Frozen Over
The snow started around three in the morning.
Heavy snow at night always did weird things with the light, catching and refracting the sodium-vapor glare of the street lamps to make the whole sky seem to glow amber. At first we told ourselves that it was just a similar trick of the light that made the heavily clumpe flakes look so unusual as they fell, but once it started to stick and then pile up it became clear that its unusual color was no illusion.
We stayed inside, at first out of fear of contamination from some unknown pollutant… but then simply out of fear. As the strange snow continued to fall and blow and pile up in drifts, the air inside the house filled with an unmistakable coppery tang. Even with all the windows closed, the smell found its way in.
The snow had piled itself three to four feet against the side of the house already. Nobody wanted to talk about what would happen if it melted. I don’t think any of us were sure that it would. The snow had been falling for hours when the sun came up and it showed no sign of stopping any time soon, if at all.
We watched and we waited. We didn’t know what else to do. If it had rained blood, the whole world probably would’ve fallen into panic and terror. When it started snowing blood, everybody just sort of held their breath.
