My boot crunched the growing layer of white fluff outside our car. This day could not have gotten any worse. “Babe, please we should stay in the car,” I pleaded. She was walking quickly away from me. I had a selfish thought that it should have been me walking away from her.

We’re stuck Dominick! We’re trapped in the middle of a fucking snowstorm and the car’s dead!” She screamed back at me, turning around only to yell in my direction. She whipped her blonde hair around again and kept walking. The further she went the more her legs sunk into the snow.

“Elle please!” I called and took a step after her. One step later Elle let out a frightened shriek and her body fell to the ground. She had stepped a little too close to the ditch in the road and the snow caved in under her weight, taking her thigh as captive.

Elle’s fists pounded the ground and she let out a long frustrated grunt. I ran up to her as quickly as I could to help her out of the ground. “Will you just stop and listen to me for once?” I said as I pulled her out by her armpits.

Once she was free she pushed me away. “No! Fuck off!”

“Elle!”

“I didn’t fucking cheat, Dom, okay! I don’t know what you saw on my phone but I didn’t fucking cheat.”

Internally rolling my eyes I tried to defuse the situation. Snow was falling harder than before now. Our tiny mazda was still flashing its hazards stuck in a snowbank after it spun on black ice. Elle was fuming, I could almost see the steam rising from the top of her head more clearly than the smoke rising from the car. The road was long and not even a snow plow had come down it in the last ten minutes. Snow was building up around us quickly and time was running out.

“Oh and that guy Steve, you two were just friends right? ‘Show me what you’re wearing’ that’s what friends message to each other?” My head knew what to say and this was exactly not it.

“Why!” She screamed, her arms clutching her head and flinging her hair in anger. “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Me?” I said, completely forgetting what was at stake and feeding into her anger. “I’m the problem? Yes, Elle because I’m the one who’s ruining our relationship.”

Elle rolled her eyes dramatically and crossed her arms. “It’s just sex, Dom, chill out.”

“Just sex?” I couldn’t believe my ears. “Just sex! Where the fuck are your morals?”

“I don’t have to take this from you. I should have left you a long time ago!” Elle turned on her heel. Her hair whipped with her spin and snowflakes flew off her. She continued her trek away from me and the safety of the car.

The realization of what just transpired hit me like a brick. I couldn’t let Elle walk away from me like this. I would never forgive myself. “Elle, wait, please!” I pleaded and ran after her. I caught her arm to force her to look at me seriously. “I can’t leave you in a snowstorm. I’ll make it up to you. I’ll forget about this whole thing.”

Elle rolled her eyes again and I was sure she would have tapped her foot if we weren’t up to our knees in snow. I widened my eyes and sent her a puppy dog face. “Please, Elle. Don’t leave me...”

She sized me up for a while. It was only after snowflakes kept falling in her eyelashes that she got fed up and shouted, “Fine! Just get me out of this ice storm.”

I let out a sigh of relief. Still holding onto her arm my fingers traveled down to hers and I led her back towards the car. “Let’s get back inside and I’ll try to get a signal in all this white shit.”

Elle didn’t answer me but she didn’t pull away either. I walked her to the passenger side door she had left flung open in her anger. There was some snow gathered on the seat and the interior of the door that I brushed off.

I could feel Elle like an impatient foreign leader waiting for a translator watching me as I brushed her seat off. Before I straightened up I opened up the glove box and pocketed the small revolver.

“Are you done yet? I’m freezing my as-” BANG! Elle’s expression became ‘o’ shaped. Her arched eyebrows rose up into her blonde bangs so far I couldn’t see them. Her blue eyes widened until the edges of her eyes were no longer touching the irises and those blue orbs were floating in a white snowstorm.

Before she fell backwards I caught her shoulder. My nails dug into her skin until it was only my large hand holding her up straight. I brought her closer to me and pressed the tip of the gun into the growing red wound in her stomach. She winced when the metal tip inched inside her.

I gave her a smirk, the one she’d seen the millions of times she had laid in bed with me trying to apologize for how she fucked up this time. But there was no making up for this one. I know probably better than most people how there’s no rest for the wicked. Her mouth opened wider and a clucking sound escaped her throat but I shushed her.

“Shh, sh, sh...It’s ok. Red is a better color on you anyway.” She grasped desperately to the fabric of my clothes. Her bangled arm jingling as her fingers tried hard to clench over my jean jacket.

I pulled the trigger one more time to be sure. This time she jerked violently. I let go and she fell backwards. Elle’s corpse rolled down the ditch leaving a wide river of red on the blinding white of the ground. She landed face down, her blonde hair spread out and mixing into the snow until her head was nearly invisible.

It was a bad day for her to wear a skirt. Now it rode up and crinkled by her upper thigh. That pitiful blue cardigan she had put on didn’t match her eyes anymore. She was awash in a pool of her own blood. It spread out like a fog rolling into town. It stained even the falling snow until eventually even her body was covered by the red flakes. Soon It began to just look like the resting place for roadkill.

I watched the snow pile up until even the red was covered by the falling white noise. Once again brushing the snow off the seat of my car I placed the revolver on the passenger seat and got back into the driver’s side.

The car could still drive. At least until I reached the next town five miles down the road. Then a kind stranger would help the shaken little kid who had hit a deer on his way here and got her blood on his body. It’ll be a pity and a shame but the snow is too piled up for anyone to care about it until spring come. Oh but what a fine mother that deer would have made.