Chapter 12- The Snow That Grows Inside

Grief is a strange snowfall.

It doesn’t fall from above, no—it rises from within. It dusts the ribs, drifts behind the eyes, settles along the edges of breath.
Our hero did not know how long he stood there, hand clenched tight around a rust-colored key, the black box pressed like a wound against his side.

He stepped down from the toilet seat, from his perch of mockery and humiliation. The fish had fallen silent. All the laughter was gone.
Only a solemn hush now filled the air.

He placed the box—gentle as one would place a coffin—into the nearby sink, half-choked with brittle flower stems.
Lilies, tulips, petals once colored now dulled to ash.
No water, no light, and still they sat there, wilted witnesses to this strange resurrection of memory.

Outside the walls, the world was changing.
It had always been black and white.
Until now.

Now, the air glimmered faintly with blue-grey.
Not enough to warm the heart—but enough to whisper that such warmth had once existed.
Snow—yes, snow—drifted through the cracked windows. But not cold like winter.
No, this was the snow of dreams. Of mourning. Of endings.
It gathered on the floor, in corners, across the broken frame of the door.
Soft. White-blue. Gentle as a sigh that never finished.

He moved through it without leaving footprints.
He didn’t even realize that at some point, he had stopped shivering.

And then—

BEEP.

A sharp, jarring tone from the bathroom behind him.
The fish—Glub—turned its animatronic head slowly toward the door, plastic eyelids blinking once.

But the voice that came was not his.

It was hers.
Crackled through static like an old answering machine tape, but unmistakable.

“Where are you? Please come home soon. I’m getting worried.”
A pause. Not for drama. For pain.

“…It’s getting dark.”

The voice sounded so young.
Too young to carry that kind of sorrow.

No trace of sarcasm escaped our hero. No muttered curse or clever deflection.
His throat tightened. His chest burned.

His only answer, soft and nearly silent, was:
“…I’m sorry.”

He turned and left the bathroom.

The cold followed him.
So did the voice, echoing faintly in the plumbing.

He didn’t look back.

Key in one hand.
Box in the other.

The cabin now housed snow and silence and grief.
And memory.

Step 3: Save the Music from darkness.

He stared ahead. Somewhere in this house, music once lived.
But he would have to find it.
Protect it.

Because now… now he remembered what the darkness does to song.
It eats it.
It steals the melody and leaves only reverb.

And if he failed—

This place would be silent forever.
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  The cabin no longer felt like shelter. It had become a mausoleum pretending to be one.

Snow sifted in through the cracks of the boarded windows, gathering across the warped planks in thin dunes of white. Each drift seemed to breathe on its own, rising and falling in rhythm with the house’s slow, frozen heartbeat. The air had the clarity of winter glass—sharp enough to cut thought.

He moved through it like a man underwater, each step releasing a sigh of powder that clung to his boots and the hem of his coat. His breath fogged, small clouds that broke apart and vanished before they reached the ceiling. Yet the cold inside him was deeper; grief had settled behind his ribs, a still lake beginning to freeze over.

The bed stood skeletal in the center of the room—its wires twisted, cruel, and waiting. He stared at it for a long moment, the faint hum of despair whispering from the metal.
To sleep forever, the thought murmured. To rest where even memory cannot follow.

He turned away, eyes catching on the open chest. Gaudy clothes, feathers dulled by dust.
He won’t be needing those anymore, another thought offered, gentle as poison.

The mirror next, cracked and stripped of its frame, leaned against the wall like a corpse propped upright. His reflection was a blur of grey and fog; he couldn’t tell if the face belonged to him or someone he’d already forgotten.
I don’t want to see myself, the third voice whispered, and it felt less like a thought and more like a command from the walls themselves.

Each despairing phrase crawled up from the floorboards, blooming through him the way mold spreads through bread—slow, soundless, inevitable.
The realm was feeding on him.
Grief here was not a visitor; it was the weather.

He sank to his knees amid the dusting snow, the key clenched in one hand, the black box resting in the other. Around him the room exhaled—wood creaked, glass shivered, the pale drifts shifted as if stirred by invisible hands. The very air seemed to whisper his surrender.

But somewhere beneath that weight, a flicker remained: the faint hum inside the box, waiting for the music that might still exist.

He drew a breath that hurt, lifted his head, and listened.
----------

The cabin no longer felt like shelter. It had become a mausoleum pretending to be one.

Snow sifted in through the cracks of the boarded windows, gathering across the warped planks in thin dunes of white. Each drift seemed to breathe on its own, rising and falling in rhythm with the house’s slow, frozen heartbeat. The air had the clarity of winter glass—sharp enough to cut thought.

He moved through it like a man underwater, each step releasing a sigh of powder that clung to his boots and the hem of his coat. His breath fogged, small clouds that broke apart and vanished before they reached the ceiling. Yet the cold inside him was deeper; grief had settled behind his ribs, a still lake beginning to freeze over.

The bed stood skeletal in the center of the room—its wires twisted, cruel, and waiting. He stared at it for a long moment, the faint hum of despair whispering from the metal.
To sleep forever, the thought murmured. To rest where even memory cannot follow.

He turned away, eyes catching on the open chest. Gaudy clothes, feathers dulled by dust.
He won’t be needing those anymore, another thought offered, gentle as poison.

The mirror next, cracked and stripped of its frame, leaned against the wall like a corpse propped upright. His reflection was a blur of grey and fog; he couldn’t tell if the face belonged to him or someone he’d already forgotten.
I don’t want to see myself, the third voice whispered, and it felt less like a thought and more like a command from the walls themselves.

Each despairing phrase crawled up from the floorboards, blooming through him the way mold spreads through bread—slow, soundless, inevitable.
The realm was feeding on him.
Grief here was not a visitor; it was the weather.

He sank to his knees amid the dusting snow, the key clenched in one hand, the black box resting in the other. Around him the room exhaled—wood creaked, glass shivered, the pale drifts shifted as if stirred by invisible hands. The very air seemed to whisper his surrender.

But somewhere beneath that weight, a flicker remained: the faint hum inside the box, waiting for the music that might still exist.

He drew a breath that hurt, lifted his head, and listened.
....

The tape hissed again, softer now—like breath fogging a window—and the final beep cut through the stillness.
The snow had stopped falling. Even the vines had gone still, frozen mid‑curl. The world seemed to hold its lungs full of air, waiting.

Then the voice came.

His own voice.

“If tomorrow starts without me, and I’m not there to see,
If the sun should rise and find your eyes all filled with tears for me;
I wish so much you wouldn’t cry the way you did today,
while thinking of the many things we didn’t get to say.”

He froze where he stood.
The timbre, the pauses, the small hitch at the start of each line—he remembered all of it.
The voice wasn’t just familiar; it was intimate.
Every syllable landed like a nail driven gently into wood.

“I know how much you care for me, and how much I care for you,
and each time that you think of me I know you’ll miss me too;”

The air grew brittle. Frost bloomed along the edges of the broken mirror, veining outward until the glass gleamed white. He could see himself reflected in fragments—grey, tired, the echo of a man who had already left.

No laughter. No more mockery from Glub.
Only the voice.
Only him.

“But when tomorrow starts without me, please try to understand,
that an angel came and called my name and took me by the hand,
and said my place was ready in heaven far above,
and that I’d have to leave behind all those I dearly love.”

The poem ended, but the machine did not click off.
The line stayed open—an endless hum, like the static between worlds.
His breath fogged in front of him; tears froze on his lashes before they could fall.

He whispered, almost to the air itself,
“…I remember.”