THE SNOWBEAST CHRONICLES
by J. Cooper Jensen
day thirteen: the lower bunker.
The days grow shorter, but time stretches ever on. Snow is building up against the doors, the paddock walls are groaning. The abominable snowbeast, that cursed creature all of white and blood, stalks me in his stealthy blanket of frozen precipitate. Either he will find a way in, or I will find a way to rid this Earth of him!
Curse his icy beard to the heated depths of fiery hell!
My food rations are marginal. I cannot afford to endure a siege. He knows this, damn him.
I have little in munitions. Yesterday I got my tongue stuck on my rifle. I have very poor aim. He knows this.
I am deeply afraid of isolation and darkness. I am experiencing both. He knows this. I know that he is a solitary creature by his very nature, and also has night vision. He knows that I know this.
Curse the day this expedition began, all those 13 days ago. What is it we sought to prove? What is it we sought to seek? Yes, yes, we were men. We were given that as birthright. And in our greed, our own wretchedness stripped us all of such an honorable title. Beasts we became, as a beast beat upon our door. O! What manner of creature do we become, man, when even the Devil cannot look upon our horrid deeds and leaves us without even his saccharine sweet coaxing and reassurances?
The shadows our own hearts cast upon the earth we tread, I say. That’s all we sought. And we found them. Or rather they found us after that blasted and unholy snowbeast came to our camp. The terror that followed—only I know now. And it will go with me, quiet, quiet, into the frozen night once I perish. By the hand of the wretched snowbeast, that slobbering snarling cad, or by my own admonishment. SNOWBEAST!
So ends this journal entry. So begins the still blackness of the night with only the mournful wind to speak with me. Alack!
The above was written as if I, the Master Jeweler, were a man trapped in a bunker and terrorized by the Abominable Snowman for no less than 13 days in 19th century Alaska.
