it. I whimpered, holding my ears with my hands, but nothing stopped. Not until one loud voice filled my mind, and it was hers, not Fallon's, but hers, and she said, Kill her! And the voices all stopped.

My hand moved down the side of my stomach to my belt loops, where the pistol was freezing against my fingers. I slipped it out, just barely showing it to Fallon, before she took a quick step back.

“What is that?” She said urgently. I rose to my feet, holding a hand out to her. “Tony, what is that?!”

“Shh.” I said. “Don't want to wake up your parents, now do we?”

“I'm sorry!” She said as an instinct. I shook my head, still holding the gun at my side.

“You don't even know what I'm mad about, do you? You're just saying sorry because... because you're helpless.”

She stopped talking, but her breaths were so loud, and so warm. I missed my wind. It just wasn't the same without her.

“Are you... going to kill me?” Fallon asked, her hands shaking at her sides. I watched as she panicked, writing in fear for my wrath. I just shrugged in response, and she took in a sharp breath of disappointment. “Please don't kill me.”

“I don't want to kill you.” I muttered. “But I have to. You just don't care anymore. You never cared.”

“Tony, I cared for you since day one. I wanted to be your friend earlier, but everybody said you liked to be alone.... How c-could I know you were actually so kind? And loving?”

The voices grew louder, as her own voice penetrated my thoughts. She haunted me, like a monster, repeating her words over and over in my ears until I groaned and threw my hands up to my ears again. The pistol was freezing against my cheek.

In a matter of seconds, Fallon had a pair of scissors at my throat. She exhaled heavily, her breath even sounded like it was cracking. I shook my head, and she blinked quickly, trying to keep tears from forming in her eyes.

“Fallon. Take a breath.”

“Get out!” She shoved me to the other side of her room, almost knocking me off of my feet. “I never want to see your face again. Out!”

“But I—“

“Out!” She screamed, and finally, her grip on the scissor became a bit too tight, digging ever so dangerously into my throat. It seemed like just a cut, but when her hand shoved towards me again, the edge of the blade sunk into the side of my throat just a bit more. I coughed, holding the side of my throat with one hand, while still trying to hold the gun to her face with the other. She smacked my hand away, and then left me with no other option than to jump out of her window, nearly landing on my face on the dirty, damp grass outside.

* * *

I became dizzy after only walking for five minutes. When I thought I was walking to my house, I was actually becoming lost in a small shelter of trees. Each step I took brought me closer into an abyss I couldn't escape. But the voices left, and the wind wasn't acting up as much as it had been before. I was almost in peace. If only my neck would stop bleeding so terribly. I stained my shirt with the blood that spilled over, but I would be fine. I just needed to find some place to sleep for the night... just a small place.

I found a small area in the undergrowth where the moonlight burst through the tree branches, and the leaves. I laid myself down, moaning in pain as my joints cracked. I was so lightheaded, I almost saw little specks of a person in the sky. I sighed. Just some sleep...

I shut my eyes slowly, welcoming the buzzing sound of mosquitoes, and the warm trickle of blood falling down my neck and chest. I wanted this peacefulness forever. If only, oh, if only!

“Love.” A voice whispered. It took everything I had to not jump at the sound. If I had more energy, I surely would have sat up. But instead, I peeked my eyes open, finding a white, translucent figure in front of me. “What have you done to yourself, love?”

“You're back.” I mumbled. The wind nodded, and her face was finally revealed as her hair moved away. She looked as though she were carved from perfect stone, by the hands of a careful sculptor, making the most captivating face ever thought to have existed.

“I could never leave you... But what happened? You're so... hurt.”

“You left me.... But I'm used to it, everybody leaves me.”

“I came back. I would hug you, but you'll freeze. I'm too cold at the moment. I made the rain stop. See?”

“But we haven't had rain in such a long time... Please don't make it stop.” I whispered. My voice cracked, and my throat suddenly had a rush of pain shooting through it. The wind's eyes teared up. Cold droplets fell on my face, and I recognized the smell of rain.

“It's too cold for you to be out here, Tony.”

“I'd rather be out here. Alone, with someone, in the cold, in the fiery pits of hell. I don't care. I'd rather be out here and freeze.”

The wind curled up next to me, her sweet scent of snow and rain filling all of my senses. I took in a deep breath, savoring her smell like it was the last thing I would ever remember before falling into a deep sleep. The wind leaned to my face, and pressed a pair of cold lips to my cheek. I shivered.

“But I'll never let you freeze without me.”