An Ice Age
by Joe Meno

An ice age has appeared in the Hoffbaugher’s parlor. The entire front room is jagged hoarfrost and brilliant snowy white: several enormous glaciers drift anonymously where the plastic-covered sofas used to stand. From the hallway, Jim Hoffbaugher stares at the immense white icebergs creaking back and forth between an expanse of terrifically gray glacial sheets: he shakes his head as if, all along, this was something he was expecting.

“Hrumph,” is what he mumbles, hands on his hips. “Would you just look at that? Would you just look at that?”

“It’s not very nice to look at,” Margaret, his wife, says from the kitchen.

“I know it. Boy, do I know it,” Jim says.

He sips at his coffee from a cup that reads World’s Best Grandpa. The edge of the coffee cup is chipped on one side and so Jim has to be mindful of where he puts his lips whenever he takes a sip. Like the icebergs newly formed in the front part of his house, like what he reads in the newspaper and what he sees on the TV, Jim does not trust any of it.

“You can call someone,” Margaret says, scrambling eggs in a frying pan.

“Who am I going to call? Nobody that’s who.”

“The police maybe.”

“The police don’t want anything to do with that. The police.”

“Town hall?”

“No, sir, I don’t think they’d be much interested, either. Town hall? No, sir.”

“Department of Water?”

“Department of Water? No. This appears to me to be the homeowner’s problem. Look,” Jim points out the kitchen window towards the Fasbinder’s house next door which seems completely peaceful and serene. Their front parlor is visible from behind wide bay windows, all pink and white, their plush furniture safely stands intact, iceless. “That nut’s place is fine.”

“Well, what about Marty?”—Marty, of course, being their deadbeat son-in-law.

Marty? Marty? Jim winces as if he has cut his lip on the rim of the coffee mug. “What is Marty going to say, hun?” he asks. “Marty,” he mutters, then once more, “Marty.”

“I think he might be able to help you. If you need to haul some of that somewhere.”

“Marty does not know his ass from his elbow, if you pardon the expression.”

“Jim,” she chides, setting the plate of eggs on the table before him.

“No, this is definitely the homeowner’s problem. You can be sure that’s what they’ll say. I’m going to go in the parlor and take a look and see if I can handle it myself.”

“OK, dear, but I don’t need another incident like the one at Christmas.”

Jim sets down his fork and sighs.

“Margaret. This is nothing like Christmas. That, that, all that was was poor planning.”

“You still might call him. Marty, I mean.”

“I can tell you right now with a hundred percent certainty that I will not be calling Marty.”

“Trish could bring the kids over. We could make lunch while you guys are figuring out what to do in there.”

“Margaret, I want to make myself clear on this. Do not call Trish’s. The last person in the world I want to see right now is that nincompoop.”

“OK, Mr. Grouchy. Suit yourself.”

Jim cleans his plate as he does every morning. He places the fork and the knife crossed at the center of the empty plate, and quickly Margaret swoops in, attending to it. She dabs around Jim’s arm with a yellow sponge and refills his coffee.

“I can tell you one thing: I am going into the parlor right now and if I see this in any way has to do with that moron’s new satellite dish next door, there is going to be a situation here. I just want to make that clear, for the courts or the police or Kojak or whoever.”

“Jim,” his wife says, chiding him again. “Now you behave.”

Jim struggles to find his black rubber boots in the hallway closet, then struggles to put them on. He searches around for his parka and when he can’t find it, he calls down the hallway grumpily.

“I can’t find my goshdarn winter coat.”

“It’s in the box, dear.”

“The box? The box? Why would it be in the box?”

“Because it’s summer. You won’t wear that thing for another six months.”

“Box,” Jim mutters once more. He discovers the cardboard box marked Winter Coats, finds his gray parka and gray gloves and pulls them on, wobbling towards the parlor.

“Now you be careful, dear. You’re not a boy scout anymore.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

Jim pulls a gray scarf around his face and weakly steps into the parlor. Immediately, he feels his breath leave his body. The wind is so cold that he can feel his lungs crystallizing. The blood in his bloodstream becomes treacherously slow. He takes another step and feels his left leg sink into the powdery whiteness, the ice growing like invisible branches up his knee. He lets out a cry and tumbles leeward as a shock of bright pain travels the length of his body: fireworks spark dully behind his eyes as he lands on his side. He is sprawled out now, the cold seething all through his joints as he watches the rectangular opening of the hallway slowly drifting away behind a veil of snowy haze. He moans as what he imagines to be a shadow, a shadow of some monstrous glacier, drawing a heavy weight across his face. Soon he realizes it is not a thing made of ice but something alive, something living, something with a musky, foul odor which trumpets a sad, funereal call before continuing on. Immediately, the animal’s square-shape, its long, curled tusks, and its large feet trigger two words Jim knows cannot possibly be the two words he’s searching for: wooly mammoth. He lays on his back, his hands now two curled claws, the scarf wet from his breathing. He closes his eyes, knowing somewhere, just beyond this swirling disaster of ice, miles and miles away from this, this, this shadow of all known emptiness, his wife is now on the phone with Marty. Marty. He hopes this will all be over shortly.

Copyright belongs to the author on the publication date unless otherwise noted.