How Snowflakes Differ

The window to Cooper’s studio apartment was glossed over with ice as flurries ferociously clawed at the pane’s edges and corners, building a small army of crystalline frost to gather endlessly. The whipped peaks of the clouds dwarfed the Houston skyline is a vast, hysterical ocean of white drenching the buildings with a gleaming blanket of snowfall only to be concealed by the rhythm of the wind whisking layers of the storm as if the entirety of Texas fell beneath a fine sheet of chiffon.

Cooper watch from the discomfort of his small, affordable dwelling. He had, as so many had, lost electricity earlier the night before, leaving him without heat. Swiftly, he scrambled for something to keep him warm, however the only possessions he had worthy of that task where a pair of slim fit biker jeans he bought from Marshal’s, a “Purple Rain” sweatshirt he had worn so often the print had started to become translucent, like paper soaked in oil, and an Astros World Series baseball cap he felt guilty wearing. Events were precarious in Coop’s life at the moment. But he was tenacious and had a new venture that paid extremely well recently, what with Valentine’s Day and a successive arctic blast occurring.

He stood close to the window, rubbing his hands concisely together, shivering as he gazed at his fingers. They were an odd hue; an ombré of lilac, livid, alabaster, and pink that morphed and marbled his nails to his knuckles. Steam clouded his stare briefly as he exhaled until he peered past his hands, still soliciting for friction, and noticed a hole in his right sock. He hadn’t even noticed his big toe suffering the same discoloration till now. Had it been that cold? So cold, in fact, that Cooper had lost feeling in his big toe?

Suddenly, his eyes became cumbersome. He felt a cold chill roll through his blood as fatigue messaged his joints and bones. He wavered, his head a bobble on a slinky bucking haphazardly up and down in a lazy strive to rouse. He felt so very tired. Again, he wavered, eyelids melting over his throbbing, exhausted eyes. Still standing, head drooped, hands closed together just above his diaphragm, Cooper sighed and felt relief crawl its way under his skin, through his shivering muscles, and blistered within. His equilibrium shuffled as he began to sway left then right. Left, then right. Then left. Then r…

Cooper heard it again! The scratching, gnawing at his attention like a whisper too muddled to comprehend. It came and went with spontaneous cacophony that rivaled the constant juxtaposition of the storm outside. He whirled his head around, turning halfway to look in its direction. Somewhere in the corner of the room, where his mattress lay on the floor unaccompanied by any furniture other than a makeshift nightstand made out of books he’d previously read, came the clamor without cadence or cause. Somewhere within the walls, it seemed.

Rattled awake, Coop’s paranoia waned, shrinking in thought till he was convinced field mice had nested within the insulation. If not mice, then rats. Neither of the species were foreign to Cooper’s apartment and every time a storm passed over Houston, both parties pillaged old buildings like the one he lived in. Hopeful the former was guilty of the eerie rasping, Cooper shuffled over to the dresser, a well-worn relic from the mid 90’s he’d baited out of a Goodwill’s dumpster and propped up on replacement cinder block legs, he opened the top drawer. Inside was a plethora of pens, BIC lighters, tangled headphones that fizzled unless the wires were held just right, and a black Moleskin journal. Feeling the soft polyurethane spine with his darkening fingertips, he lifted the journal out, multiple stacks of Jacksons hidden beneath peering idly up at him. He began to close the drawer when the scratching established itself once more. Still shivering, Cooper defied the source of the noise, stomping over his bed and bashing the wall with the back end of the journal. The grating faded, diminishing itself till only that faintest clawing could be heard.

Perturbed, Cooper stumbled off his mattress and over to the kitchenette where he opened a cupboard, pulling a small saucepan out. He placed it in the sink and began to rip pages out of the journal, crumpling them into loose mounds with his free hand. The scratching persisted still, each tear and crinkle battling its muttering until an opus of chaos crescendoed. Rip. Crumple. Scratch. Tear. Scrunch. Scrape. It echoed deeper and deeper into Coop’s brain, groping his patience with invisible claws and fangs relentless as the snow.

“Shut up!” Cooper screamed. Fuming with the absurdity of his situation, he paused and waited for the scratching to soften.

“Holler’n won’t do you no good, Chick’n Coop.”

Cooper’s blood congealed. Fear had malformed his shivering to a rigid shake. Dread smashed into him like a wave of mud, crushing him so that he had to clench the counter in an attempted to remain standing. No one called him “Chick’n Coop” anymore. The last time anyone had used that childish nickname on him he was in little league. Besides, who had entered his apartment without him knowing. There was only one room and all four locks had been secure the last time he had checked. Steam flooding his frozen breath, Cooper anxiously turned to accost the intruder.

Weakness devoured Coop’s body as he gawked at the silhouette now standing where he had been in front of the window moments ago, framed by the howling frost outside. A woman with bone-straight blonde hair and pale skin with vibrant freckles that dolloped her wide cheekbones and narrow nose stood facing him. She was wearing a russet mid-western nightgown that reached her thin ankles with a zipper that ran along the front. Her skin was lax around her jowls and neck, giving her a sickly visage complemented by bruises that plagued her hands. Dried mucus clumped in flaky patches around her nostrils flashed green from what little light poured through the sleet coated window. Most haunting were her eye; a pair of deep sapphires with a milky pupils, as if they were blinded and draped with cellophane.

