Red Hot Burning Desire [Jan2014]

Today my brother burned himself a blister on the heating. We are immobilized because of the "freeze of the century". Its Minus 120 outside. Don't ask me whether that's Fahrenheit or Celsius, at this temperature it makes no difference. Step outside and your skull cracks in the cold - that's not just a fancy metaphor, its a medical certainty. For the last three days we have been huddled up around the heaters in the house. The police and the news tell us not to venture outside, there is a curfew. Mom went to the attic to get some more blankets the other day but came back with instant frostbite. Thats how bad this is. Anything other than the immediate surroundings of the heaters is off-limits. Open the front door and you die.

Of course, there is no guarantee that the heating is going to work that much longer under these conditions.

And two weeks into the freeze, daddy ought to get food.

My family talked over ways to go about it. It was finally decided that daddy put on his snow suit and carry our portable battery-powered car-heater inside that suit. Sounds like a dumb and dangerous idea, right? Well it was. The little portable device didn't stand a chance against the ice-winds and daddy came back into the house screaming with agony. His face, feet and hands had gone slightly purple and we had to make him a hot bath to get him back. My older brother took the snow suit and heater down to the basement because we still had some canned food there. He brought back was some very frozen foods which we placed near the heater to thaw out.

One day, a national emergency broadcast said that they were predicting a temporary drop down to minus 75 for midday of the same day. The broadcaster said that its still dangerous to go outside but this may be the only chance in weeks to get out and stock up on food.

Daddy took the chance, again with the portable heater inside the suit. It must have been an awkward walk. The heater had to be moved around inside the suit so that various body parts received heating. They could not be moved through the legs or arms but pointed in that direction. Daddy did not dare take the car, who knows what the cold had done to it. It would be a five block walk.

At the supermarket, people were looting. Daddy watched from afar. He didnt go near because he did not want to get hurt. On the other hand, who knew how long the batteries of his heater would stay? Everything looked deserted except for the supermarket were people were apparently in panic.

But then the batteries of the heater went dead.

He raced for his life toward the supermarket which was now his only chance at survival. More than a few minutes in these temperatures without the heater and his kids would be fatherless. As he approached the store his horror grew as he saw dead bodies lying around outside. But he had no choice and rushed through the doors of the store.

There was some heating inside and he cowered close to it, panting heavily, trying to warm up, trying to get a sense of what was going on in here. From where he sat, regaining his composure, he saw no one, but heard someone rummaging around in another aisle. A few more aisles down, to his shock, he heard a gunshot. Soon thereafter, one of the people rummaging emerged at the cash counter looking paranoid. Their eyes met. The guy wore heavy winter gear and had a huge bag full of items, probably more than his body weight could carry. He ran outside, apparently without any portable heater.

Am I now alone in here with the gunman? he asked himself.

And the gunman soon emerged with a shopping cart full of goods, pointing his gun firmly at Daddy. Daddy was still too cold and afraid to say anything. The man with the gun left the building and got into a car. To Daddys amazement the car seemed to be working just fine. It seemed he was now stuck in the supermarket that would continue to be visited by armed looters and thieves. But that's not how Daddy thought. He got up and started collecting food for his family as if there might be a possibility to bring it back. By the time he had stuffed four bags full of foods, others had also been in and out doing just the same thing. If this continues they`ll have emptied the shelves within an hour, he thought.

"Excuse me, can you give me a ride?" he asked one of the people who had come by car. "I need to get back to my family, but my heater is out of batteries".Daddy only got home with the mans kind help and because there was no wind going at the time. Minus 70 plus wind would have cut right through that snow suit. "This food should last us a week or two. But if we're going to survive, we need to come up with something else" he told us. Temperatures were soon back in the minus 100s. At one point they hit the outer-space level of minus 140.

When TV Broadcasting stopped we kind of realized that we were now on our own.

My bigger brother guessed that some kind of sudden cataclysm had brought about a new ice age. He also thought we had a better chance of survival if we took our car down south. He predicted the heating would stop working soon and millions of people would die. So when temperatures went all the way back up to minus 80 (don't get me wrong, that's still deadly cold, but it gives you a few minutes of leeway compared to minus 120), we checked the car. The car started! But we couldnt leave yet because we were not prepared. We had to leave because food was running out, but there was a whole lot of preparation to go into so that we could survive. We had to make sure to take enough batteries for the portable heater. And we had to get several carts of fuel. "Why doesnt the fuel freeze?" I asked Daddy. But he was too busy to answer. Or he didnt know why.

The next time it went up to minus 80 we just left. My older brother said we just have to go south, south, south. Inside the car, the portable heater kept the car still well below freezing, but warm enough to survive. The landscape was all snow and ice. In 13 hours of driving down the Interstate, we saw only two other cars. The country had shut down. When Dad started hallucinating about seeing deer on the roads, we knew he was exhausted and we had to find some place warm to rest. There was a Holiday Inn and there were two windows in which lights shone.

Thats when we realized Mom was dead. She wasnt sleeping, she was in fact dead. Hypothermia.

