CRUMP

Crump.
His foot lifted and placed itself ahead of the other, gently but squarely to the ground.

Crump.
The feet stayed apart, the space between them measuring in time more than distance as he hesitated to lift his back foot or even shift the weight.  But he knew he couldn't stay there much longer.
He raised it, slowly, hesitantly.  No noise.  He needed the silence, depended on it.  But he couldn't risk staying still. For a moment, a flicker of thought allowed him to weigh up which would be the lesser of two evils: noise or stillness?  The moment wasn't long enough and his own momentum forced his hand.  Or rather his foot.

Crump.
In sank slowly into the soft white, the muffled sound the only tell-tale noise that he was there, the footprints the only evidence of his past.  Another step.

Crump.
As preoccupied as his mind was with the situation of the moment he so desperately wished he wasn't in right now, that didn't stop it from still running needless background operations.  Such as how beautiful everywhere looked like this; exactly what his footsteps sounded like; how he actually might truly love to spend a crisp Sunday afternoon strolling under the bright low afternoon winter sun and listening to his dull enchanting footsteps if right now he didn't seriously need absolute goddamn fucking silence as he crept along another step.

Crump.
He paused.  His silent echo-less surroundings hanging still as if the world was holding it's breath.  In all this silence he believed he'd heard something, something other than his own footsteps.  Or thought he had.
His neck snapping from left to right looking for who knows what, hoping to catch a glimpse of whatever could have made the noise he may not have heard.  Hoping to explain what it was.  Hoping he hadn't heard it.  Hoping, praying, it was nothing.
No movement.  No sound.
The world breathed again as he took another tentative step, wishing for an absence of sound but knowing his wish can't be granted.

Crump.
If only the world had a mute button.  He wouldn't be making that sound, that delicious memorable sound.  That damn dangerous sound that draws attention from the ears.  He knows if he can hear it then the wrong ears can hear it too.  And still, while he worries and fears and ponders his plans his brain throws up questions.  What's the word for it?  As he dreads the next steps he already knows he must take, it asks: what does it sound like?  His heart in his mouth, leg raising ready for the next footfall, it inquires: Can you describe it? Can you name it?

Crump.
The answers come as quickly and undesired as the questions.
Like biscuits crushed between blankets.  Like celery bitten beneath pillows.  Like bones ground between the teeth of a mattress.  A soft dampened crack, the dull crush as it compacts beneath the heel.  No one word.  It needs a word.  A forgiving, suppressed, crumpled crunch.
And just as the new word formed in his mind, giving it a real sound and weight, as if it had been a word all along, he heard it again.

Crump.
He had not moved.  The sound made did not belong to him, or more specifically to his feet.  It was the sound of a footstep, another's footstep.
He was being followed through the snow.



I wrote this last winter as I was trying to come up with an onomatopoeia for the noise your feet make in the snow.
I'm a tad disappointed we haven't had any snow here over winter, especially since we had such an awesome wealth of it last year and the rest of the world seems to be getting more than it's fair share.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed it.

Until next time fools,
Pete