Winter

Sand flows easily. The tiny little grains fall one by one; collecting themselves in the bottom. In the end there are no more left to fall.
---

Kathy closed her eyes as the bullet displaced her side. At first it'd been warm, an odd sense, but then it started to hurt as she moved and felt the organs and skin it'd ripped through shift. Now she felt afraid. Surely someone had heard the gun fire and would come running to see what'd happened. She didn't think she could have much time before she'd get sleepy. The blood didn't want to stop. It was warm on her hands as it flowed over them and pooled on the ground. She wished her parents would run up to her.

The church hall was dark in the late evening of winter and now it cried.

Twenty years before
It was close to dusk when the teenagers began to gather upstairs for the evening. Stacy sat in the fold-up chair waiting for the service to start. She felt eager to begin. It was cold that day. The sun hadn't been out at all and it'd been miserable. The youth director had managed to corral everyone upstairs and was waiting for them to calm down. It irritated her when they didn't quiet down quickly. The guitar player sat up front and gazed out at her. His eyes seemed wild in his twisted locks of hair. She smiled back at him half heartedly. The director broke the guitarist's fixation as he started to drum the first notes for the first song.

Stacy felt lost in thought. It felt like years since she'd felt safe in her own little world. She knew she had nothing to worry about but she couldn't get over some feeling of something watching her. It'd been that way for a year, that something was watching her. Her mother had laughed it off, she was downstairs singing in the masses now. Her father had been to busy. She pulled her flannel shirt closer around her. A girl next to her tried to get her to stand up and be happy but Stacy didn't feel like it. The girl sat down and asked her what was wrong, Stacy didn't feel like telling her. She stood up with the girl and joined in the singing.
---

Stacy sat on the swings of the playground as she waited in the cold to go home. Justin sat next to her, the guitar player. He looked at her with those pale blue eyes of his. She'd known them well. He'd watched her. She'd loved it. They took each other's hands and held them. She gave him a fake smile and he asked her what was wrong. She told him it was nothing and led him back inside.

She told him she was pregnant. He sat in a slump, he didn't want it to be true. She looked down, he didn't take it well, she had been expecting him to respond like this. He asked her what she was going to do. She wasn't sure. Her parents didn't suspect anything yet. Justin stood up and walked away without another word.

Stacy sat alone in the fake light of the hall. She felt the stare of the watcher on her, the way she had for a year. It was shifty and cold and then it was frightening in a chaotic way the next second. She couldn't force herself to look around for it. It scared her. Stacy called out but didn't hear anything respond. Was that a good thing? She laughed to herself and stood up. She still felt watched.
---

It was a week since they had talked. They sat back down in the same place, in the same hall that they had a week before. Justin asked her again what she planned to do. She looked at him and asked him what they should do? He told her he wasn't going to be involved in it, it was her problem. She told him she would abort it. He looked at her and told her 'fine' and stood and left. She watched him walk away.

His eyes had been different. They had been darker, they weren't the icy blue anymore. It scared her, she felt alone, in a shell of what she'd become familiar with as her life. Stacy looked around, searching for the watching eyes, but she couldn't feel them. They weren't there. Stacy stood up and walked down stairs and outside into the cold and began to walk home.
---

Stacy sat again in the metal chair as she waited for the service to begin. The room was cold as always. She stood up and walked over to the door. She felt the eagerness she always felt on those Sunday nights, but something had changed. She felt her isolation trap her. It was like she was comatose in a hospital. She could see herself from a third person perspective sitting in a wheel chair with a bandaged head in a large open room. It was a cold image, but it mirrored her own, she couldn't feel much more from her own life.

She spoke out loud across the room to Justin. He couldn't hear her over his guitar as she left the room. Everyone made their way in soon after but Stacy wasn't there.
---

Stacy walked down the stairs and sat at the foot in a heap of confusion, it pained her. She watched out the glass doors into nothing. Cars passed by outside. She never saw the man approach the church until he reached the doors and entered. He stood lean with a moonlight tan and dark shadowed eyes. He wore a dark grey coat and looked almost insane. He licked his lips and rubbed his fingers individually with his thumbs.

He stopped, looked at her and stared. He held a gun out to her and told her to 'finish it'. She looked at him in fear. She looked at the gun, it was old with smudges and a fading handle. She didn't know what he meant. She never had thought of what those words might have meant, but she took the gun and walked up the stairs. The music of the guitar grew clearer and louder. She stopped and looked back, the stranger stood watching her just a few steps back. She went down the darkened hall and turned. She fired a single shot and smiled. The smell of the gun's fire dispersed around her.

The stranger walked up to her and took the gun out of her hand as he whispered sweet words into her ear. He walked back to the door and down the stairs. She looked past the wall she faced and through the window. He walked away outside. She chose to follow him.
---

An old man stood outside the church, stopping on a walk to gaze at the beauty of the modern looking building. It was cold out, just as it had been twenty years before.

Kathy played in the nursery waiting for her parents to be done downstairs after dinner. Her mommy had come up and told her to finish up because they were leaving soon. She put away the last of her toys and closed the door. She wished her mommy hadn't turned off the lights in the hall. She didn't like the darkness in the depth of the hall. She walked out and over to the window and looked out at the parking lot to see if it had started snowing yet, it hadn't. The cold of the outside reached in and off the window. She turned and saw the darkness move and heard the loud echo of the bang.