Chapter 1, Post 8: The Man Who Does Not Exist

The wind drove harder, pressing into the man’s skin, the nails of an iron maiden tearing at its victim. His chest caved, as if crushed beneath a great stone. His face devolved from wild to gray to ashen. Bones dissolved. Skin retreated. His features, moments before the grooves of a storm etched in granite, smoothed, leaving only a trail of ghostly white lines. Then...

Nothing.

Only the wind. Calmer now. Whatever had breathed rage into its indifferent course was sated.

The cry of the hawk rang out. One golden leaf from an aspen defied gravity’s pull, bouncing up along the mountain cliff before succumbing to the inevitable. The bugling of the bull elk found its way through branches and between trees, rising over the babble of the brook. The distant shrill of a pika cut the air as it darted into the dark beneath the boulders of its home. Then...

Snow.

It drifted down, intricately embroidered crystals delighting in their return to earth.

Like clean sheets from a warm bed it coated the remains of the body. Sugar atop a Christmas cookie. Whitewash on a clapboard shack. Fairy dust from a child’s tale. Until finally, the man stirred.