Here’s Part 3 of this writing exercise. I have no idea how many parts there will be or how it will end. Or if it will end. Like real exercise, you never know until you get to the gym and start sweating. Okay, that was a terrible analogy.
Here’s Part 3 (375 words).
Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here.
A Walk in the Snow, Part 3
I am not surprised, but neither am I especially pleased, because I was certain there was someone behind me and the acoustics in the area are not likely to lead me to mistake my own footsteps for those of someone else.
But even as I think this the whole experience begins to muddy in my mind. I am cold and a little tired and in no mood to play games with my own brain. I give in, give up. Yes, I imagined the entire thing. No one was following me. No one was there.
Instead of trudging forward and that much closer to the delicious steaming mug of hot chocolate that would be mine, I pivot around and face the way I came from. I retrace my steps, peering down into the trodden snow, examining my shoe prints and looking for others. There’s not enough light and given that letting my imagination fill in the blanks is quite possibly the reason I am now walking opposite my destination, I stop, pull out my phone and turn on its flashlight function (I wonder if it’s called Torch mode in the UK). I crouch down, my knees creaking unhappily from the cold and the damp, and wave the phone across the path I’ve made. I can see my prints clearly. I don’t see any others.
My imagination, that’s all. Time for hot chocolate and some apparently well-needed rest.
I continue to backtrack just a little more, having not quite reached the point of total satisfaction. It’s kind of like art–I’ll know it when I see it. Or in this case, when I get there.
The not-terribly-impressive beam of light sweeps back and forth from the phone and suddenly it slips through my gloved hand, landing in the snow with a soft plop. It sinks a little. I mutter a choice epitaph, then reach down to scoop it out, but the glove endows my hand with the gift of clumsiness and I instead push it further into the snow.
More cursing ensues. I pull the glove off and stuff it into a coat pocket. I begin fishing with my bare fingers, already numbing from the cold.
It is then that I hear the footsteps coming from behind me.
