Day 461

From the wide window he could see the whole city as it slept beneath several feet of snow.
It had been like this for as long as he could remember, though now his memory was weaker.
According to the lines etched on the wall in clusters of 400, he was somewhere around eighty.
Far too old for this weather but too young to die, in his opinion.

He remembered a time when people went outside, when the snow wasn't so deep.
From his vantage point he could see the streets he'd played on with his friends before they left.
Everyone left eventually, through their own will or the snow's.
It used to be so safe, cold but safe.

His eyes glazed over as he thought about the day when he first saw someone vanish.
He'd been standing next to his mother as they hid under some building's overhang to talk.
A friend of his was running towards them both, sinking slowly into the snow.
He would have helped but his mother held him too tightly.

By the time they eventually reached him all that was visible of them was their forehead and one eye.
Slowly their skin turned blue, their eye closed and they sunk down entirely.
His mother had smashed the window of the building behind them and they hid there until morning.
She refused to tell him how long this had been going on for or how many had been lost.

After that the snow didn't seem as pretty as it had before, it seemed to wait.
More and more people disappeared, his wide community of loved ones dwindled.
The adults would only speak about it in small groups, hushing each other as they trembled.
Whether it was from fear or the bitter cold, he wasn't sure but it didn't stop them from going.

Eventually it was just him and his mother left, she refused to leave.
As the snow finally caught her she screamed at him to wait for his father, to never leave.
This was the first time she'd ever mentioned him, before that he'd assumed his father to be dead.
He crept from roof-to-roof (their strategy against the snow) and scoured the city for life.

This leads us back to the present, wherein he is old and watching vague blue figures from above.
You see, they started coming back the same as they'd been when they vanished only... not.
Their skin that deathly blue and their eyes held that same sheen as fresh ice.
He'd barricaded every floor from ground to twentieth and disabled the lift but still, they were close.

His mother's voice echoed up the lift's shaft and along the corridor, trying to find him.
He had a vague suspicion she already knew, that she'd seen him like the falling snow had.
It had been this way for far too long and he was so tired of it all.
They were in the hallway searching for him room by room.