Winter in December

It was a dark and cold night that Christmas Eve. A man was driving down the road with presents for his niece and his nephew, and his sister and her husband. The weatherman had said the storm would hit them that night and he was right, but still the man would not be kept from his family on Christmas Eve. He had no children, no wife; only his sister and her family.

As he was looking in the passenger seat of his car at the card his sister's family had sent him, a blaring horn and bright blinding headlights flared up in his face, wrenching him back to reality from his imagining to swerve just seconds from hitting the semi head-on. His car, out of the truck's way, skidded and slid towards the ditch on his side, plunging into what he was sure an icy depth of deathly cold waters the ditch still held.

As his car's engine rumbled and died with a spurt, he realized that he would not make very long without a heat source. Looking through his already frosted windows up the road, he spotted what appeared to be lights. House lights! Without a single thought of what lay just outside his door, he threw it open, allowing the biting sting of the icy waters to flood into his car and take his breath away as it washed over him, drenching his clothes with the subzero liquid.

Already freezing and sneezing with every step, he dug his way out of the car and onto the road, to begin his slow death march towards the house. His legs, leaden with cold, began to snap and pop. Looking down at his legs, he was so cold he could barely comprehend that the water that had soaked him to the bone back in his car, had frozen to create a thick, icy layer over his pants.

Knowing that with every passing second he was closer to death, the man rushed headlong to the house as fast as his numb body would take him.

Upon reaching the door, the man pounded the doorbell with his stiff, broken fingers. He felt deep inside his soul, that unless he found a warm hearth to stay by, he would be frozen in place like a dead living statue.

Inside, behind the shutters, he could make out someone moving towards the door, peeking inside the window. The woman behind it stared at him with wide eyes, as if the man were a creature from her most horrid dreams.

"Heeellpp! P-please help!" he screamed with all his might, but it only came out a soft, hoarse gasp. The woman inside turned away, snapping the shutters closed, shutting all hope the man had for salvation in the darkest corner of his consciousness.

The man whimpered and cried tears that instantly froze on his bare cheeks. He looked around in hopeless despair. Off in the distance, he could just make out the dim lights of a small farmhouse.

Numb, frostbit, and near death, the man stumbled and staggered toward his last chance of survival. He began to slowly place one foot in front of the other, inching his way toward the cold lights of the building. His vision blurred and he felt a type of warmth deep inside as he saw the pair of yellow eyes moving towards him at unearthly speeds. He saw the people inside the SUV, the look of joy on those familiar faces.

As Molly was starting up yet another song, Vinny slammed on the brakes, but it was too late to stop the car from plowing into the object in front of him. He had no idea what it was or what it was doing in the middle of the street, he only knew that he would run into it no matter what he did.

"What...in the HELL was that!" Vinny had slammed on the brakes so hard, that the wheels had locked up and the SUV had bashed into what stood before it, while Vinny had tried in vain to avoid hitting what had popped up in front of him. "Stay here," Vinny commanded to his son and daughter.

As Molly and Vinny crawled out of the car, the boy inside asked his little sister, "Hey! Do you think dad hit a guy? It'd be cool if he did, right?"

Just as Vinny and Molly looked under the wheel of the SUV at the man they had hit, they were filled with a feeling that few have had the misfortune to know.

"Ooohh...my...God!" Molly gasped, exasperated and stricken with a mixture of grief and horror, at what she feared most.

Vinny had hit a man. He had run his SUV straight into his brother-in-law.