This ‘blog’, as some may recall, was originally created to record my failings in various NYC Midnight writing competitions . It has mainly lived up to that goal.

Occasionally, however, due possibly to heavy drinking or illicit drug consumption on the part of the judges, something gets a bit off track and I enjoy modest (and transient) success.

Such was the case with a story I shared with you Here that was awarded a miraculous 2nd place in the first round of this year’s short story event.

Fear not, however, for my 2nd round effort has not a snowball’s chance in hell of impressing the judges similarly. They rarely get fall down drunk twice in a row.

Nevertheless, here it is, for those with nothing else to do.

The requirement was for a horror story featuring the concept of ‘winterize’ and ‘paratroopers’.

It is horrific in perhaps more ways than one. The formatting didn’t work when copying and transferring it here, but I’m too lazy to fix it with this block editor thing.

Let the Darkness Take Us

(A woman, traumatised by war, hides from the Nuclear Winter but cannot hide from her own demons.)

I am a survivor. My husband is a survivalist. There is a difference.
Long before the war began, he built a deep bunker in the Bialowieza Forest, below a dilapidated shack, purchased from his meagre earnings working as a professor of science at the University of Bialystok, here in Poland.
He is a good man. A clever man. He cares for me deeply, I know.
And here in that private bunker he tries to shelter me from the storm. I am surrounded by thick concrete. We have food, water, firewood, torches, batteries, a rifle, ammunition, and so on. There is a combustion stove at the centre of the room, which burns for 24 hours a day. Around it we bathe, cook, eat, sleep, talk and think. It has become our shrine, upon which life depends. There is a trapdoor above me accessible by a sturdy ladder, opening into the shack, and whatever may be beyond.
The bunker measures no more than 5 metres square, but we have supplies sufficient to last for 12 to 18 months. We are fully prepared, physically at least, to withstand the nuclear winter.
I will try to keep an occasional journal of events and of my private thoughts. The notes will be brief and there will be errors of fact and clarity.
For I am writing in the dark.

2023/11/23
We always knew it would come to this, one day, though this war started no differently than those before it. First came the sabre rattling and the clashing of egos. Then the aeroplanes, the bombs, and the missiles. And then the troops. The worst of them were the paratroopers, who descended like locusts to squabble over the scraps that the heavy artillery had left behind. Stupid children waving guns and chanting slogans they didn’t understand. Thugs, thieves, and rapists. When they came to our city; to my house, they looked at me with distain; with disinterest. But they took me anyway. When the fourth of them, the youngest of them – young enough to be my son, had finished and was readjusting his trousers, he grinned down at me. “Thank you, Ma’am,” he said.
I vomited for 3 hours.
Aleksander found me lying on the dusty concrete floor of what once had been our home. He had been in the forest, making final preparations for our departure – so his efforts to save me had effectively left me at the mercy of the beasts. He carried me to the van and drove me away to the forest. Few words were spoken. What was there to say?
2023/12/11
It is already difficult to receive news. But it has happened. Nobody knows who was the first to push the button. It matters not. The monster has been released. The madness has begun.
2024/01/18
The nights are growing colder, though it is increasingly difficult to tell night from day. The cracks in the trapdoor at the top of the ladder are our only source of natural light and even that grows dimmer.
The shortwave radio, our only means of communication, is increasingly unreliable and we must limit its use to conserve battery power. We have heard though, a few times, of other survivalists venturing out into the open. But, of those, we have never heard again.
2024/03/01
We speak less and less.
He asks for sex, from time to time. But I cannot bring myself to it.
It is not just the sex. “You have no passion within you for anything at all, Katarzyna.” Aleksander has complained. And he is right. My heart isn’t in it.
He assures me always that we have sufficient food, water, and firewood to last this thing out. And that we have each other.
I am not sure that that will be enough.

2024/04/18
I have tried to make this place inhabitable.
There is a mirror on one wall and on another a crumpled photograph from our wedding day. I cannot bear to look at either of them.
Conditions are horrid. There are no internal walls down here and no hope of privacy. The toilet is little more than a hole in the ground. One must squat over it and hear the echoes of one’s own ablutions returning from the deep. We turn away when the other is using it.
The stench of everything is becoming intolerable.
Although good manners seem now, to me, ridiculous.
Aleksander has warned me that the toilet will eventually become a serious fire hazard. The build up of gases within it will create an explosive mix and, were I ever to throw a match into it I could, in one blinding flash, destroy everything for which we have worked.
“It is science,” he informed me.
“And it is science that got us into the shit in the first place,” I replied.
It had never occurred to me to throw a match into the toilet. Why would I? But since hearing about it I cannot get the idea out of my head, fearing that some inner demon may compel me to do so.

