Winter Feast - Part Two of Six

Outside, three men could be seen turning right, their bodies faintly outlined in the whipping winds and snow. If the snow had stopped, and if the winds had died down, perhaps one of them would have heard a sigh of hunger from the boatshed. A sigh for fresh meat. A very special meat.

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“Dammit, Yaz. She said he was at the bottom of the hill. Where the hell is he?”

“Damned if I know, Darwin. Maybe he wasn’t dead like Brenda thought and went back to his room to get some rest.”

“If that’s the case,” Charlie yelled out above the wind, “it would make more sense to come down to the bar. It’s closer.”

“Maybe so.”

Darwin spotted something off to his left.

“What’s that over there by the telephone pole?”

Yaz turned in the direction Darwin was pointing at. Walking over, Yaz saw a baseball cap. David always wore one that would have a funny saying on it. Picking the hat up, shaking away the clinging snow, he looked at it. It read: MY MOM THINKS I’M AT THE MOVIES.

Staring closer, Yaz thought he saw blood but wasn’t sure.

“C’mon guys, let’s get back inside. I don’t think there’s anything we can do here.”

Darwin yelled above the wind, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“If this is what I think it is, Brenda’s right about David, and somebody is playing a cruel game with us. Very cruel.”

Darwin and Charlie looked at each other through slatted eyes trying to avoid the snow’s attack from blinding them. They followed Yaz back down to the bar.

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Across the way, behind the boatshed, David’s body lay with his chest splayed open, and a chomping, slurping sound could barely be heard.

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Upomn the hill, in his room, Mike was watching channel 3, drinking a beer and eating potato chips. Mike was getting restless. Ever since the storm hit before noon, he’s stayed inside his small cabin refusing to go anywhere, but now the storm was screwing with the reception and no matter how many times he fooled around with the rabbit ears attached to the TV, he just wasn’t getting a clear picture.

Getting up from his bed for the hundredth time, he pulled the curtains back to take another look at the larger-than-life snowflakes massing together, creating one large flat snowball as he liked to think of it, in front of him. While looking out his window, he saw could barely see three bodies moving around in the snow. He blinked his eyes and they were gone.

He stopped by his mini-fridge, and opened it, grabbing another cold beer, went back to the bed and sat down. Popping the pull-tab, he took a long pull and smacked his lips together.

“I can’t take this shit any longer. Might as well get my coat on and go down to the bar and see what’s shaking. Something about being alone on a night like this that isn’t right.”

Bending over, Mike grabbed his work boots, slid his feet into each one and pulled hard on the laces. Grabbing his coat, gloves and hat, he buttoned up and walked to the front door muttering, “This is a night I hope will be over soon. Never seen it this bad. No sir, this is about as bad as bad can get.”

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Outside, it waited.

https://theprose.com/post/217322/winter-feast-part-one-of-six