25 Hour Watch

Everyone gave their best but no one could remove the rider’s block from the middle of the road.  It blocked the town from the cemetery, clogged the only artery unto death.  This was an event some might think to be a trivial matter, but the town had dead to bury, winter had come.

The earth was cold; the dirt a solid mass spreading throughout the countryside, far and wide.  A gray cloud of seeming doom loomed, it slept; the monster refused to part and let the sun shine through.  Winter had taken over, and the snowmen scratched their heads, they wandered around the rock.  They held their fingers to their chin and considered the massive physics involved with taking away the block.

Half a dozen puffs of cloudy breath surrounded an immovable object.  Twelve completely opaque eyes, on an overcast winter morning, looked at one another, their exaggerated noses grew icicles from the tips.  None standing taller than forty-eight inches, one man pushed the rider’s block, then two.  All six men tried to change the object’s weight on earth; together they leaned and they heaved.  The block wouldn’t move.

The rider was gone.

He’d left a block and left the scene.

Some had scarves, others top hats, all of them with dry, wooded fingers, ceremoniously packed Darren’s remains into two shovels.  These things were gifts from the creators, given to the most influential snowmen of the town.  Recently departed Darren had been quite important, a cob pipe and a button-down jacket were barely less than a shovel, but dead and gone, the pieces would go to someone else. It was the order of things.  It was the snowman’s code.

Those who saw it said Snowman Darren didn’t have a chance because snowmen don’t move at all very quickly.  The rider plowed straight ahead, into the mid-section, and left behind a gruesome horror of button, cob, and carrot stick; an explosion of powder and coal.  The rider examined the body, but attempted nothing more, and what remained of Darren lay splayed and sprawled across a cold white road.  It was not a pretty sight, and the snowmen were doing their best to clean it up.

The balled up men made a plan to go around the rider’s block.  They decided: Two would go first and carve the path.  Two more would follow and refine the way.  Then, two shovel holders, over a freshly beaten path, would deliver Darren to rest at the other side of the block.  The north hill of 7417 South Washington Street.  The cemetery.  Where the sun rarely hit even when the clouds did let it through.  Two by two, at a speedy 3 rotations-per-minute, the six men set out to pave a path for the other side.

Around town, several eyes of coal slowly stirred awake with similar curiosity given all living things.  The snowy people peered, and craned, and gasped, realizing something was amiss…

Everyone feared a snowball war, many talked of impending overheating, and aside from melting to death, the people mostly feared, being plowed.  Their innocent blackened eyes stared down to 7417 and rumors quickly began circling who might have died.  The process of elimination quickly determined it to be Darren.  Poor Darren.  He sat in a place too close to the grave, and eventually was killed by writer’s block.