The last vestiges of my humanity have almost been stripped from me. Centuries of cultural conditioning, empathy, sympathy and basic compassion have all but solidified like flies in amber in my frozen body and mind.
All I am left with is one single desire, a need that is so terrifying in its domination, its rabid animation of this fevered flesh...I am but an automaton, a beaten prisoner of its most perverse and sickening fancies.
I am very, very hungry.
But for all this, I am not yet one of THEM. Even the most subjugated of creatures, from the humble lab rat to the kiddies domesticated hamster may violate the probability tables of convention now and then.
I call them 'Snowmen', these small snow shrouded bumps that pepper the village streets like milky fungi. In my naivety I often stepped into them with the expectation of sinking into a soft drift of powdery snow, only to be gripped by an almost atavistic repulsion as my foot sank into what can only be described as a large rubbery foetus.
Yes, the village has become a graveyard, a necropolis, a city of the dead...and the almost dead.
One week of heavy snow and this once vibrant community is reduced to this. The social contract was spun out like piece of gum from the broken yellowed teeth of a madman... until it finally snapped like cheap twine. There are no rules anymore, everything is permitted, because when all is said and done, a man has got to eat.
The lollipop lady was still standing in the centre of the road when I turned into the main street. Like a silent surrealist sculpture: day-glo yellow and horrifically absurd, she stood sentinel and implacable, her once benign 'lollipop' like an ancient spear at her side.
My first instinct was to hail her with a friendly 'hello', an inquiry as to her well being maybe, something to break the ice, to let her know that I meant her no harm.
But there was something wrong.
I could physically feel the spurt of adrenaline flood my veins, my muscles tensed and the urge to fight or flee turned me into a simple animal. I shivered, but not from the cold, there was something so grotesque about this once human figure, something so malignant, that I felt my sphincter tremble like cold trifle.
It was her eyes.
The once familiar, ruddy and puffy dinner plate face of Joan Norris was no longer set with the kind, wise cornflower blue orbs that had guided so many generations of children across that street.
No, the eyes had lost all their life spirit, all their humanity and comprehension of this world. Joan was already in hell. Something deep inside me, some little flame of compassion had kindled my muscles into action, I was actually walking towards her. What I was going to say or do, I had no idea, but my compulsion to go on was beyond the reason of reasonable (and well fed) men, I was insane with hunger now and unsure where my delirium began and my logic ended.
Still she stood there, silent, immovable and expressionless in the searingly cold, metallic atmosphere. The snow had trapped and baffled all the normal ambient sounds, sensitizing the air - the village was now a giant sound-stage awaiting the big performance, the final act for the two players.
Inch by inch I crept onwards, the soft crunch of the snow like the mastication of some small invisible creature, my breath billowing into the still air - smokey tendrils misting the glass of my window onto this hideous vision.
I was perhaps ten yards away from the fluorescent monster when I first saw the blood.
A small glistening crimson pool was steaming and beginning to congeal in the low, late afternoon sun. The blood puddle had formed under the round head of Joan's lollipop has its edge lay still in the snow. Her hand was bone white as she gripped the handle of the unlikely weapon.
I froze, literally and metaphorically. Time stopped and my befuddled head grasped blindly hither and thither for some clue, a link, attempting to nudge the chain of associations that would necessitate a decision. I needed a light bulb to flash so I could act, but everything was in slow motion.
I could now see the bloodied corpses of unfortunate shoppers who had fought for the last scrap of sustenance from the dark, gutted interior of the Scot-Mid general store. Poor bastards I thought - the quick and the dead. That brief glimpse was enough to register the torn empty packet of Cheesy Whotsits gripped in the chubby death claw of one of the more rotund members of our little village.
But my brief distraction was all the lollipop creature needed, and I felt rather than saw the scything blade of her safety wand swish past my ear with the gentlest kiss of my lank, greasy hair.
I instinctively raised my hand in a futile gesture to ward off the next blow, and turning on my heel launched myself like a missile out of that gladiatorial arena for the furiously famished.
I managed to get about a hundred yards before I tripped, quite spectacularly over one of the macabre 'Snowmen'. I skidded through the snow, choked and blinded by the icy powder, coming to rest by the rear wheel of an abandoned and trashed Asda home delivery van.
I twisted onto my back, heart hammering, electrified by that strange current of rage and fear.
There she, or rather 'it' stood, five paces away with an ungodly grin spreading over those sickly marble features. Please god, I silently wept, don't let me die like this... skewered like a pig by a lollipop lady, an Asda van my pathetic tombstone!
At that precise moment, the sun was released by the dusky clouds and I was warmly embraced by an almost Blakeian epiphany.
I fumbled furiously for the half eaten CurlyWurly in my inside coat pocket that I was saving for when things got really bad.
I waved the little stick of chocolate coated toffee at the terrifying apparition, while I grinned insanely, emitting small childlike giggles, tears of shame coursing down my frozen cheeks at my pathetic predicament.
The soft thump of the lollipop in the snow hardly registered, I was all eye's as I saw the dribbling monstrosity move towards my prone figure, its hands in prayer-like supplication, the once dulled eyes now illuminated by some inner supernatural light.
I tossed the milk choc coated ambrosia into the snow a few yards to my left, and then watched horrified but fascinated as the foul gibbering cretin drunkenly staggered towards this unforeseen bounty.
As the thing stooped to retrieve the pathetic morsel, I jumped to my feet and seized the discarded lollipop...and without a moments hesitation, brought the improvised axe down upon the things capped skull.
The last thing I remember is running.
Where I found the energy from I can't imagine, but I ran and ran, skidding and sliding, knees riding high in the deep snow as I fled that accursed place, torn by hunger and a terrible guilt...a guilt that would never be assuaged, even by my interminable screams that released the crows in great black clouds into twilight's last gleamings.
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