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Start your story with a description of the cold, using lots of sensory detail.

Posted in Winter on Dec 1, 2023

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✍️ 65 stories

White Hell

Submitted to Contest #227

They had originally named this exoplanet WHTHLL025. After astronauts began sending probes there, everyone just called it White Hell. It was, as scientists discovered, an icy world so glacial cold and forbidding that no life was deemed viable.  That was, until twelve cycles ago, when a Dr. Javier Veil reanalyzed some of the older probe data. To say his discovery changed the world would be an understatement. A mission was planned; humanity had to see for themselves. I’m typing these words as we approach WHTHLL025, on the starship ...

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Diamonds

Submitted to Contest #227

She had always hated winter. As a child all it meant was she that couldn’t go swimming, or climbing up to her treehouse. Winter meant being stuck in school, and the house being way too cold, and the grit and stink of the kerosene heater in the living room. Going outside meant stiff clothes, and chilled fingers within minutes as the snow melted in her mittens, and bread bags on her feet under her boots to keep them dry, making her feet sweat.  Even fall was depressing, because it meant winter was coming. And here she was...

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OWDTS

Submitted to Contest #227

TW: Sexual violence. Physical violence. Gore The air was sharp. Biting even. The sky had turned the same colour as the snow-covered ground and the inability to tell sky from ground painted the picture of an incessant white blanket. It was beautiful. The stretching pine trees wore jackets of white fur and towered over me as my feet dredged through the snow. Slowly, decisively. Deciding if they were capable of taking the next step, numbed by the aggressive kisses of the ice doused air. My fingers shouted for relief, silenced and numbed by t...

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Dancing Snow

Submitted to Contest #227

White powder glistened on everything he saw. It covered the trees, forcing branches to curve and bend to an almost snapping point. His breath came in rasps, vaporizing in thick steam before his face. The cold bit through his thermal clothes, numbing his fingers. His skin prickled, desperate for the friction that welcomed warmth. Ice coated his eyelashes and stuck together every time he blinked. He had long ago abandoned his goggles as they kept frosting over. Visibility was low with or without the goggles.  The wind howled, pulling puf...

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Fireplace Confessions

Submitted to Contest #227

In the heart of the woodlands, the air was crisp and sharp as the biting wind cut through the ancient trees. The raging snow and howling winds had struck hard and fast, enveloping the surrounding landscape in a relentless shroud of white. A wooden cabin, weathered by time and tempest, stood steadfast alongside a humble stable, both cloaked in a blanket of powdery snow. Within the cabin's frost-kissed window, a tall, young, yet rugged figure stood silhouetted against the wintry gloom, his gaze fixed upon the desolate expanse of snow outside...

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Blizzard Beach

Submitted to Contest #227

“It’s not the heat; it’s the humanity.” Gus mixed wit with his margaritas. “Back home, this time of year, people turn colder than a witch’s tit. It’s bad enough that the Artic wind will make your teeth hurt. Your breath forms icicles on your mustache and you get brain freeze without even sucking down a Slurpee. Even with insulated boots and gloves, your toes and fingers go numb. Lots of folks there forget to have fun when it gets cold.” The waiter came by, gesturing at his empty glass. “Uno mas,” Gus said, shifting on his stool at the beachs...

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Why I Loved Winter

Submitted to Contest #227

People say the heat suffocates, but I say the cold does more because each breath hurts my lungs terribly, causing me apprehension towards taking normal length breaths.  The cold succeeds at being very annoying in the fact that, unless you reach hypothermia, your fingers and toes are not yet fully numb, only mostly. Only mostly numb, meaning it still burns (there are those heat descriptions again) each time you touch something or move a muscle. For example, right now, as I reach my hand into my pocket to grab my flashlight, all my finger...