The terror of the situation was that we were all too cold to care or grieve about mothers death. Deep down inside I knew I was supposed to feel shocked or sad or something, but all I had was a red hot burning desire to get somewhere warm. We drove the car up to the door entrance (no, we were not going to get out of the car and go through the door like normal people), but the door didnt open. So my dad honked the car like crazy. And he kept doing so until this guy in a bathing robe came down into the lobby. He had a key. And the glass door slid open. And dad said: "Take all the bags, take everything and run!" and so we did get out of the car and we were outside at around minus 100 for a few seconds. We left mom in the car. We collapsed on the floor of the hotel lobby. The guy in the robe said: "The first floor is ours. We don't want to be disturbed there. Hotel owners dont seem to be around. I have the key to this place in case you want to leave. Enjoy your stay".

(Continued next post)

The guy turned around and went back to the stairs. As he walked up he called "And the Elevator is out of Order". He then disappeared behind the staircase. Quite the odd scene.

I could tell the heating in the lobby was on at full throttle. A thermometer behind the reception desk read Minus 10 F and Minus 23 C. That was incredibly warm compared to outside. Daddy sat there motionless. I think he was in shock over mom. He didnt even bother to sit on one of the nice lobby sofas. He sat on the floor. We saw moms dead body sitting stiff upright in the car outside. What a morbid sight.

After about one hour of sitting there, wordlessly, my brother, with tears in his eyes, said "Lets get something to eat". Sure enough, the staff room behind the reception desk was generously heated and there was a working refrigerator there, of all things. And that fridge had kept food fresh at proper temperatures. There was cheese and salami, yogurt, drinks and chocolate. My Brother helped Dad up, who still hadnt said a word. Dad said he didnt want to eat, but when my brother forced him to go to that room, Dad did get hungry and ate stuff. He hadnt eaten properly in days and apparently still had the will to survive. My brother then took a key that said "Suite 77" and that's where the three of us went with all of our belongings - rechargeable batteries, portable heater, a few drinks and our clothes. Of course this hadn't been properly thought through. "Suite 77" was not heated and when we opened the door a stiff icy cold engulfed the three of us. My Dad fell back, clutching his chest. My brother quickly shut the door. "In normal circumstances we'd have to get daddy to the hospital" he murmured. We decided to go back to the lobby. There we turned off the light so that we wouldn't have to open the door for other people who discovered the Hotel. My brother also found the lights to the entrance and turned them off so that we didn't have to see frozen mom. We all fell asleep in the lobby.

We spent a week at that Hotel because we had to wait until it got warm enough to travel. Warm enough meant minus 80 or 70. Daddy was sick all week, he lie there all week while we administered whatever we could find in the staff rooms. He was still sick the day we left, but we had no choice if we were going to survive. On the road again we discovered dead bodies strewn all over the place. My Brother was convinced that this was because the heating in most places had stopped working. I didn't understand enough about where the heat came from or why it would stop so I just assumed he is right. From 5 in the morning, my Dad drove 15 hours straight, and then my Brother took over. My Brother was only 16 years old and had very little driving experience, but this was a matter of life and death. By midnight the border to Mexico had been reached. It it was still Minus 80. That was a little miracle, because it hadn't been that "warm" at midnight in a long time. Maybe Mexico really was warmer? Minus 80 meant that the portable heater was still providing enough air for us to push on. As morning broke, my Brother was still driving, Daddy was sleeping and I had just woken up. My Brother had been right. It was warmer in the South. The car said it was Minus 55 degrees outside. This was a temperature we could actually survive in. And to our great delight, at midday it was Minus 35! But Dad was still sick as ever and couldn't do anymore driving. Brother said we would be on the lookout for a hospital soon.

Mindless as we were, we hadn't thought this one through either. Of course we hadn't been the only ones with the idea to travel south. And the Mexican Police was having none of it. They had probably seen Millions of people from the North trespass and loot recently. They ambushed us. Rather than telling us to head back north and that we weren't welcome here, they shot me, my Brother and Daddy in the head, end of story. Im going to put down this pencil now because they already shot my Brother and Daddy and are now coming for me. I just wrote this whole thing down so that if some goof complains about the weather again, he remembers my tale and stops complaining. My grandma always said "There is no bad weather, only wrong clothing". And in normal circumstances, she was right. So while I get that you are cold and that you are experiencing bad weather, get over it already, because I've been through much worse.

One of the pictures found in the boys phone:

reply to post by Skyfloating


I enjoyed that, thanks...plus as an added bonus you appropriated one of my favourite Billy Connelly quotes...

"I hate all those weathermen, too, who tell you that rain is bad weather. There's no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing, so get yourself a sexy raincoat and live a little. "

source: www.jokes4us.com...

Good advice that!

reply to post by KilgoreTrout


Long time no see KT!

OP: Sorry for the off-topic one-liner. Havent seen this poster here in years and was happy to see her (I think its a her, not a him? Well, you never know). Anyway, sorry...but at least it bumps your thread, eh?

reply to post by Skyfloating


I hadn't noticed your reply, sorry...and...definitely a 'her' BTW. And even though I never really went away, it is nice of you to have noted my absence from your point of view

Best Wishes.