The fog is an accomplice as the girl appears from it like an apparition, as if she is already half gone from this world, scuffing her boots on her way to the mailbox across the road from the driveway; the mailbox, the only one for miles on this lost country road, hidden from the house by the fog.
Look at her, oblivious. The stupid, betraying child.
She looks both ways at the roadside; there is nothing to see or hear approaching in the fog. No vehicle is coming. No one is coming. Not that she knows.
Look at her.
Did she think she would not be found out? That she could keep it a secret?
She crosses the road, toward the mailbox. Toward the trees behind it. Toward the end of her.
Closer.
That’s it.
That’s it.
Closer.
Come, stupid child. Come.
She does not see me. I am engulfed in wrath’s flames. If she were to look up, she would see a hot, white, incandescent light illuminating the fog around me.
But, the fool, she does not look up.
She crosses to the mailbox and opens it.
So close.
The melting rags of snow are wet and slippery. But oh so quiet. Steps soundless in the chorus of rain in the trees.
She turns.
Away from the mailbox.
She drops an envelope and stoops to pick it up from the muddy road.
She stands upright again, brushing the soiled envelope against her fleece jacket.
The heart is a wild panther lunging at the bars of its cage.
She is in reach.
She looks one way down the road she cannot see in the fog, listening.
Looks the other way, listening.
No vehicle is coming.
No one is coming.
Nothing is coming.
Except her end.
Her end is coming.
Her end is here.
The loop swings over her head and is pulled tight to her throat.
The envelopes drop to the snow as her legs drum.
She is no match.
She is easy.
Now, she will confess what she knows, what she has done.
Now, she will confess her sins.