Mood: A Snowy Evening in the City
2.
 One night right after the turn of the century—in a city we shall not name, at a time just before Christmas—snow fell silently on the rooftops, and the very air smelled of snow. The white crystals were dry and thick, and plummeted from an ash-colored sky.
A custard-bright moon with a shocked face floated behind drifting ships of cloud. Moonlight glittered on the river, under the bridges, on the frozen streets.
The snow flakes disappeared among the black zags and zigs of the skyline. Christmas angels in the sky blew icy polar winds that froze the distant rail lines, and iced up ships in the harbors, but warmed the human heart—if the person was in the right state of grace.
Falling, drifting snowflakes would vanish in the black-and-blue of a high, starry night sky. They silently and briefly reappeared in gritty circles of lantern glow on street corners. More and more flakes fell as the storm intensified. The flakes plummeted into rapidly accumulating flows and drifts along darkened house walls.
Snow muffled the slam of a door, a shout for a cab, a laugh at a joke, a goodnight, and a gunning motor. The air smelled briefly of exhaust. Gloomy pines in the park sighed in the wind, and their clean scent brushed the air clean.
Night and snow rimmed the glow of a clock’s blue neon edge in a hairdresser’s shop. Darkness framed a yellow beer sign in the corner of a tavern window. Dark light glittered on high-tech stainless steel lettering—on a shop selling fancy glass and steel coffee machines that were colored bright yellow or red or green or blue or just plain glossy white. One by one, shop lights winked out and doors rattled, as departing employees locked them. Each was on his or her way to a warm Christmas dinner by a tree full of ornaments and presents—even the few remaining, elderly employees of Latchloose Savings & Loan—all but Latchloose himself. He sat immobile, like a pale and horrid statue behind his great wooden desk, and heard people’s footsteps that were muffled on the white sidewalks below his offices.
The streets were nearly empty, with a few last cars going here, and a few last pedestrians hurrying there. It was too late for the buses, and too early for the city plowing trucks. Here a Christmas wreath hung on a door, and there a string of colored lights traced a window frame. Somewhere on a chilly porch in a poor part of town, a row of children’s boots stood in a row, and a kitchen was alive with pots banging and parents talking while the house smelled of baking turkey, of macaroni and cheese, of spices and fruits, while children laughed by the fireplace.
Most of the big city office buildings dimmed down, except for the glow of corridor lights. Most offices were empty, except for cleaning crews who must venture out. The shopping center with its neon and bright windows emptied quickly. There was a traffic jam, but it thinned out. Silence and emptiness reigned as the night deepened. The train station had been jammed with rush hour traffic, but now stood closed and abandoned for the night. The clock over the concrete platform read 11:50, barely visible through the ice crystals gathering on the glass and wrapping around the black, wrought-iron arches. Oh yes, and a very slight, cold wind moaned lightly, and keened as it circled around in ghostly white swirls.
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Copyright © 2014 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.
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