2024/05/01
I have lost weight. It is difficult, and pointless, to stand up and move around.
Aleksander has begun talking of getting out. He wants to ‘rescue’ me.
“We know what happens to people who ‘get out’,” I told him.
“Do we?” he replied, “maybe they have found somewhere else, somewhere safe. A beach somewhere.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Why have they not come back to rescue us?”
“They don’t know where we are.”
It is too late to rescue me, anyway.
And I cannot forgive him.
2024/07/12
Aleksander loaded the rifle today. I wondered if he was planning our suicide.
“Why don’t we just lay down in the snow and die?” I asked.
I have heard of people falling asleep in the snow and never awakening. It is a peaceful way to go.
He looked back at me sadly.
2024/-/-
I can no longer keep track. Time ceased to have meaning long ago. The world has stopped in the middle of a freezing night. Time is measured only by the dwindling supply of firewood.
I am having nightmares.
If we speak, we argue. Aleksander clings defiantly to hope on the other side. Hope for what?
He is determined to re-enter the world.
I wish I were dead. I wish Aleksander were dead. Him more than me.
I told him so. Then I turned away from him and went to sleep.
Sunday morning?
When I awoke, he was gone. He had taken his heaviest clothing, one of the torches, batteries, a little of the food and a water cannister. Not the rifle. I noticed also that he had removed our wedding photograph from the wall.
I take this to be a message of some sort.
On Saturday nights, long ago, we would sometimes drink too much and would argue. He would then make a show of storming out and finding somewhere to sulk. Or just to frighten me. But by Sunday afternoon he was back, with roses, chocolates, and apologies.
He is trying to frighten me again. But there will be no roses or chocolates.
I climbed up the ladder, of course, to see if I could find him. I shone my torch around the hut, thinking that he might be hiding from me there, huddled cold and pathetic in a corner. But he was nowhere inside. I gingerly opened the door and peered out of it to take my first look at the new world. There was nothing to see.
Aleksander is gone.
He is dead and feels nothing. I feel little more.
Everything feeling swallowed by the freezing blackness.

-/-/-
It has probably been two weeks now.
I don’t miss him. But the nightmares grow worse.
Paratroopers. They come in the night.
“Thank you, Ma’am.”
I have ventured into the shack a few times and looked out the door. I doubt that there is anything out there that could hurt me.
More than I have already been hurt.
-/-/-
I spend more time up in the shack now, for as long as I can bear the cold, although climbing up the ladder is becoming more difficult. I occasionally venture out onto the veranda and once I even stepped off, only to sink to my waist in snow. It took an eternity, and all my energy, just to climb back out.
I have discovered that there is, in fact, a dull light in the sky differentiating night and day and sometimes I can pick out things in the near distance without the use of the torch. Sometimes I see something move out there. Sometimes I catch a glimpse of his dead body lying in the snow.
-/-/-
I hear noises. Sometimes in my sleep, sometimes when I am awake. I can scarcely tell the difference.
They may be aeroplanes. They remind me of the distant dull roar that came before the dropping of the paratroopers. Perhaps, there is another war.
Perhaps, it is starting all over again.
-/-/-
Whenever I awaken (do I ever truly awaken?) it is in terror.
For I have seen them. Again. Falling from the skies. They are coming to get me. The paratroopers.
-/-/-
And now, I am sure. There is something out there. I stood on the veranda and I saw movement. This is not a dream.
I saw a torchlight in the distance. It flashed once and then disappeared.
I must load the rifle.

-/-/-
Something is moving towards me. Slowly and laboriously. But deliberately. About seven hundred metres away. Falling, with every few steps, into deeper snow. Struggling to it’s feet again and continuing. Falling again. On and on. A stumbling zombie of the apocalypse. Always towards me.
I have never fired a gun. I have no hope of hitting anything from this range. I must wait. Lure it into my trap. Only then will I strike.
I looked away for a second, just to test myself, hoping, when I looked back, that the spectre might have disappeared. And then, returning my gaze, I panicked until I saw him again, imagining him about to burst through the door. But no. He had still two hundred metres to travel.
The waiting is an agony.

-/-/-
When it was within fifty metres of the shack, and I was sure that it had seen me I went inside and climbed down the ladder. I waited there until I heard the ponderous footsteps and the heavy breathing above and I pointed the rifle upward. When it opened the trapdoor and peered down at me, I fired. The first bullet struck it in the shoulder and the second in the upper chest, where the heart should have been. It staggered backwards and I heard it crash out through the door and onto the veranda.
When I climbed up there, it was still quivering, so I pointed the rifle and fired again. This time into the forehead. It lay still.
I leant cautiously over it and reached out to touch. There I felt the bloody warmth of another human seep between my fingers.
He had removed the glove from his left hand and was clasping a scrap of paper. I took it from him and flattened it out, shining the torch upon it until I recognised myself, in a white wedding dress, smiling for the photographer. There was no need to remove his balaclava . I had already recognised the ring on his finger. I pushed him gently off the veranda and back into the snow.
I can’t remember if I cried. I climbed back down the ladder and began lighting matches and throwing them into the toilet. Nothing happened.
-/-/-
So now I must climb back up into the world for a final time. I will step from the veranda and lay beside my husband in the snow.
And let the night take us both.