Creative Submission: Haley Stoessl Builds an Everlasting Snowman

The earthquake shatters the foundations and people run past him.  Shrill noises reach him and he says Goodbye, Goodbye, Goodbye to every single person that passes him on their way out.  He was never equipped with smell.

“Goodbye.”

The few who made it out are forever haunted by the warbling voice by the elevator.  But most did not.  They die in small groups in stair ways or cubicles and patients are left alone to suffer. He was never equipped with smell.

“I’m sorry.”

He talks to himself to help the patients who still survive who do not have anyone to come for them.  The power goes out and he sees nothing.  And then the world ceases movement and he hears nothing.  He tells the patients sorry and goodbye because he is sorry and he will miss knowing that they were there.

“May I take your coat and hat?”

He is old and was important.  He knows this.  Sometimes he hears old noises, squeaking of wheels or old groans of the building.  Somewhere a gurney rattles down a sloping hall, somewhere a shelf of expired medication crashes to the floor.  He says hello and then he says Goodbye.

“Yes it is a very fine day.”

He knows that someday there will be light again.  The old hospital is old and will fall to pieces.  He knows someday he will see again.  And then maybe he will hear again.  But he knows inventors build things to last, the buildings and him.

He waits.

He waits in the dark and he warbles on and on about things he does not understand as his circuits expend every fact and every riddle and he answers himself in the old languages of a long time ago. A long time ago he was grand they told him.

He’s been tired for a long time.

*Nun Sa Lam is Korean for snowman, literally “person of snow”.

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