The Snowman ( A 24 Hour Short Story)

His howls of agony filled the house, the warm fire telling its own tale across the walls, as Hess, his face scrunched up in red, beaded pain, refused to take his sodden gloves off.

“You’re not going back out there Hess, you’re freezing!!”

His bitten cheeks flushed deeper with determination, fighting the chill with a sheer force of will, despite the searing burn of hot tears on cold skin.

“... But I need to finish my snowman!”

Too cold to object further, Hess let his mother pull his saturated gloves off his pale, frozen hands, her concern flaring up as she felt the icy chill against her palm.

“Hess you are frozen solid! You’ll get frostbite if you’re not careful! You know if you’d come in when I told you to, and not run around for another hour, you’d’ve warmed up again by now, and you could be back out there before bed!”

A defeated resignation started to take hold, as Hess teetered mid tantrum, his angry wailing descending into breathless agonised sobs. The pain of feeling returning stabbed through his cold hands like angry needles.

“You can finish your snowman in the morning, we’re getting more snow tonight, and how about in the morning, I help for a bit hmm?”

“No muuum! He’s my snowman! I make him!”

“Okay, well how about we get those wet clothes off, and we can make marshmallow snowmen to toast by the fire?”

He was only marginally placated, until he was distracted by marshmallows, stacked three in a row on a metal prong. The flames licked the white sugar shell, the crisp coating spitting with golden bubbles, as the top marshmallow began to droop in the heat.

---

By the time the clock beeped eight am, Karen sat up with a start. She woken up a few times already, but seeing the dark huddled at the window, she gone back to sleep, glad of every extra moment before the excited bouncing began.

The snow had been thick when she went the bed, drifting in a great carousel around the half made snowman. She’d got lost in the hypnotic swirl, and had stayed up later than she’d intended watching it fall.

She threw back the covers, not able to remember the last time Hess had been off school and not woken her up by now. She smiled to herself, he’d had a long day, playing out in the snow, no wonder he needed sleep.

She pushed open Hess’s bedroom door, expected the usual spill of lego and dinosaurs. Fear gripped her stomach, as a pale face peeked between covers, the duvet ruched up where he’d pulled it over his ear.

“Honey, what’s wrong?”

He didn’t say a word, sunken eyes led a grave face towards her. Sweat dusted his skin with it’s fine, sickly sheen.

He shuddered under her touch, her hand cold on his hot, damp forehead.

“You’re running a temperature! Let me get the thermometer,”

Karen threw open the curtains to reveal the outside, covered with the thick, white icing of a christmas cake. By the time she got back with the little thermometer, cleaned and ready to go in his mouth, Hess was kneeling on his bed, the covers dropped back, straining for a view down the garden.

He fell back into the bed without prompting, but his usually bright eyes, dull and listless, remained fixed on the panes.

“Hess, you have a temperature, you need to stay in bed until you’re better.”

He took a moment before he responded, his eyes still firmly fixed on the steady drift of snow flakes, shimmying through the air.

“... but … snowman …”

“He’ll still be there waiting for you tomorrow.”

---

Tomorrow came, and as predicted, the snowman stood waiting in the fresh spread of snow.

Hess pushed his pale, clammy face to the window, ignoring the burn of the cold glass on his flushed skin.

“Hess, get back into bed, the doctor will be here any moment now!”

The young boy climbed down, reluctantly retreating under the covers.

“Don’t want doctor!”

“I know you don’t, but, you want to finish your snow man before the snow melts don’t you?”

Hess didn’t quite follow the logic, but too fatigued to question it, he nodded, sinking to the sheets.

---

“Mrs Motterly,”

“Please doctor, call me Karen,”

“Karen, your son has had a bad chill, and it’s taken hold on his chest. Seen a lot of it with this snow, kids playing out too long. Antibiotics, and he’ll be tearing round the place again in days.”

For a moment, Karen felt a pang of guilt for having let him play out all day. It must’ve shown on her face.

“As I said Karen, seen a lot of kids under the weather like this, don’t you be worrying, or blaming yourself, the little ones can always tell if you’re fretting, and he’ll be right as rain before you know it.”

She sat by the sitting room window, watching the doctor trudge through the thick snow that masked the garden path. The spiralling footprints of the day before, the huge furrows of snow, gathered and rolled into large balls, were already filled in. Like a memory faded with time, not a trace of the work that went into making the snowman remained.

---

“But mum, you said tomorrow!”

The betrayal in his eyes cut Karen deeper than any wound could. She hated it when life made a liar of her.

“I know I did, but you need to get better, otherwise you’ll only end up having to stay in bed longer.”

It was with a devastated pout, Hess threw himself over in bed, turning his back to her.

“You said!”

“You’ve a whole week off school still, you’ll have plenty of time to finish your snowman!”

“But muuuumm, you don’t understand, I need to finish him today!”

“And what’s so special about today humm? He’ll be waiting for you when you feel better, and you’ll only make yourself feel worse going out there.”

“But mum, he has no eyes! He doesn’t even know I’m watching him! He thinks i’ve just left him, I wanted to be his friend...”

---

Later that afternoon, when Karen came to check on him, Hess had climbed out of bed and clambered onto the windowsill, dragging his duvet with him. He sat, his eyes closed, resting against the glass, his faint breath dancing across the cold pane like flickering shadows.

