Awake, awake, hearken and holler! Up and at ‘em! The day has come, and it’s come in the night with a sneaky footstep, thief-soft! To the plows, to the plows!
By god, there’s inches of that horrible white stuff out there, and there’ll be feet by sunrise. Grab a shovel, grab your belt, grit your teeth.
The white stuff is persistent. Don’t let your guard down, don’t let your gaze waver. It can swallow a shoveller whole in a blink’s breath. I’ve seen it happen. One moment there’s a healthy determined living breathing pissing moaning quailing specimen of human spirit and power and flaws there and then BAM. Nothing but a drift.
It will also eat your cat. Because it can. Never, ever, ever forget that. If you see a cat frolicking through the white stuff, look again: that thing’s high-tailing it for its fuckin’ life.
It’s changing tactics now, so don’t be fooled if the white stuff comes to your door hat in hand, smile on face. It will present itself as an old friend or long-lost relative. It will bring ingratiating handshakes for you and your spouse and disturbing ideas to your children. You shouldn’t believe its lies for an instant. Honeyed words and bloodied hands are all it brings, and every gift is poisoned. Turn away, turn aside, turn your back to it and curl your lip and shut the door. Then get your shovel.
We have new tools this year at all the latest hardware stores for the latest doom. Your shovel can be xtra-large xtra-spiky or xtra-vagant. For an additional thirty-three percent surcharge it can be self-heating for a smoother, sliceyer scoop. Slip the cashier a little something and they’ll sell you one of the register fools to come home and shovel for you. Rebuild your strength as your serf toils against the white stuff, plan your strategies, discipline your mind. Think on all you love and hold dear and its imminent destruction. That helps.
***
Alright, we’ve had a few setbacks. That’s to be expected, no two seasons are really the same. The white stuff is cunning. This time it snuck in and let all the gas out of our plows and the air out of our tires and splintered the hafts of our shovels and spat in our hot chocolate and bribed our employees to look the other way. It also peed in our thermometers, which explains how it got so close before we saw it coming.
But you know what? That doesn’t mean anything. We can win this because we’re in this to win this and we aren’t allowed to ever lose. And that means something. It means a lot to us. To me. To you. To us. You get me?
Yes.
We have to. We’re all we’ve got, because our spouses are weak and our children are stupid and everyone else is feeble and stupid and soft sheep ripe to be drowned in the tidal slurry of the white stuff. And sheep are soft and fluffy and white. They’re practically the enemy already.
Barricade yourselves in while you work this out. Repair your shovels, refuel your vehicles. Recite the twenty-seven psalms and ninety mantras and forty-three paeans to destruction and the eternal burning pits where the white stuff is destined to dwell. Don’t be afraid to scream and shout as the hate flows around your neck and up into your jaw. That’s where it’s most powerful, and where you can keep it ready and waiting.
Make sure the hate is in your lower jaw. Not your upper. That would be very, very, very, very, very bad. So don’t let it get there. We have enough problems with the damned white stuff.
No time for more words. Here comes the second wave.
***
The problem’s over, friends. We found our traitor. We found the despicable, foul-mouthed, filthy-brained, sewer-tongued cur-bait that sold us all out to the white stuff, sold us all up the creek and down the river and through satan’s chambers.
It was THAT ONE. You know the one I mean. And you know what I mean when I say you know the one I mean.
Now you all sort this out. I’ll be back in a minute.
***
Those of you who still remain after the purge, good job. You’re loyal. We know that traitors are weak and feeble due to the white stuff in their coward-veins, so if you lived you’re not one. Cogniteo irpso sum. Pick up the shovels of the fallen, you can use one in each hand one in your mouth and hold extras between each toe so that’s eleven shovels each and there’s plenty enough.
Of course you aren’t shovelling with the toe shovels. Those are to replace the other three when they burn in your hands from the fury of your blows and the passion of your power. So don’t worry about it, okay?
The plows were just holding us back. The true power was inside you all along. Howl when it comes out, so it hurts the white stuff harder and its gales flinch back from your teeth. Let them fall out and your bite will grow sharper, your eyes harder, your bones stronger, even as all of them turn black and blue and fall off and burn away in the endless tides of hell that rain from the clouds.
Dare to dream, folks. Dare to dream. It’s what will win us this war.
***
So winning is more complicated than you’d think. You may have seen too many sports films, or perhaps been to a casino. You think that winning means ‘not losing,’ and that’s why you seem to be under the impression that we cannot win against the white stuff. You are all giant huge enormous idiots.
No, winning isn’t not losing. Winning is making the other guy lose HARDER, and HARDER YET, until all that’s left isn’t even worth calling by name. Winning is erasing your opponent from history and tearing out the page and eating it and shitting it out and building a rocket and firing that shit into the sun.
Anyways, yes, we can’t win. The white stuff is simply too powerful. It can’t be shovelled, it can’t be plowed, it can’t be melted, it can’t be salted, it can’t be sanded, it can’t be stopped. Which is why we are going to strategically deploy our secret weapon and destroy the entire atmosphere.
See, the white stuff falls out of the clouds, right? And the clouds need an atmosphere, right? No more atmosphere, no more clouds.
Or we could use this other secret weapon, which will vaporize all water molecules it comes into contact with. But it’s a bit tough to spread. We’ll have to go door to door and make folks drink it.
How about we do half each? Half each.
***
The white stuff has covered the graves of our comrades, their ditch-sepulchres and their ruin-tombs, their field-graves and charnel-holes. They died bravely and nobly and without giving an inch and they were utter failures for it and now it dances its joyous dance on their empty meaningless forgotten graves. They deserve it.
If only they’d all tried harder. If only they’d all shovelled faster. If only they’d switched to winter tires like they’d been told to, none of this would’ve happened.
It’s someone’s fault. And since it’s just me and you left, I think you know who I mean when I say I know who I mean is the person who I know is someone whose fault it is.
Don’t play dumb.
I am forgiving and loving and merciful, which is why I will let you have a final cigarette before you march into the white stuff and become one with your traitorous masters.
You don’t smoke? Oh fuck off then. Out you go! OUT! GET OUT OF MY SIGHT.
***
The white stuff has deployed its most cunning stratagem at last: on the precipice of my victory, I have slipped and fallen and slipped a disc and now I can’t get up.
If only my troops hadn’t deserted me, this would all be fixed now.
Darn.
I’ll just lie here for a bit, appreciate the scenery. Say what you will about that white stuff, but it sure looks nice when it falls from the sky like that.
It sure looks nice.