The Frostbite

Robin pushed aside the blanket and rushed to the window the moment her mother left. She rubbed her sleeve wet, wiping the fog off the window. She cocked up her hands against it like binoculars and then looked out. Sheets of rain and snow were falling. It wasn’t normal rain. And it wasn’t normal snow either. It was the ugly middle ground. A weird sludgy, wintry mix. Graupels fell and banged against the earth making sweet chin music. She looked up at the clouds as the graupels fell down. It looked like the clouds were snowball fighting with the earth. And everything in between the sky and the earth was a part of it, whether it liked it or not. She looked to her extreme right, trying to get a perspective of the third dimension but she couldn’t quite look beyond the restrictions of the window pane. She could see the carrot and the buttons sticking out of the face of the snowman. The woolly hat wasn’t there though. Either the wind had knocked it out, or the graupels had scored baskets.

“What are you doing?” came the soft whisper of Anya from her bed.

“Checking on our snowman! He is in danger.” Robin whispered back to her twin.

“We can’t do anything. Just go to sleep.” Anya responded, holding back her yawn.

Robin looked out onto the lawn. The bluegrass that grew in the summers was lost somewhere, dead and trampled on by sheets and sheets of snow. And as she looked at the snow, she felt a shadow creep past the window. The wind was crisp and unforgiving.

“I am going out there!” Robin whispered back, her voice in quivers.

“WHAT!” Anya said, trying to sound as angry as she could while whispering, “You can’t do that! You will wake up Mum and Dad and get yourself in trouble.”

“Our snowman needs an umbrella. And I will give him one and come back. That is it.”

With that, Robin fumbled around, putting on her maroon jumper, the red woolly hat and her green scarf.

“That’s my scarf!” Anya said out loud and got up from bed.

“I can’t find mine. And you are not even using it! So shut it!”

Anya sat back seeing her elder (by forty seconds...) sister tiptoe across the room and softly open the door. She was gone before Anya could put on her green jumper. She hurried with her red woolly hat and Robin’s brown scarf (which had been tossed under the bed). And then she tiptoed out of the room too and down the corridor trying to keep up with her sister’s shadow.

A chill ran up through her loose pyjamas. The wind fluttered in through the gaps in their clothing. Anya felt like she was the world and the world was a deflating balloon as air gushed in through her clothing. She rushed ahead, her flip-flops sinking in the snow. She looked at her sister in envy who had put on shoes. She hadn’t forgotten her shoes per say. She couldn’t simply find them in the shoe rack. And now she knew why. Anya’s shoes weren’t in the shoe rack because her elder sister couldn’t find hers. By the time Anya made it to the snowman, her ankles freezing in the cold, Robin had already picked up the snowman’s hat that had fallen down. She put it onto the snowman’s head.

She was putting the blue umbrella she had brought along in the snowman’s twig hands. Anya flinched as the graupels hit her in the scalp and ran under the shade of the front door. Robin followed a minute later after she had put the umbrella in the snowman’s grasp. And now she stood looking at the snowman. He was holding up the umbrella. His smile of pebbles, a carrot nose and eyes of beads made him look like a Disney character. The two balls of paunch were magnificent, perfectly round and equidistant from the naval.

“You do know that it’s dad’s umbrella, right? And that he will notice it in the morning?” Anya said. Robin did not respond. She was looking at the snowman, her smile as wide as the snowman’s pebbly smile.

“I am going back-” Anya stopped dead in her tracks. She felt a cold gush behind her. It felt like the darkness was creeping behind her. Like a deformed hand from the shadows had touched her on a bare shoulder. She turned back, the color draining out of her face. She was paler than the wintry mix and shivering like petroleum evaporating from a cusped palm.

“Did you feel that too?” she asked, her voice jittery as she turned back to see her sister. Robin did not respond. And she was not smiling anymore. Her pebble smile had fallen flat into an open-mouth gape. Anya looked at the snowman.

A shadow was wrapped around its snowy torso. There were two dark wings like a bat that had engulfed the creature. The sisters couldn’t see past the shadow, but two fangs had dug deep into the snowman’s nape.