She reached over the creaking bed, lifting him back down to the warmth and comfort of the mattress. He stirred as her arms slipped under him, the medicine doing little to ease his fever dreams.

“... snowman … i need to… “

He mumbled incoherently, his lips making vague shapes as his eyes darted under the lids.

---

It was 1am, Karen had been struggling to sleep. Guilt and worry ate at her chest, chipping at her mind, breaking into her every thought. Hess was really sick, it could be pneumonia. They hadn’t had snow in years, he’d been so excited… but she should have made him come in.

She closed her eyes, willing sleep to whisk her away, but unable to shake the image of his flushed face, his rounded cheeks, pressed against the window, as he burbled through his blocked nose.

She didn’t check the time when she threw back the covers.

Wrapping her dressing gown tight around her, she slipped down the stairs. A heavy padded coat waited by the backdoor, it was constrictive over her dressing gown, but she needed the warmth.

The snow was falling thick and fast, catching in her lose hair, clinging to her exposed dressing gown hem. The lid of the coal scuttle, mounded with frozen snow, refused to move. Yanking hard at the handle, Karen fell backwards, the lid still not budging. Her bare hands sank into the crystalline teeth of the snow, pain coursing through her, chased by the guilt.

Determination pushed her fingers deeper into the snow, seeking the frozen ground, and two stray lumps of coal.

---

“Mum, mum!”

There was excitement in the thin thread of a voice, calling her from her bed that morning.

“Mum, mum come quick”

Hess sat, the duvet fallen away, on the window sill, dirty snot smearing the pane where his face had been pressed.

“He has eyes! He has eyes mum, he grew them overnight! I knew he was real!! It’s just like the movie!!”

A smiled filled Karen’s heart, dancing across her cheeks.

“He must’ve done! See, you didn’t need to worry, he knows you haven’t just left him there, he’s waiting for you to get better!”

---

But Hess didn’t get better.

Three days later, Karen called the doctor again.

“It can take a while for the antibiotics to work Mrs Motterly, you have to give them a chance, keep a close eye on him, and this weather should break tomorrow, they should have the roads clear then, and we can get him into A & E if needs be.”

For once, the weatherman was right, and a feeble Hess awoke the next day, basking in pale winter sun.

“Mum!!”

His panic cut through her dreams, Karen didn’t register what was going on until she found herself stumbling into his room.

“Mum, the sun! The sun!!”

Tears were steadily flowing down his cheeks.

“Mum, he’ll melt…”

Climbing onto the bed next to him, Karen gathered her son in her arms.

“Don’t worry about that Hess, you have to get better, you can always make another snowman.”

That made things infinitely worse, he pushed her away.

“No mum! I don’t want another snowman, I want this one, he was going to be my friend.”

Karen had always enjoyed Christmas movies and books, but in that moment, she found herself cursing the beautiful tales.

---

The following day, the sun once against kissed the snow covered world, melting back the sugared coating, revealing patches of dark dirt below.

The snowman, persevering, stood tall in the thinning snow. His eyes has slid a little, his head tilted to one side, but he still stood there. Karen sat on the edge of her sons bed, picking strands of hair from his damp forehead.

“Has the snowman left without me?”

Hess murmured, without opening his eyes.

“No honey, he’s still there, waiting for you.”

“Hasn’t he melted?”

“Not yet, do you want to go out and see him before we go to the hospital?”

---

She swaddled Hess in blankets, tucking them around him, as though a single cold breeze now would be the death of him.

He kept his eyes closed all the way down the stairs, it was only when the cold air touched his cheeks, he opened one, then the other.

A pale white face stared back at Hess, dark coal eyes mirroring the boys sunken, drawn complexion.

“Promise you’ll wait for me snowman...”

The words barely made a sound, but each one took form in the cold, drifting free of his lips, brushing the snowman's cheek, before fading from view.

---

Hess was in hospital for four days before he started to recover, pneumonia gripped him, slowly filling his lungs, but he fought. Karen stayed there with him, not able to face returning to an empty house, filled with decorations, echoes of cheer lost to her.

By the time he was discharged, there wasn’t a trace of snow left.

Hess sobbed the entire car ride home.

“I’ll have to wait until next year, and what if the snowman hates me now, because i didn’t come back in time!!”

He kept it up the whole way home, until, pulling down the dirt track, he saw it, stood outside the house.

The snowman.

As frozen as the moment they left him. Standing tall in the warm sunlight, branch arms having sprouted from his side, a newly formed studded, stone smile, waiting to greet them.

As promised.

This didn't go where I thought it would, but it was a nice winter tale to tell. Phew mind wiped now though, but, made the deadline! Only just under the word count, very glad I managed this one. Not sure where it's at, but not got the energy to edit any more, so here we have it, hope you enjoy <3

This is an entry to @mctiller's #twentyfourhourshortstory contest, the latest round has the prompt: After a huge snowstorm some kids make a snowman that mysteriously does not melt when the rest of the snow does. Hopefully, this still counts, even though it isn't kids plural that make the snowman. You can check out all the rules and entries under the post.

Photo Credit by Pixabay User Victoria_Borodinova who has loads of beautiful images, and such variety, including plenty featuring people in lots of different story ready scenarios.