Previous Volumes
Volume 1 No. 3
The Last Winter by Sam Sawnick
When it didn’t, she made her way back to her house and he went off to his.
​
​
She stood outside her place with a rifle, watching in the direction of his cabin, scanning the lake, eyes darting from ice to sky. There was a sudden lull in the wind and the sun dared to peak from behind the clouds. She was staring at the frozen waves when the figure appeared. It was closer to her than the lake, and she nearly choked on her breath. She readied her rifle but just as quickly as the beast had appeared, it was gone.
​
​
She charged towards where she had seen it. She lost speed as she stumbled through the snow drifts, and the wind surged back up around her. She kept moving forward.
​
She heard a familiar grunt and turned to face him.
“It was here and then it wasn’t! Did you see it?”
She stared at him blankly and raised the rifle.
“Was it you?”
He stumbled backwards in shock and rattled out, “What are you on about?”
“Was that you? Are you trying to trick me into walking out into that damned lake?”
It was his turn to stare blankly. He put his hands up.
“Why would I do that? You’re the only other person I’ve seen in years.”
“Right, and now suddenly we’re seeing a monster?”
“How the hell should I know what that blasted thing is?”
“Because it’s you,” she answered, dipping the barrel of the rifle forward.
She braced the rifle against her shoulder and shot at his knee.
The sound was deafening and carried out into the frozen nothing, quickly followed by his howls of pain.
​
He’d fallen to the ground. She inched closer and shot him in the chest.
His limbs flailed wildly for a moment, and he seemed to be staring at something in the increasingly crimson snow around him. He was choking on blood, sputtering something.
A final struggle was made to raise his hand and point at something on the horizon.
And then he was gone.
​
She crouched down, the wind biting at her face.
Her eyes followed the line of his lifeless finger and she saw what he had seen. She scrambled on the ground. On all fours she crawled across the lake, crawling further and further out, running her hands over the tracks of something nearly human except for the talon-like toes.