SNOWSCREEN: Chapter 2

A Project Petrichor Environmental Thriller, serialized

CHAPTER II

Read the Prologue and Chapter I.

Brautigan hopped out of the bus and sunk up to his ankles in a chilled soup of snow, slush, and mud, the water instantly seeping through his beat up old running shoes and sending an icy shock straight to his brain. Ah, Silverton, he thought, uttering a high-pitched groan. 

Yet even the shocking sensation in his lower appendages, nor the similarly jarring feeling that swirled his guts when he spied Eliza Santos, couldn’t shake the befuddlement from Brautigan’s brain: What had happened to the woman on the bus? 

“Hey, Eliza! Did you see a woman get off the bus?”

“Good to see you, too,” she said.

“She was sitting there in the bus. Then she wasn’t. She must have gotten off here so where did she go? She was wearing a lilac-colored dress and …”

“Lilac? You’re all agog over some woman wearing lilac? I think not.”

“What?”

“Only frumpy old ladies wear that color. Get it together.” 

“Huh? I don’t know … I’m not agog over anything, whatever that means. She looked familiar and troubled is all and I wanted to talk to her and then she was gone.” Fact is, she was wearing lilac and Brautigan was attracted to her and he was pretty sure Eliza was full of shit. Probably a little jealous, too. 

“Preying on distraught women still, eh? Well, I didn’t see her, which is probably for the best. You’re late, by the way.”

“Yeah, there was a mudslide. In December. Can you believe it?”

“You mean debris flow, don’t you? It’s pretty weird. This moisture wasn’t in the forecast. It was dry as a bone down south and then this side of Coal Bank it was sloppy, nasty, slushy … What’s that German word?

“Schneeregen.”