The Monarch Papers

1. Cold

Chapter 1

Cold

“Magiq does not run according to science. It runs on intention and emotion.”

Robert

I dreamed about snow. Tall white drifts suffocated the world, the bitter winds shaping them into familiar forms only to morph them again into something alien, something other. The city buildings that rose around me were the only landmarks I recognized, but even they looked different somehow, like distant relatives I hadn’t seen in years. Their dusted faces glowed in the moonlight, and their black, empty windows looked down on me like mournful eyes.

I was naked, trudging through snow up to my hips, my legs numb, my exposed skin burning in the cold. The wind picked up and I saw her, Lauren, her snow-body coalescing inside a tiny whirlwind that drifted down a forgotten alley. I followed, pushing my way through the ever-thickening drifts. She turned and looked at me, looked through me, as if I were the one made of snow.

I ignored my blackened, frostbitten fingertips, my tears frozen and heavy on my cheeks, and burrowed my way to her. She hovered atop a drift before me, the moonlight caught inside the snowy matrix of her body. It lit her from within, the blue glow waxing and waning like the winking of a pulsar, like a falling and rising tide, like breathing.

Like a heartbeat.

She watched the snow swirling around her, as if every flake was a new world of discovery finally opened to her. I shivered uncontrollably at her feet, blinking at the wind and struggling to keep my eyes from freezing shut. The snow grew deeper, pressing my folded arms harder against my chest. I was immobile; only my head remained above the snow.

Lauren bent to one knee and cradled my face with an ethereal hand. She pointed out across the silent white city, to a house that sat far off in the distance, untouched by the snow. Its deep red shingles were a defiant patch of warmth in the blinding white. There was a fire flickering in one of its windows, and a shape looking back at me from inside. I wanted to feel that warmth so desperately, but I wasn’t going to make it there. Too far. Too cold. The tears I shed turned to ice in an instant.

She turned back to me, said nothing, only stared at me with eyes that twinkled like cold, unfiltered starlight until the snow finally covered me completely and I was frozen in the dark.

I woke confused. I couldn’t see, and my arms were still pinned to my chest. Panic rose swiftly until I realized I was cocooned in blankets. Somehow I had managed to roll off my bed and was hanging off the side by a tangle of thick sheets. When I was finally able free myself, I changed out of my sweat-soaked undershirt into something dry. I shivered violently. Ever since the night of the performance, I couldn’t get warm. Even the unseasonably warm weather did little to help.

The glow from the digital clock on the dresser filled the room with a jaundiced haze. The numbers burned like cigarettes in the dark. Three on a match. Crimea. Russia. Cold. Snow.

My mind bounced from thought to thought, unable to calm itself or focus on any one thing for very long. I stumbled to the bathroom and splashed cool water on my face, not bothering to turn on the light. I was too frightened to see what might stare back at me. I could still feel her hand on my face, that impossible cold on my cheek when the rest of my body was too numb to feel anything.

Numb. Comfortably Numb. Pink Floyd. Madison Square Garden. Sneaking in liquor. No ice. Ice. Snow.

I let the hot water run over my fingers, wishing heat back into them, but they wouldn’t obey. I had to be coming down with something. The chills, the shivering, the fevered delirium, every random thought always bringing me back to snow. To her, and that impossible night when the universe cracked open and the abyss gazed into our world.

Nietzsche. College. Kissing Christine Baylor in the dark room. Fumbling in the dark. Falling. Twisted ankle. Bag of ice. Ice. Snow.

Snow.

Outside, a blanket of snow lay across the city and I could see the fluorescent welcome sign of a liquor store shining into the night like a lighthouse tempting lost souls to crash upon the rocks. My hands were shaking, either from nerves, the cold, or simply a bodily reminder of alcoholic detox to deter me from falling off the wagon. I pulled the blankets from my bed and sat in the corner beside the radiator.

I wept until the sun rose.