Snow storm

500 word flash fiction

Joe scraped ice from his windscreen and then jumped out of the blizzard and into the driver’s seat. Praying that his jalopy would get him to work, he was off. Snow quickly covered the windscreen and the wipers went into overdrive trying to keep up. Dark at 7am, the day seemed as reluctant as Joe had been to get started.

Visibility was down to twenty feet. Joe’s car felt like the only one in the world as the road wound steeply down and the snow fell faster. The old heater belted out scorched air until his frozen fingers gradually relaxed on the wheel. He ran through his day — morning rounds, coffee, then doors open to visitors at 10am. Joe knew they would be scarce in this weather. He hoped for a quiet day.

The car faltered and the engine spluttered. Joe held his breath but it died anyway.

Muttering, he switched the ignition off and on again — once, twice, and on the third attempt, the car coughed back into life. He eased down on the accelerator and was on his way.

Joe sat hunched forward, his nose three inches from the windscreen. Peering through the swirling snowflakes made him dizzy, as if he’d worked his way through a bottle of scotch. The journey seemed interminable and the dense whiteness and eerie silence made it feel like an alien planet. Pulling round the last bend, he relaxed; almost there. Then came the thud. The car lurched over something and Joe hit the brakes. With a sinking feeling, he cursed and climbed out, already fearing what he would see.

The vivid red of splashed blood was unmissable in the white-out world. Joe dropped to his knees.

It had been a fully-grown deer. Warm blood seeped from its broken body, steaming as it hit the snow. It smelt of life and death at the same time but its eyes were glassy black. Joe checked. No pulse. He sat back on his heels for a moment regarding the deer, already half-covered in snow. Sighing and feeling about as bad as he possibly could, Joe heaved the body from under his car and away to the snow-shrouded roadside. It left a vermilion wound on the ice-white ground, but within a minute that too had disappeared under fresh flakes. Visibility was down to a couple of feet now. He would come back later if the weather lifted, to deal with the corpse.

Having plunged his bloodied hands deep into the snow and scrubbed them, Joe edged the car into work. Frozen and sick, the horror of killing the animal sank into his numbed brain.

Collecting his bunch of keys from their hook, he set off on his rounds. He mucked out and fed forty animals, with kind words and comforting pats for all. But he could take no pleasure in it today; all he could see was the deer’s frozen body, lying crushed by the roadside, just a short walk from the animal sanctuary.

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