My head turns toward the slanted snowfall outside. My heart shivers.
It's too cold.
I try and cover up with my blanket but it doesn't help.
I hum to the music playing in the background and I sigh.
"God, if this is all there is to life, why am I here?" I ask out loud.
I listen and wait.
No answer.
I sigh again and head for the kitchen with my cookie dough craving lurking somewhere deep in my tongue. Lackadaisical days are what cookie dough is made for, right?
I hold my stomach, doing flip flops.
Maybe I shouldn't.
I hear a knock on the front door.
Stealthily I creep towards the front hall to see who it is.
I can't see very well through the window blinds, but I can see enough to where I can come to a conclusion that it's someone I don't know. So I leave him at the door and head back for the kitchen.
"Hello?" The someone says. "I need help."
I glance back toward the hall. Well, if he needs help...
I go ahead and walk towards the door. He looks relieved to see me.
I open the door. He's covered in snow.
"I'm sorry, I'm kind of sick..." I say, coughing, pulling him inside. "Goodness, you must be freezing..."
He looks at me strangely. His eyes are weird, they don't really have a color. He has brown, thick hair peeking out from his hat.
"What do you need?" I ask him, turning away again and holding my stomach. "Do you want hot chocolate, coffee..."
"Thank you, but I'm allergic," he says, surveying my house.
"To what?"
He looks back at me. "What?"
"Nevermind," I say. "What do you need?" I ask again, drinking water.
"I'm just..." he stares at a picture frame standing on the front table. "Um..."
"Do you need help, or..." I sigh, impatient, holding my stomach.
"It's kind of embarrassing," he says, pulling a piece of paper from his jacket.
"I opened the door, didn't I?" I reason. "What do you need?"
"Directions... to my house," he says.
I nod slowly.
"I just moved here... well, somewhere around here... and I can't find it," he says.
"Um..." I stammer. "I can try, but... I'm not too good at directions..."
"Anybody's better than me," he laughs nervously. He's strange.
"Um, okay... what's your address?"
He slowly mumbles it out, obviously second-guessing himself as he's saying it out loud.
I sigh and look out the window. "Does your house have a red door?"
"Yeah," he says, perking up. "You know the way?"
"Next door," I mumble, pointing to my right.
He joins me out the window and he blushes. "Oh," he says quietly, then looks at me. "I told you I'm bad with directions... I..." he bites his lip and turns from me quickly, sort of spraying me with beads of melted snow on his jacket. I wipe it from my face, showing him to the front door. "I'm sorry to bother you."
I look at his face again. Strange.
"No problem," I sigh again.
"You okay?" he asks, out of the blue, looking back at the picture frame. It's me, smiling. He's been staring at it.
I look at him, wondering how he knew I wasn't okay. I cross my arms.
He looks back at me. Knowing he won't get an answer, he swallows and opens the door to the blizzard. "Thanks... I'll be praying for you."
He walks out the door and shivers down to his car.
I turn away from the door in tears. I've been praying every day for years and I wasn't better. It's not going to work.
I look back at him. He waves, then speeds off to next door.
He never introduced himself.
Strange.
