DAILYSOMETHING

Bell

They’ve told him to go and move the bell into the shed. It was past midnight and the snow had started falling in large moonlit flakes. It got colder as he moved away from the streetlights toward the field. The bell stood by two posts behind the shed, its skirt under a foot of snow. He dug out the bottom and tried to lift it. The bell’s frost stuck to his fingers. It was dark. He could only see his breath’s vapor lit up by the moon and the snow and the darkness that was the bell. He lifted up one side and felt a vast colder emptiness expand from the bell’s underside. In the distance tall trees could be heard slapping against each other in the high winds. He knocked the bell to its side and rolled it to the shed. Following his footsteps in the snow backwards he stopped by the window of their house and looked at the light rectangle it cast on the snow. He punched at the glass and broke it.