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Compassion for a Lonely Soul

Submitted to Contest #227

When I first became aware, I was cold. Not the crisp cold of an Autumn afternoon, but the bitter, angry cold that you find deep in the darkness of winter. The kind of cold that burns your skin in a way you never imagined it could. The kind of cold that eventually leaves you numb to the world. The cold that starts with tingling fingertips that travels up your arms and legs until everything you are, exists only in the presence of the cold. It breaches your chest, hardening your heart into a block of heavy ice. That’s the cold I felt ...

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Icescape

Submitted to Contest #227

This story is a prequel to my previous submissions, The Night Gathering and Metamorphoses, taken place seventeen years prior.********A droplet from the overhead condenser fell on the nape of Stephanie Nguyen’s neck, leaving a frosty trail down her shoulder blade while streaking toward the small of her back, reminding her that the walk-in freezer she was hiding in was absorbing moisture through the door left ajar, and frost would soon build up on the food, shelves, her clothes, and eyeglasses. An even worse prospect was the temperature alarm,...

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If you hear the screams, it’s too late

Submitted to Contest #227

                  I heard the sound of a blood curdling scream that woke me out of my sleep at 3am. At first I thought I had imagined it. And my heavy eyes shut closed again. Shivering from the freezing temperatures, I curled into a fetal position and went back to sleep. I was amazed that I could sleep at all. It’s probably because I’m exhausted from climbing, and the roar of the wind emanating from the mountain sounded serine, much like waves crashing ...

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The Road Sign

Submitted to Contest #227

The Road Sign The unhasty winter sun rose slowly above the frigid façades of the stately houses on both sides of a wide suburban road. The birds that bunched up during the freezing night inside the thick waxy branches of evergreens began to shuffle and chirp. Inside the warm foyer, two large suitcases were standing by the double front door adorned with fresh balsam fir wreaths giving out the comphorous scent of the holidays. Lenora and Sebastian were finishing their coffee and getting ready to head for the airport. They had a flight booke...

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Out of the Cold

Submitted to Contest #227

The icy air of the Montreal winter beats against my skin, a stark contrast to the warm car. It is almost sunset and close to minus fifteen degrees, supposed to feel like minus twenty-five with wind chill. My thin sweater and leggings do not do much to block the frigid air, but I am wearing heavy boots and thick mittens. Hypothermia, not frostbite, that is my goal.  An easy death.  I have heard that hypothermia is one of the better ways to go. You supposedly grow number and more disoriented until eventually losing consciousnes...

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Frozen Awakening: A Tale of Ice, Redemption, and Compassion.

Submitted to Contest #227

In the vibrant Punjab region, there lived a man named Sadhu Sudersingh. He dozed off throughout the frigid winter, burrowing himself in his warm den. With the break of dawn, the sun burst forth, its radiant beams cascading upon the earth, declaring spring; a remarkable occurrence unfolded within Sadhu Sudersingh’s very being as if time had sped up during his slumber. Roused, he jolted upright, a surge of sensation coursing through his limbs, revitalizing them with newfound vitality. Sadhu snapped awake, his eyes wide as they drank in the sof...

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Qanak

Submitted to Contest #227

Qanuk My father was Inuit. He said he could smell the snow before it came. He would lift his nose toward the sky and inhale and say, No Qanuk's tonight. In the morning - maybe. When he was a boy, his toes froze inside his boots, and three of them had to be removed. He remembers holding them in his hand as brittle frigid bricks. When I was young he tried to teach me to smell the snow coming, but it was never something I could master. Sometimes, I could come close. My sense of snow comes more from the things I see. First, the pallet of the...

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The Best Chicken Dinner Ever

Submitted to Contest #227

Aching feet crunch through that howling blast of wind, my endless pace defying the billowing snow clouds that soak what little dry cloth remains of my scarf, parka, and pants. It was my soggy attempt to bundle up through an endless car-strewn landscape. Just getting to the office bus stop was a story all its own. If I could make my lips move to tell it.But I was one of the fortunate few. Unlike many motorists, I would have a bus to transport me home. We would have bus lanes and priority access to whatever highway snow-clearing was available!...

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