“Mom?” Cooper stuttered, “You’re not here.” The woman held her hands outward in a welcoming gesture yet moved with a rigidness liken to ice.

“And yet I am.” She replied.

“No.” Coop argued, “You’re dead.” His mother’s face shifted. The shadows that pooled into her eye sockets and cheeks deepened as concern ravaged her expression. She vanished. Nothing remained of the vision Cooper had just experienced. He knew she couldn’t have been here. It’s impossible.

He marched across the studio to the dresser once more to retrieve a lighter.

“You think that book is going to keep you warm enough?” Her voice pierced Cooper’s determination. He was hallucinating. He had to be. Ignoring the delusion, He reached into the drawer, cobalt veins weaving themselves up the back of his hands. “I asked you a question!” His mother erupted into existence from his left side this time, so close Cooper could have sworn he felt her icy breath sweep across his neck. He turned back to the kitchenette; the phantom masquerading as his dead mom impeding his path to the saucepan with the torn bits of Moleskin inside. “Why don’t you burn some of that money you have stashed in that drawer? Probably keep you warmer longer if you ration it out.”

“I’m not doing that.” Cooper firmly pushed past her, trying to avert her lifeless gaze.

“Look at you, then? Mister know-it-all?” She mocked him was a coldness combatting the shivering within his own body. “I wasn’t born yesterday, and you’ll do what I say!” Her speech boomed, aggression in every syllable.

“You don’t know what I need!” Cooper firmly stood his ground.

“I don’t?”, she scorned. “If I say jump, you ask, ‘How high?’.”

“I’m a grown man.”

“Grown man?”, she appeared beside him, seeming to lurch in and out of reality. “Can’t even afford an actual apartment!”

“You don’t know what I need!” Cooper repeated louder.

His mother toppled his anger. “You don’t need to be selling drugs!” She cried, a berating screech vibrating in the hollow space she manifested.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” They were shouting now.

“I know that’s how you got that $20,000 hidden away in your dresser!”

“I had to!”

“You didn’t have to! Just like you didn’t have to cut me out of your life!” She screamed with immense force, driving his back to crash into the adjacent wall.

Cooper sat bewildered, facing to the center of the room. His breathe heavy, labored with steam as he looked franticly around. The scratching from earlier strengthened, this time persisting from inside his room. Cooper’s awareness shot towards the same corner he had heard the abrading from before and was left in horror. A sickly creature, humanoid in shape, hunched in an excruciating curl sitting on his mattress, it’s limbs branch-like and void of movement, except for the rasping scratching coming from its strained breathing, appeared from the swelling shadows that now gathered in the seams of his apartment. Its skin was grey and dotted with bedsores that danced around clotted blood blisters that trekked its decomposing flesh which sagged off its’ grotesque frame. With every tortured inhale, a popping resonated along its’ emaciated features, ribs visibly cracking out of place in a painful expansion only to condense upon its’ staggered exhaling, wheezing in immeasurable agony that hissed out of its’ gaping maw.

“Are ten stacks of $20s worth dying over?” His mother appeared sitting on the floor next to him, her voice soft and gentle as a lark.

“You died because you thought this was hoax, mom.” Tears started to border his vision. “You didn’t wear a mask and look what happened?” They sat in silence, the disturbed being's growling the only sound invading their pause.

“I can’t change that”, a melancholy lanced Cooper’s heart as she said this, “burn the money, son.” She leaned towards him, humming while reaching for his face, and played with the stubble that peppered his jawline that jutted from his long neck with her bruised fingers.

Cooper turned to her, “I can’t. I’m about to get my car taken away”, he lingered in a concoction derived of confusion and trepidation, looking back at the sad thing coiled on his bed then down at his hands, fingers now shriveled in a stiff grasp holding two stacks of cash. He couldn’t remember if he’d grabbed them prior. “What is that?”, he asked, trying to fill the silence between his mother, it, and his delirium.

His mother looked at the creature, shame writhing across her fair features, then back at her son. Softer now, she replied earnestly, “An old friend.” Cooper looked puzzled as his mother continued, “It’s regret.” She said effortlessly in a comfortable pragmatism that shocked Coop. His head reeled in pain. What was real? What wasn’t?

“Are you even really here?” His voice splintered as he turned toward his mom once more, her freckles tightening across her smiling face. He saw love in her eyes; no-bake cookies in the summer with TV Land mindlessly airing all day.

“Does it matter?” She replied. Cooper couldn’t take it anymore. Tears uncontrollably streamed down his cheek. He could taste the salt as that gathered in the corners of his mouth and smell the melted chocolate as the ‘I Love Lucy’ theme song played in his memories.

“Am I dying?” His voice now a scratchy rasp in the wake of his sobbing.

His mother’s smile slowly vanished as her hands cradled his frostbitten fists still holding the stacks of money. A tear chased down her cheek. “I love you.” She whispered.

Cooper felt so very tired. Head drooped; he grieved a labored sigh, his eyes cumbersome as he slipped into the void.