Friendly Snowman, NOT

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Friendly Snowman, NOT

The snowman didn’t move during the day. He stood with his hands held outright and parallel to the ground. His big belly seemed melded to the snow beneath. To look at him, one would think him completely immobile, quite like a building, a tree, or a mailbox. One would also suppose that his midriff was anchored to his belly, that it was frozen solid in one smooth joining, along with his head, such as it was, perched atop him like an aging pumpkin rotting into its fence post.

The snowman hoped everyone would see him like that, as a series of three frozen chunks of ice, harmless and friendless. But you see, in reality, he was no normal snowman, but a snow monster, a carnivore who dined on flesh. So, like all predators, the snowman in silence and invisible readiness, waited for unsuspecting victims to enter his hunting ground. During the day, there were too many of those delicious morsels walking about. He knew they'd destroy him if he attempted to appease his appetite, so he drooled a few drips of ice water, but didn't move. He wanted no man to know that mobility and teeth awaited the DARK.

Thus, throughout the day, children crowded around what they thought was a friendly snowman. They hugged him and flopped his scarf about. They decorated him with frilly scraps of material. They put hats on his head -- cowboy hats, berets, derby hats, and even, one time, a silly bonnet that tied under his chin. The girls even took off their own hats and tried on bows and veils, then reddened his lips using holly berries. Some changed his shirt buttons by using leaves or chunks of coal and then changed those for acorns and rocks or colored blocks from inside the house. The children’s fingers continuously poked and pried, and the snow monster endured it, dreaming of the night to come.

“Let them have their fun,” he mumbled so silently that even the very young child hugging him at that very moment couldn't hear.

For a long time the children played, sledding down the small hills behind the snowman on tires, on fancy toboggans, on sleds and paper sacks. The littlest ones clustered about the snowman, patted his big fat tummy, and built miniature snow babies all about his feet. In the afternoon the children tossed about snowballs, slapping the snowman in the face with their careless tosses.

All that time, no matter what the activity, the snowman maintained a happy face, smiling from pebble to pebble. But inside him, where a cold, hardened heart beat so slowly that you and I would not hear it, the snowman’s anger built. Each pale, white hand entombed in mitten or glove became a forbidden candy he yearned to taste. And the pink-flushed faces of the sweet, laughing children became traveling juicy, rare t-bone steaks.

Later, about four o’clock in the afternoon, a cold wind crept up and blew the children inside. The snowman’s stomach growled, but still, he didn't move.

Clouds blew in to cover the blue of sky. A crow cawed as it flew by. It circled twice, then coasted down, seeking a seat on the snowman’s head, but with its landing, the little red and white checked baseball hat the snowman wore slid to the ground. The crow hopped into the air and flew off, loudly bemoaning his lost perch.

How typically we rant in complaint when fate so habitually saves our life. But the crow, like many of us, was not a philosopher. He complained of unfairness while meeting good fortune, at least he did for another two weeks. And then one day an eagle’s beak was his end, for you see, good fortune and bad fortune often hold hands. But that is another tale.

The snowman, growing hungrier and hungrier, clinched his stiff, branched fingers, and in irritation, his mighty grip crushed several small twigs and a butterfly caught in between -- one that had not flown south with all its brethren and so discovered the bitterness of death.

The sun, a crushed persimmon of orangish pulp, spread its muck across the horizon. The snowman watched and waited. Anticipation gnawed inside him as loudly as the hunger in his soul.

Night crystals began to sparkle the moment the sun admitted defeat, for the moon was rising and had begun to spread its glow across the snow banks and onto the snowman’s huge stomach. Clouds blew in, sliding across the dregs of resistant sunrays. The sky slowly filled itself with blackened charcoal puffs and shaded out the day.

The snowman moved a centimeter. The ice cracked in the web of his feet. He tilted slightly to the left and raised one foot a few centimeters from the ground. The other foot clung, iced over in snow melt. The snowman struggled, flexed his muscled slabs of snow. Crack. He broke away. A meter, he walked, and then another. His feet taloned out. The branches of his hands grew sharper. The pointed edges, once rounded by concerned parents and older children, suddenly formed spikes. He rolled his head about, then growled like a clogged garbage disposal.

“UUHHHAA. UGGGRRRGGGHHH,” he said, but no one heard him except a stray dog passing by on its way homeward.

It was old Mr. Peter’s dog, a German Shepherd, white hair on his jowls, stiff-legged in the rear. The dog stopped and stared at the snowman. Its bristles raised and the skin around its muzzle drew back, reveling yellowed, grimy teeth.

“Grrrrrr,” it rumbled, deep inside its throat, followed by a bark, a loud, sharp cry of warning.

The snowman was ready. He shot a twig and severed an eye. Penetration of the brain sometimes fells the toughest challenger. The dog fell on its side, one spasm later.

The snowman laughed, a gurgled, moaning that caused inhabitants of nearby houses to get up and lock their doors. They didn’t need to. The snowman would not set foot inside.

He slid across the snow and hovered over the carcass of the dog. His talons clawed. His pores opened. He slurped and inhaled through the bottom of his big, bloated stomach. Then he kicked the bones across the snow. The view made his smile snarl. He loved the sight of discarded bones, but he was still hungry. He rolled and slid and squished and squirmed forward.

An old drunk was leaning against a leaf-naked tree. The snowman glugged him up. Feeling slightly better, he rolled and slid and squished and squirmed toward the town.

The night was a good one for his round, fat tummy. He digested several more pieces of warm, gooey flesh. Then stretching his arms up into the air, he rotated his shoulders about. A great big yawn disturbed his exercises, and he pushed against the frozen mounds of snow until he returned to his former place and position.

Once back into his spot, the snowman’s stomach gurgled, and he felt a might bit uncomfortable. He rolled his neck again and arched his shoulders and let out a giant burp.

“Ah,” he said, and his face smoothed back into its pleasant, clown-like smile. He stretched his arms and allowed the cool, fragrant air to bathe his body with damp, moist snow. His eyes closed, and he fell asleep, utterly content.

In the morning, the sky brightened, and the children looked out into the new snow. There stood their friendly snowman. They bounded outside to hug and kiss him, to poke and prick, to rearrange his fallen hat.

It is lucky that the parents, waiting inside their warm and cushy house, could not read the thoughts of the snowman as he stood there with their children, waiting, waiting for the fall of night.

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