Colder Nights

by Cullen Gallagher

It was so cold that even the smog, hovering perpetually above New York City, seemed to solidify and then fall down to earth under its own weight - but it was only snow. It was so cold that even the rising stink from the subway and the fuming exhaust from cars and buses couldn’t melt the snow. It was so cold that the snow stayed, and that the people all stayed home. It was so cold that at just a few minutes past eleven p.m. on a Wednesday night, there were only two people passing under the shadows of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. And it was so cold that one of their bodies wouldn’t be found until well past dawn the next morning by someone who couldn’t afford to miss a day of work and who had a long train ride ahead of him. It was so cold that even the blood was frozen, and tonight promised to be even colder than yesterday.

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Cullen Gallagher lives in Brooklyn, NY where he is a film critic. He also blogs about crime fiction at Pulp Serenade.