Dangling Feet at the Big un-Bang: Volume 1, Chapter 1

Aug 2

5 min read

Updated: Aug 17

The constellations were being rewoven, though there wasn’t a telescope-owner in the neighborhood curious enough to notice. A loom in the stars pulled a joint from the lion, a scale from the fish, a horn from the bull, a claw from the crab, the buckler from the hunter. New threads interlaced misaligned stars into something not so easily traced by a finger in the sky, and before anyone could even attempt to do so, this new weave glowed bright and obscured itself and began to fall in an unseasonable late May snow. The air became cold and windless and large flakes accumulated rapidly. Perhaps their crystalline designs held the secret of the symbol they’d seemingly fallen from, but any chance of comparing a snowflake to the new constellation was lost altogether by the sunrise.

The snow was two inches high by Desiree’s first smell of coffee and a half-inch higher by the time she waded through her footwear to find her snow-boots last in rotation at the back of the closet. She left by the side door in a poofy snowsuit partially rolled out of bed, wearing two layers of thick pink sweatpants and a purple polyester coat, topped by a fuzzy blue hat over that morning’s wild hair. Desiree had promised herself she’d take the next opportunity to see something novel, and real, and generally regarded as marvelous, which was tentatively scheduled to be the upcoming blue moon. She’d missed the eclipse, the comet, the meteor shower, and the northern lights, those shared experiences of majestic phenomenon that gave her co-workers something to revel on about in the breakroom, which over the past several months of buildup had turned majesty into something that desperately needed to be crossed off her sanity checklist. Her resolve was too energized for the familiar view provided by the sidewalk and its snow-white pageantry of single-family homes. Instead, Desiree took the trespassing route of a neighborhood cat, which in a suburban neighborhood meant navigating dogs and fences. A feline thoroughfare between two ranch homes with open property lines made the most direct route to the decorative row of privacy trees behind the subdivision. And being doubly decorative, the sight of them made up for the missed eclipse. The privacy trees, already awakened through spring and dressed in green for summer, wore their white in clusters and bunches heavy past its holiday, as if this carefully curated line had been uprooted and usurped by monstrously large snowball bushes. Under droopy limbs, it looked as if one might fall like an apple. It caused a coffee-surged sense of prickly wonder to flow to the tips of Desiree’s fingers, tempted to pluck a snow globe from an otherwise green wreath.

Thinking better of it, she ducked to avoid clipping a branch and causing a collapse. Stepping past the trees was to step out of the neighborhood and into the full breadth of the snowfall over an open field, recently bloomed in yellow butterweed. Desiree stood in tranquil astonishment. The clash of winter with spring would have made for a magical photograph—or the background of a tantalizing one. She pointed a toe within her boot. The trees kept the area fairly private. She could roll one leg of her sweatpants to her calf, remove boot and sock, stretch her leg, raise a heel, and snap a picture as the crystals settled on her skin and turned the tips of her toes red like a cold cute nose. Icily vibrant flowers shimmered with good taste. High production values typically drew fewer creepy clients. She crouched down to better scout the location. A limited edition as rare as this weather could sell for five-hundred dollars each. These thoughts came spontaneously and she didn’t have her camera. She’d have to go back home and return quickly but in scanning the snow for the perfect frame, Desiree became distracted by something strange and baffling, disturbing any sense of inspiration with unease.

Something reminiscent of a crop circle. Sharp, crisp, stamped, almost embossed in the ground. A clean mold in the snow. As if not fallen but pressed from the sky. It looped and curled like a hard-to-read signature. About six-feet across, Desiree circled the edge, trying to find the angle that might show what exactly this design was; and in doing so, stepped beside another print. This second one was smaller, maybe a foot across, but of unrefined shape, lacking the precision of the design, scratched deep across the snow as if swept there by a broom. Followed by a second, a third, a fourth. They led away from the site and with each print the shape narrowed, brushing itself into something more definite, decreasing in size at the fifth, the sixth, the seventh, slimming into the unmistakable shape of a boot, similar, though more masculine in its print, to Desiree’s own.

It was an uncanny sensation that could only be described in fantasy terms such as being tapped on the shoulder by a stranger who’s your doppelganger or watching slime transform into a human but still Desiree followed the footprints through the snowball trees to behind a row of fenced-in houses.

Over four inches covered the ground. The snowfall was heavy yet the footprints looked as fresh as before, and Desiree saw no one ahead. She tightened her coat. Rather than a majestic sight, an odd but explainable one would have relieved her now. If she’d seen, for instance, a wacky neighbor with an open shed, a set of boards and a rope—tools needed for a crop circle—along with a special pair of snowshoes, the mystery would close. Her stomach would return to its natural place. She’d flash a comforting smile that there was at least one person with a strange hobby—snow art—in this otherwise everyday neighborhood of retirees, new families, and herself, the nurse, who lived with her mother, the paralegal. The backyards, however, were empty wherever she looked. The footprints continued forward. She rubbed her arms to fight off a newfound chill. Following the trail house after house after house until finally at five inches of snow they turned into a yard without a fence.

The footprints crossed the lawn. They led up the steps of a deck and it was in approaching the deck that Desiree’s scope widened and she realized she was following the prints to her own backdoor.

To the summertime doormat, practically stomped clean of snow so that the bluebirds showed again beneath the boot-marks.

Inside, her mother was in conversation, and the footprints continued as puddles all the way to the wet man, who sat on a towel in a chair across from her.

“Desiree, this man—you’re an artist, right?—he wants to paint our living room.”

Next week on Dangling Feet at the Big un-Bang, Desiree keeps her boots on while investigating the wet man. Will she regret going inside? Can a stranger brought in from the storm really be trusted? Read Chapter 2 Now.