As above, so below

When I was a kid and the snow began to fall, I always found myself perched in the window seat, watching the front yard. The only disturbance was the few footprints my father left after his failed attempt at shoveling.

The funny thing about snow, is that if you watch it long enough, everything blends together. 

There is no up. There is no down. The world is suspended.

After a while you stop noticing where it lands.

The snow, it seems, is the same here. But instead of sitting at a windowsill, I’m lying on my back.

I should be cold, I think vaguely.

My fingers are stiff. My fatigues are soaked. Why am I not cold?

I look around. Somehow I’m in a small clearing. The trees are nothing but splintered stumps protruding from the ground.

My helmet is gone.This feels important.

I turn my head and see it. It’s on its back, slowly filling with snow.

Just like I am.

I roll over and reach for it. I can barely bend my red, swollen fingers. There’s something beyond the helmet. Or, someone beyond the helmet, probably thrown by the same Panzer blast. 

I crawl toward it.

Toward him, I mean.

I open my mouth and realize I don’t know his name. I call to him.

"Hey! Hey, kid"!

But when I reach him, any further questions are answered by the round hole in his chest.

His eyes are open, as if he was also simply watching the snow float through the air. But they are glazed now, snow collecting in them, on them. I can barely see them anymore.

Soon I’ll be blind.

Just like him.

He’s just a child on the cusp of manhood. God, there isn’t even the hint of a five-o’clock shadow.

I look down at his jacket.

Miller.

Like me, he’s just a kid watching the snow.

Something tells me—almost like half a memory—that I should close his eyes. But it’s too cold.

They stick.

I begin to rise, but something half buried in the snow stops me.

His tags.

I pull them free.

I shove them down the front of my shirt.

His mother will want them.

I walk away and it’s still snowing.

Back into the woods.

Back into the trees.

Back into the dark.

And it’s still snowing.

Miller is the only one left to see it fall.

As above,

so below.