Lucid Daydreaming Blog

It was dark outside. It was always dark outside. The coffee worked overtime, and I wasn’t working at all. Where I’m from, when it snows, the world is brighter. That’s because the sun reflects off the snow. It’s blinding. When there is no sun, the snow is gray. In Alaska, everything is gray.

My roommates aren’t helping. It’s enough that I have to share a table with them. But they expect me to hold a conversation. I’d rather talk to the dog, although, thankfully, it doesn’t talk back.

I track the snowflakes outside the window. I watch the windmill standing tall in the lawn, motionless, snow capped. In the afternoons I shovel the sidewalk. When no one is looking I take my gloves off and bury my hands in the snow until they are red and it hurts to warm them. In the evenings, when we have a big fire going, I sit away in my nook and become mesmorized by the shadows on the faces of my roommates and the moose head above them. All of their eyes are bottomless pits in the light.

We were warned about the blizzard. I had food for two weeks, maybe three if I went hungry a few days. It wasn’t the food we should have been worried about. I’ll be plain. There is water in blood. And we took a vote, to survive. Thinking back on it now, I wish one of us had thought to melt the snow before killing the dog.