Snowscape

He could do this. No, he would do this. There was no real choice but to keep going. If he turned back now, there was no guarantee he'd be able to drive, and he'd certainly never catch a bus to make it to work on time in case driving didn't work out. Never mind the zero degrees. Never mind the minus ten wind chill. Never mind the snow drifts and the ice hiding below the snow drifts. He had to make this work. He had to get to that bus.

Why couldn't it have been his left foot? he wondered as he thumped along, eyes on the ground, darting from one potential trip hazard to another, even the imagined ones. With his left foot in a walking cast, he could still drive. But no, it was the right foot, the driving foot. A foot that was then swathed in two pairs of thick, white sweat socks with a plastic sandwich baggie rubber banded around the toes. It was not remotely enough to keep out the chill.

The neighborhood trees around him were gaunt, skeletal, like the figure in Edvard Munch's the Scream. That is how cold it was. If he didn't make it, would he be found like that? Wobbled and withered, his mouth frozen in the middle of a cry of nooooo? By some poor sap, perhaps, taking his happy but shivering dog for a walk? Because you always have to take dogs for walks, no matter the weather. He was pretty sure it was in the owners manual. You could buy sweaters and booties to protect their furry bodies and tender paws, but a-walking they must go. And so did he.

How long had it been? Five minutes? Ten minutes? An hour? Google Maps had promised a fourteen minute walk, but that was for a normal person in normal weather, not a chump in a walking cast making his foolish way through the aftermath of a blizzard. Why did they call it a walking cast, anyway? He wasn't walking. It was more like toddling. Or lurching, at the moment, since his padded winter boot was taller than the cast, thus completely throwing off his gait.

He looked at the street signs. Carver Ave? Where was that? It was a straight shot to the bus stop. There was literally no way he could make a wrong turn. He peered more closely at the houses around him. Nope, totally unrecognizable. Hills of snow all around.

He kept going.