Story Fragment: *chitter*

All I remember is the cold.

The terrible biting, rending cold. One well beyond a normal winter’s day.

Actually, I can remember one more thing. The empty hollow feeling, entirely numb from head to foot. And this, I think, I grasped tightly for as long as humanly possible. Mainly because it was still Human. It was the only thing left of my life. The only thing that hadn’t yet been taken from me. And I wrapped it about me, like a blanket, but it did nothing for the cold.

It was all I had left of hope. That there was someone who would know me. Who could stand over me and say “I know him.” For certainly, I couldn’t do that myself.

And besides me were the most likely candidates for having known. Faces twisted and frozen, skin as blue as a clear sky. Taken surprisingly gracefully for their expressions. I no longer know who these men were, just that they had died, and had thankfully stayed still.

I could feel absences. A sense of nothing so pronounced that it, itself was an object. But other than that I knew nothing more that I was a man, or had been.

As I thought on this with the remainder of my sanity, I failed to notice the final stiffening of my body, into what would be it's last slumber.

When I awoke, all I knew was the hunger.