BY Orion Emerick
At least when the holidays are here I can pretend things are normal again, that
I’m just home for the festivities and I’ll be gone before next week, returned to the bustle
of a college town where I get back to my day-to-day life. I can forget, at least for a
moment or two, that I am home until further notice.
Everyone is in a good mood too, the house feels warm and happy with all the
lights and my dad’s collection of nutcrackers on every window sill. When I take a deep
breath, the joy leftover from my childhood floods back and saturates my brain. It makes
it all easier if I remember how much I used to love this time of year, before it turned
into an opportunity for my relatives to act like my way of life if some political statement.
They will be here in a few hours if the storm doesn’t stop them from making it here. The
weatherman strongly recommended we all stay indoors despite the holidays, with the
high of three degrees above zero. I shiver just thinking about it. People have been
saying the cold is enough to steal away your body. I’ve dreamed of things like that, only
in my head I just disappear, no subzero temps involved.
I look out the window, snow crashes down in fat flakes but barely enough has
landed to cover the grass. My mom calls my namethat’snotmyname, she’s in the kitchen,
she wants help with the meatballs. We fight as I try to shape them, our voices raise for
nothing. I know she’s mad. Mad at my body. Mad at my life. I am too. We take it out on
each other when little things go wrong. It wasn’t like that always, I try to tap into some
of that leftover childhood wonder. I float back through time and remember when she
taught me the recipe. It was the year I lost my first tooth, right on Christmas Eve, I was
excited that the Tooth Fairy and Santa were going to come the same night. She snaps at
me, saying I’m making them too small and they’ll burn in the oven. Then is not now, she
says something about women being better at cooking. It feels like needles in my skin.
She says mynamethat’snotmyname and says I’m being dramatic when I correct her.
I go on a walk. The air bites at my cheeks the second I step outside. The wind
blows the snow around so that it’s no longer coming down straight but whipping
around in every direction. I can see to the end of the block before the blizzard swallows
everything up into a blur. The cold gnaws at my fingers and I know I’ll have to make
this walk quick. I try to focus on the cold parts of my body and not the parts that drove
me out here, like the size of my hands, the pitch of my voice, or the shape of my chest,
and all the parts that my sister insists are perfect. The more I think about it, the more I
boil with discomfort.
The streets are empty, cars are hidden away in garages or parked in driveways.
The sidewalk, or where it would be, is uneven but constant and buried with snow. I pull
my scarf down and let the cold rush against my cheeks as I trudge through the snow. It
comes halfway up my calves. I hear the weatherman’s voice in my head again. It’s
numbingly cold. I should stay inside until the storm blows over but I was suffocating.
Even if I’m freezing, at least I’m not breathing the same recycled air. Even if I’m
freezing, I can breathe out here.
The air fills up my lungs as if the wind is blowing directly into them, its
welcomed chill wraps my body inside and out. I pull my hand from my pocket to guard
my eyes against the glare of all the bright white snow. It’s coming down so heavy I can
barely make out what’s in the distance. I know I should turn around but I can hear my
mom’s voice in the back of my head, I can hear my dad asking why I stopped wearing
makeup, I was so pretty. I tilt my face into the wind and keep walking. It whips across
my cheeks, stinging a little but I find the bitter cold refreshing even if my hands are
numb.
I go to pull my sleeve back and check my watch, it feels like I’ve been out here for
hours but I know it’s probably only been ten minutes. When I look down, my hand is
fading, turning a translucent tone of tin. I can see the white glare of the snow where my
palm should be blocking my view of the ground. My fingers are gone completely besides
a faint silver silhouette. The face of my watch floats at the edge of my sleeve.Never mind
the time, my brain begins to rush with thoughts and all those stories I scoffed at news
reports about people turning invisible with the snow. I thought they were so stupid,
blaming the falling temperatures and all the microplastic in our bloodstreams. It
seemed impossible that someone would turn invisible just because they went outside in
the cold. Before I can panic about what I’ll do, I think about what my parents will have
to say, I think about the things they’ll yell. And then I don’t care. My body is leaving.
I glance at my watch, then pull my other hand from my pocket and let it go numb
too so I can time how long it takes for that one to become just a silhouette. First there is
the numbness, then there it is. My fingernails, then my knuckles, soon my palm has
turned too, leaving behind a transparent silhouette. I take my hat off and unzip my coat.
My mom calls, poking her head out the door, “young lady, you better put that
coat back on.” She must’ve been watching me from the living room window. I shouldn’t
be able to hear her over the wind, but her shrill voice rings out like a church bell on a
clear day.
I kick up my feet and start running. Letting my coat bounce further down my
arms, I cross the street and turn the corner out of my mom's view. Still, I can hear her
calling my name. The front door slams shut and I hear her shouting
mynamethat’snotmyname, cutting through the snowflakes. The cold air whispers
through my body as my coat falls to the ground and lands with a puff of snow.
My mom’s voice starts to fade as I take off running faster without the restriction
of my heavy coat. I glance down at my torso. The numb feeling takes it over when I look
down. First it’s my shoulders then I want to break out crying as my chest disappears
into a flat silver outline. I’ve never recognized my body so much before. I run and run,
lighter now without the weight of my chest and stomach or the restriction of that pink
coat.
Soon, my whole body has gone and I am nothing but a silhouette. I finally stop
running when I reach the elementary school a few blocks away. The snow is up to where
my knees would be when my mom catches up, she’s calling my name. Annoyed more
than worried. My pink coat is flung over her shoulder as she stomps. I wish the wind
would just blow it away. I always hated how girly that coat made me look.
She stops and peers through the chain link fence, she puts a hand on her hip and
scowls. Then, she throws my big puff coat over the fence and turns to walk back home.
She seems lighter without me, the same way I am lighter without my body. I think she is
happy like I am. We both got what we wanted. Though I am numb and invisible, I could stand to stay like this forever. Without my body, I am light and happy.
Orion is passionate storytelling and all things strange, from aliens to monster to strange parts of nature. They take a lot of inspiration from nature and natural phenomena. As a midwest native, they often write stories that turn mundane environments, like the suburbs, into a space to explore the strange. Much of their work uses magic or unexplainable elements, like monsters or ghosts, to explore queerness and isolation. Their work has been published in Red Cedar Review and Long River Review.