The wings unwrapped themselves and the vampire fluttered to the swing nearby. Its clawed legs hung upside-down by the pole and the sisters saw his face for the first time. His eyes were red with bloodlust. He had wings instead of hands and like a bat, he had wrapped his body in them. They weren’t black, although black was the closest thing you could describe them as. They were inconspicuous like shadows. His teeth weren’t visible even though he was smiling. Only his two yellow fangs glared out of his mouth.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here? I sss-mell the sss-weet curling of your AB+ blood.” said the vampire. His voice was slithery like a snake and his tongue forked and red. An extended slither was evident in his voice when the tongue glided under the two fangs. “Too bad that I have already had my dinner.”

He swirled around the bar with the torque from his clawed feet. Before the twins could blink an eye, he stood on the snow in front of them. The vampire walked ahead. Even when his feet were bare, his claws got grip on the snowy pavement.

“It was sss-weeter than your blood, my dinner. But it wasn’t the natural kind of sss-weet. The artificial kind. The diabetes kind.”

Anya didn’t move. Robin didn’t move. But without thought or word, they had come closer to each other and their hands had slipped into each other’s. Anya was shoving her nails into Robin’s palm. And Robin was too stunned to tell her to stop.

“No worries though. There is always tomorrow. I will take your leave. For now, that is. I would leave you two with your dear sss-nowman now. You might find him a little more fun to play with. Esss-plecialy after the frrrossstbite I gave him.”

The wings fluttered. With two flaps he was gone as fast as he had come, disappearing like a shadow in the shadows. The twins looked at each other. Robin pulled her hand away from Anya. She had left deep gouges, with her huge fingernails and all, into her skin. Before she could say anything, they heard a soft sizzle like the melting of snow.

The snowman’s paunch was dripping. Four icicles spiked out of the circles the girls had rolled and shaped with so much passion. The pebble smile widened and the umbrella was thrown away.

Anya looked at Robin. Robin looked at Anya. They saw each other’s eyes say it with blinks and then as they broke into a dash, they shouted it out together. “RUN!”

The Frostbite followed, very slowly, still in the middle of growing his limbs. A dozen more hands popped out. The snow fused and mingled and the hands and legs mingled into its plumage. The girls ran down the pavement, Robin in front, Anya close behind and the Frostbite slowing down a little. It was figuring out what to do with its pristine white wings.

Robin jumped onto the locked iron gates and she climbed up as fast as she could, not even stopping to look below. There were weird gaps in the iron gates making it tricky to climb. She lost her grip a few times on her way up but she finally reached up. With one long breath, as she reached the top, she jumped over to the other side of the gate. As she descended down she came face to face with her sister who was on the other side of the gate.

“Hurry UP!” Robin shouted in her sister’s face.

“I am TRYING! It’s hard to do in flip-flops!” Anya shouted back at her, as she climbed up.

“Why the HELL did you not wear SHOES?” Robin replied, almost out of breath and then she jumped down landing in the soft snow.

“You took MINE! THAT IS WHY!”

The rain was bickering. Her bottom was wet with the thin wet layer of damp rain on the snow. And she looked up at her sister who had made it to the top. The Frostbite was still behind. He had grown a dozen more arms and he looked in pain as they merged into each other. Its wings were silver and as large as the vampire’s.

“He is coming!” Robin shouted up to Anya who had almost reached the top. And then as she tried pushing herself over to the other side, a flip-flop fell out of her toes and landed on the ground with a plop. There was a crackling of ice. The Frostbite had flapped its wings.

“Quick! Jump down!” Robin shouted.

And Anya hoisted her over the gate to the other side. And as she jumped down from the top of the gate, she lost her second flip-flop and landed right on her ankle. The scream was loud but it was lost in the thunder.

“Come…” Robin said, trying to lift her up. Anya got up on one foot. Her tears were cold but she kept her sniffles to herself. The running began again. Robin was in the front, taking the lead and Anya continued to fall back, trying her best to keep up with the paining knee. None of them looked back. They felt that looking back would make the Frostbite faster. It didn’t, of course, but not looking also didn’t slow him down.

The Frostbite flapped his pristine wings of snow and with one swoop, it flew over the iron gates. It fluttered behind, still trying to figure out flight. He was slow but he was still doing well by infant Frostbite standards. He flapped his wings, getting better and better with each stroke of the wings. His beady eyes saw the twins running. Its smile of pebbles widened as two claws of ice and snow took shape. And then it swooped down like an eagle, caught Anya in its grip and flew over. His rocky cackle echoed. Robin looked up, tears in her eyes. If only she had worn her own shoes.