Silver and Cold

Cold, he thought as he pulled himself into a tighter ball and tried for the millionth time to wrap the frost covered  emergency blanket tighter around his shivering body. All those times I thought I was cold and I never even knew what the word really meant. 

He cursed silently under his breath and watched the little clouds of steam from his breath dance up and around his empty living room. All of the furniture, his collection of books and comics, hell even the shelves they sat on. All of it had long ago been burned in the now dead fireplace that dominated the far wall of the brick bungalow he and Cindy had bought two summers ago, Before she, she... He cut that tangent off.

Summer the thought seemed to echo off the empty walls. "Let's see," he said to himself counting on his gloved hand, "carry the one and yesterday was the first day of summer, sounds about par for the course," he finished before thinking to himself, Like that word even means anything anymore? Hell, it hasn't stopped snowing in Hawaii for six months.

He coughed and  then thought about pacing the room for a bit before deciding that there was no point in trying to ward off the inevitable. He still remembered the uproar on the Internet, 'Sun spot cycle slowing' they said, followed by ' Newest Climate shift models confirm expected temperature drop due to decreased solar output,' and all the  hullabaloo as the experts on both sides of the debate ran their mouths for months on end,calling each other liars and frauds while the Earth kept getting cooler.

Not that it really mattered, what can you do when your night light burns out to keep the monsters at bay; if you don't have a replacement? Even all the fossil fuels and wood in the world can't keep you warm forever... "In fact,only about eleven months based on rationing and orderly distribution," said the experts.

"Too bad they're all dead now, I could sure use some of their hot air," he chuckled. "I wonder how long they were able to heat their houses on all the bullshit about contingency plans and emergency procedures they fed us..." he continued smirking to himself before the pain of his chapped lips cut both his laughter and his soliloquy short.

He noticed he had stopped shivering sometime within the last few minutes and was starting to feel sleepy but couldn't seem to bring himself to really care." But really I'm as big of a fool as any of them," he retorted to the empty walls as he shifted farther down to rest his back against the cool wall.

"I mean, this morning I was king of the world. I had a whole goddamned half bottle of heating oil left and just like that I pissed it away..." he yawned trying to shake the cobwebs from his head as he relived the moment again.  In his mind's eye he watched the small silver-can he had scavenged from one of the burnt out ruins down the block slip out of his fingers in slow motion. He winced again remembering the fleeting moment of joy he had when he had almost caught the can before it slipped through his outstretched hands. He shook his head again at the dumb luck of it hitting cap first on the frozen ground. He could still envision it frame by frame, the  dark brown stain  quickly spreading over the hard concrete that still remainded of his driveway, the very same driveway he had  torn large chunks up from the month before, to use as cairn stones for Cindy.

"Pissed it away, just like everything and everybody else. The biggest oil spill since the Gulf Spill and nobody's left to care but me," he yawned pulling the tattered silver coated blanket closer as he felt the warmth begin to radiate through his body.