Cold Story?

The beginning of what could evolve into a full story. I would appreciate any feedback, or new ideas in which it could go.

Cold Story

The cold northerly wind was howling through the frozen tundra that his world had become. As he raised his head from the sitting position he had been in, it seemed to be more frigid than it had been moments earlier. His eyes darted around, surveying the landscape around him as he felt an eerie presence.

It was bitter cold, enough to make his heavy winter jacket feel as if it were made of tissue paper. A thin layer of frost slowly began blanketing the lenses of his glasses. After a moment or two they became opaque, as useless for seeing as a couple of frosted beer mugs.

He tore the freezing glasses from his face and held them at arms length in his gloved hand. “What the hell?” He gasped as he threw them to the ground. A dry wispy laugh rattled behind him. He wheeled around looking frantically about for what could have made that sound. He saw only the freshly shoveled deck of the tiny cabin he had finished earlier that year. “Just in time for winter he thought”.

He raised his gaze to the rooftop and saw only the faint trail of woodsmoke rising from the makeshift chimney. “S**t, my fire!” he thought as he ran around to the front of the cabin. He threw open the door and slammed it shut behind him. As the latch found its home in the door frame, the picture he kept on the wall between the door and the window fell from its nail. It made a crunching sound as it crashed to the floor, etching the pristine glass with spiderwebs. He stopped in his tracks and turned to face the sound. “Damn it!” He exclaimed, “That was my favorite picture”.

He knelt down to gingerly pick up the frame and the fragile nest of broken glass it contained. He stood up slowly, remembering the time that the picture was taken. It was a picture of his family, before the draft had taken him from them. He remembered his father grabbing his shoulder as he slipped the picture into his trembling hands.

“Be strong son”, were the last words he heard from his father before the men in the army fatigues called everyone into the large trucks that had been parked on main street. He crammed in with the twenty others in the truck and they shut the doors on the back. He didn't stop waving until his parents were out of sight.

He placed the picture on the table in the center of his cabin. He pushed the memories aside as he strode over to rekindle the fire from its small clutch of coals. As he poked small pieces of wood into the fire he thought about his time in the military.

The first several months were hell. They pushed the soldiers until they passed out from sheer exhaustion. The training got more and more brutal every day for the first two weeks. It consisted of anything from running miles at a time, to crawling through spaces that wouldn’t accommodate a rabbit. The drill sergeant was named Murphy, but he insisted on being called Sir.

The trials we were put through were bad for most of us, but for those that attracted the attention of Murphy it was hell. When one of the men fell behind the group during our morning run, the others kept running and nobody payed the slightest of attention to him. Nobody but me that is. I saw him fall behind and remembered his face, he had been crying the night before. I had been just about to fall asleep when I heard his weeping from a few bunks down.

He had been mumbling something about missing his family when the drill sergeant got word that someone was awake, and forced him to perform a hundred and fifty pushups, because he obviously wasn't tired enough. After around seventy five the poor man's arms gave out. Even the boot of the sergeant was not enough to rouse him. The beating continued until I had seen enough. I stepped forward and yelled “Permission to finish his punishment Sir?”

Murphy looked at me and smiled, it was not a smile of compassion, or of pride, or even of anger. It was the smile of a madman bent on breaking someone. He bellowed at me “Did I give you permission to address me, maggot?”.

“No Sir!” I replied in my near trembling voice.

“Drop and give me fifty plus what Jenkins had left” he yelled even louder.

I plunged to the ground and began pushing myself up and down with all of my strength. He must have realized this and called for the other soldiers to put Jenkins on my back. Jenkins was not a heavy man, but the extra weight definitely didn’t help me any. I had gotten about half way through when I began to feel my arms refusing my commands. They had gone from coiled springs to limp noodles. The weight of the man on my back had been too much, I could tell that I was not going to be able to finish them.

As he looked down he realized that he was almost entirely out of kindling. He had the small firebox packed full of the small wood, and muttered under his breath. He would have to replace it tomorrow he thought, as he closed the door to the stove. He began inspecting his coat for any holes. The coat was in good enough condition, besides the normal wear that had accumulated on the many patches that dotted the surface of the coat, it was just as intact as it was yesterday.

He found himself thinking back to the chill he had received outside on his makeshift bench, and then he remembered. “My glasses!”. He threw his coat back on and rushed to the door. He was careful to close it more gently this time, though the damage had been done. He walked quickly to the place he had been sitting, where the snowfall had all but erased any trace of him previously being there. He began sifting through the snow with his bare hands, searching for where his glasses may have fallen. His hands his something rigid in the snow, and he grasped at the thing he had found. It was a knife! A knife with the US. Army insignia stamped on it, and along it's glinting edge there was a reflective surface.

As he turned the knife over in his hand he saw a reflection on the blade. He whirled around to find a strange man in a suit standing before him. It was well below freezing outside but this strange man did not seem to feel the chill that had again penetrated his coat. He looked at the man, he was wearing a black fedora that kept his face in shadow. His suit was exceedingly well pressed, it would have been impossible to keep it in that condition that far into the woods.

The more he looked at this man the more a general feeling of unease spread through his body. There was something about him that seemed familiar, but he also seemed so incredibly out of place. He offered the man in, as it was so cold outside in the frigid air. The man said in a voice that sounded like the ripping of paper, “No thank you, The weather out here suits me just fine”, “Actually I am here to help you”.

“What?” He thought; Help me?, no one is supposed to even know that I am here, how can this man claim to be here to help me? I asked, clearing my throat “With what?”.

“Oh, I am capable of helping you with a great many things Mr. Ashford”.

How does he know my name?,I had put a lot of effort into moving out here just so I could get away from people that know me. The fact that this man knows my name is a threat to my safety.  

Author's Note

Would appreciate anything you have to say about this, especially how I could improve it or continue it.

Reviews

[Dante Carlisle]

I'm responding to your question of how this could be improved, because it's much the same thing I look for in my own writing. So, forgive the blunt nature of my review.

I only really have two major issues with the prose, and I'll keep it short and sweet. The first is that the transition from memory to present is always a difficult one to do smoothly. Try to look at ways to do so in a way that it is immediately (first few words) apparent that we have changed speeds. Like I said, it's always a difficult action in a story.

The other complaint is that I think you feel the need to explain things to your reader too much. Always assume your reader is highly intelligent, and try to avoid redundancies. One that stuck out to me was that you repeated yourself. Instead of telling us your character looked at the strange man, simply tell us about the man's appearance. This implies your character is looking at him.

These are two of the first things that jumped out at me, but I'm by no means an expert, simply my own opinion. That's part of the game, though. There are a hundred ways you could continue this, where do you see it going?