The cold was an ever-present part of our lives now. An aspect many wish they could forget, to ignore but it was impossible especially tonight where instead of the wind merely will cause any exposed skin to feel as if it were burning. Instead, it is as if the heat from the world has been sucked away, leaving only darkness and the freezing cold in its absence. It is the type of cold that not only causes your bones to ache but your very muscles to slow as if they themselves were being frozen.

A roar they shook the snow beneath my feet shook me from my musings. My eyes quickly dart to and fro searching for the origin before I realise that it was from being me. But this only fills me with more fear, for there are only two options. That I either passed it and we didn’t notice each other, or I am being hunted. It is coming.

I increase my pace until it is a run or as much as a run as I’m able to make it in waist-deep snow, I pushed my stumbling body through what it could and over what it could not. The wind picked up in a furious howl as something almost as scary as the certain death that hunted me occurs. It snows. 

“No!” I cry out, my voice a near panic as any hope I have of surviving without shelter disappears.

A sudden downpour of the type of snow everyone loved as a kid, where every drop was like small fluffy balls falling from the sky but in this case, there was enough snow to block out what little light the moon above gave out. The cold is just going to keep getting worse. Even the beast chasing me stopped its ever-present roaring at the sight of the indomitable snow. The danger this represents must be as fatal for it as it is for me. Enough for it to give up its hunt.

I had to find shelter, or else I was just going to end up like the countless beneath my feet their frozen forms are a testament to this new world that we now live in.

“I will not die here,” I say to myself as the cold starts to creep into my body.

I say this every time I almost fall, every stumble or trip brought its utterance from my lips my very soul going into the words I spoke for I know that if I do not believe them wholeheartedly, then this will be my end. I speak the words that have kept me going in this cruel world again and again, as many times as it takes.

“I will not die here, I will not go quietly into the night” the words struggle from my lips the cold almost stealing them from me.

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As I repeated this I must have traveled miles, it seemed like hours that I was trudging through this endless expanse. but at last my body had given out, my body smacks into the solid ground beneath me with what feels like the force of a truck. The cold was once again creeping in, the snow settling around me. My grave is slowly being filled. I reach my hand out to pull me forward but instead of the grip given by snow and ice, my hand instead slides off something smooth. 

It is as if my entire body is flooded with the will to live once more, I desperately search for the flashlight within the confines of my coat, once freed I point it downwards towards what my hand had discovered.

“Glass… ” the whisper barely broke past the ice that had formed on my lips.

Within seconds my hand was pointing the flash flight all over the area. I was on a roof, there must be a door somewhere to access it. This is my chance, once I find the door ill be ok, ill be able to survive. I almost flick past it with the torch but I quickly light up what I just saw. A mound of snow that is slightly too angular, too straight with sides too sheer to be just snow. I scramble over to it as fast as I can, the light never leaving it. The one hopes I have of living, of seeing tomorrow.

Once I reach it I quickly start digging into the side closest to me with my hand, my body acting as if it is possessed ripping through the snow with a ferocity only reached when your life is at stake. Soon my hands touched something smooth once again cold but different from the snow around it. I could laugh and cry as I realise what it is. Metal, I’ve found the door.

With the amount of adrenaline and will to live flowing through my veins, I made quick work of the rest of the snow trapping the rest of the door. A shuddering breath leaves my lips as my hand reaches for the handle. It doesn’t move.

“No, no no no.” I almost scream, a strength I didn’t know I possessed wells up in my body with each utterance.

Almost before I give the suggestion in my mind conscious thought, my body acts. 

Slam 

I throw my body against the door, while I know it should hurt I do not care.

Slam 

The entirety of my body is numb.

Slam 

I can almost feel the cold creeping into my mind.

Slam

My thoughts slowing.

Slam 

My body finally wins against the frozen metal of the door, I almost fall through the opening but I frantically pick myself up and push the door closed. As I once more pull the flashlight from my coat and find out that I had not in actuality been victorious against the door but against the frame itself. I find myself on the floor of a grey concrete stairway. My hand points to the wall to my left and I find myself staring at a map. A slightly mad chuckle leaves my lips growling until it’s a full-blown laughing fit.

It’s a map of a mall.

“I will not go gently into the night,” I say to myself as a smile stretches across my face. 

I carry myself to my feet before I have catching myself on the handrail of the stairs as my body fails to stand on its own but the smile never leaves my face. Once steady with one hand on the guard rail while the other is occupied with the flashlight I begin my descent down the stairs and for the first time in weeks I walk with hope alight in my heart, not the fleeting kind that comes with getting more than your share of food or another blanket, but that of certainty that tomorrow will be better.