Note: Every so often this page will contain amusing nonsense. This is some of that nonsense.
Just when I thought these streets couldn’t get any colder, the storm blew in.
I was looking down at an alley from my 15th floor walkup, watching it fall. It was whiter than a glass of skim milk in the arctic out there and the buildings were getting harder and harder to make out. This could only mean one thing: I was stuck at home with only a bottle of rye and my old wounds for company.
A guy could sure use a cup of cocoa in times like these. I walked over to my kitchen—it was just a hot plate, a microwave and a few assorted cockroaches in a nook, but for a guy like me it was a five-star restaurant. Though today, I did wish there was a barkeep to take my order: one cocoa, extra chocolatey, absolutely no marshmallows. I wasn’t about to get soft.
As usual, I had to do it alone. I heated some water in the microwave. I tried a sip. It burnt my tongue, so I punched the microwave’s lights out. What was it trying to do, huh?
I dug around in my cabinet until I found it: an old packet of Swiss Miss. I’d had a Swiss miss once. I buried this packet deep in my pantry when she left me for a white-collar criminal who could give her the kind of life she deserved. It still stung sometimes, but not as much as the bullet she shot me with on her way out.
I sifted through the hot chocolate packet. I’d caught wind of something called a “hot cocoa bomb” recently and I needed to make damn sure no one had put one in here. It was clear: nothing doing but chocolate and sugar. I dumped it into the water.
I was having trouble getting the cocoa to mix in. It was all sticking together in little clumps on the surface. I didn’t mix well with others either, so I couldn’t blame it. That’s how I wound up alone on a snow day. No partner, no dames, not even a criminal to keep me occupied.
That’s when it came to me. I could make my own company. I threw back the cocoa in one gulp like it was cheap tequila and headed outside.
Out in the alley, I stared at the fresh snow on the ground. I wasn’t sure where to start, but I’d seen little kids do this in the movies so I figured it couldn’t be that hard. I gathered a bunch of snow in both arms and squished it together. It was colder than a dame’s heart, but I didn’t let that get to me. I squished together a smaller ball and then an even smaller ball and finally found some little sticks for arms. There he was. My new partner. My snowman looked a little naked out there in the blizzard, so I gave him my fedora to keep him warm. The kid looked sharp.
No sooner had I done that, then an unknown assailant pelted me with a snow-based projectile. It sent a cold trickle of icy water down my collar that I wouldn’t soon forget. He was at the end of the alley; short guy, couldn’t have been more than 12. He’d just picked a fight with the wrong man.
I pulled a .22 from my pocket and was about to take aim when a stick gently pressed my gun arm down. It was my snowman.
“Put it away,” my new partner said. “We need to beat him at his own game.”
I was about to say something smart about not taking orders from anyone, snowmen included, when another snowball hit me square in my even squarer jaw.
I put the gun away, grabbed a handful of snow, and started throwing. The snowman did too, but he was quicker than I was. He knocked the boy down with a well-aimed snowball to the face.
I wished that had been the end of it, but no, turns out the perp wasn’t alone. He had a whole gang behind him. Snowballs started whizzing past me from all directions. I couldn’t keep up. We were outnumbered.
“Save yourself!” the snowman shouted as one ball of ice hit one of his stick arms and sent it flying down the alley.
“I can’t leave a man behind!” I said.
“But you can leave a snowman behind,” he said, insistent. Two snowballs hit me in the kneecaps, and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to take this much longer. He was right.
“I’ll cover you,” he said. I dashed toward my building but turned back halfway.
“I think we really had something here,” I said. “It was the start of a beautiful friendship!”
“We’ll always have 5 minutes ago!” he replied. The assailants redoubled their attack. A wave of snowballs came crashing down on our end of the alley. I made it inside and back up to my apartment. When I looked down at the alley from my window all that was left was my hat, half-buried in snow.
Pop Culture Penguin 