The sound of keen metal carving across ice echoed through empty halls as a lurching figure made its way under the chattering fluorescent hum of the ceiling. Closer it moved, following the cold knifing that heralded an approaching joy that caused shivers to reverberate visibly along the folds of fabric that draped from the thing’s shoulders. Soon, it entered that sacred arena, where the stick men glided across the ice, making it messy, making it ready.
The thing wondered silently as it slowly made its way up to a distant perch, why the stick men even bothered with their silly sticks. As it took its seat it dreamily closed its eyes and imagined needle men in place of these silly people, dragging long, cold metal points across the ice, leaving behind deep, titillating gouges in its frosty surface. People were filing in now – these were the families and friends of the stickmen, or so the thing thought. Why else would anyone come just to watch them? Watch them and ignore ‘it’ no less.
'It' was glorious. Time counted downwards with seemingly impossible slowness – every moment an eternity well worth waiting for. As horns blared the thing shifted uneasily in its seat; it was over, the stickmen were leaving, and soon it would be here.
Soon, everything would be wonderful.
As the cacophonous shuffling of feet began to erupt across the arena the thing began to fixate on a tiny door across the now deeply wounded ice. The last footsteps faded back into the warm, outside world leaving only silence and cold. The thing felt the sort of numb loneliness kept only for those who find happiness between the golden moments meant for it, but then the turning of a knob shot a warming jolt through its freezing limbs. From that once lifeless door now slowly sprang a man in a grey jumpsuit, a long-visored hat covering all, but a toothy, white smile. As he made his way across the ice he looked up, hidden eyes scanning for something. The thing began to shift and straighten up in its seat, and the man’s smile widened. Now everything could begin.
Gracefully the man made his way to a large set of double doors kept closed by a monstrous padlock which he whisked away with ease. As he swung wide the doors to ‘its’ hiding place, his poise made the thing clap with furious joy. Slowly he vanished into the darkness that lay beyond the doors, and again came the silence and the cold. The thing didn’t care though – it had a fire burning inside it now. Then it happened; two bright shafts of light came bursting forth from the dark, followed by a gurgling roar.
“Zamboni!” the thing let out with a guttural shriek, as it began to make its way clumsily down to the ice. As the man piloted it across the stickmen’s handiwork, the thing looked on in frenzied amazement as all that was left in its wake was smooth ice. The wonder the thing felt was too much for just eyes to bear and unconsciously it threw its hulking form over the barrier that separated it from the magic of healing ice. The thing ran its hands over the ice, feeling its gently rolling smoothness where once there was a cruel network of sharp schisms.
“Zamboni! Zamboni! Zamboni!” the thing hollered, trailing the man as he made his way around the ice, looking back and smiling every few feet, glad to see the thing following so close behind. However, the ice made no notice of this companionship, and with characteristic coldness it provided no purchase to the thing’s ever quickening step. With a high-pitched squeal the thing suddenly found the ground closer to its head than its feet, and with a mortifying crunch its rapturous dance was brought to an abrupt stop.
At the sight of this the man brought the machine to a halt and let himself plummet with reckless urgency down to the ice. He knelt down beside the thing, frantically grasping about it, as if to catch some escaping ghost that would leave him forever. However, the thing reached up and grasped his wrist, bringing his eyes to rest upon the thing’s. They were yellow, bloodshot, and seemed eager to vent the mottled spirit they contained. Tinny wafts of blood reach the man’s nose, as time passed around them with a quickening cruelty. Their eyes told each other stories that their words could never have contained. Moments passed the thing further and further away from the man until a loud klaxon began to sound, bursting the two from their shared reverie.
Warmth began to build beneath them, and beads of moisture began to form in the dimples of the smoothed ice. The time of the stickmen was over, and so the machinery was now setting to work, birthing new ice for when they would eventually return. A symphony of cracks and fissures began to heave small, desperate breaths of faltering cold beneath the machine, as the substance holding its immense form began to falter. The man did not care though; he could not pull himself away. The thing could sense the conflict building in the man’s chest though, and with a reassuring hand streaked with unknown filth, reached up and grasped his shoulder. Finally the phantom that haunted the body of the thing made its way out with the same clumsiness it had inhabited it with, and in a final breath the thing whispered, “Zamboni.”
With grim determination, the man left the now empty form of the thing, and rushed to save the blessed machine. Revving its engine he drove frantically along the faltering ice as it morphed slowly into a spreading pool. Looking back to where he once saw only joy, he now was met with the sight of the thing being consumed by the arena, sinking down into its inky bowels. Soon the machine was returned to its place, and the man left this now joyless place, haunted by the knowledge he would someday have to return.
Months of summer passed, but the sun never found the man.
And so came the fall.
The stickmen came and went, the tiny door opened, and out stepped the man. His jumpsuit was tattered and gone was his hat, but still he made his way across the ice as he had always done. With a thuggish tug he removed the lock from the doors, and soon he found himself mindlessly gliding along the ice. He mended its myriad wounds, wiping clean away the violent afflictions of the stickmen and their games, but it now brought him nothing except unending cold. The chill of the place had consumed the thing, and he along with it.
Once he was done he locked the machine away, and putting up no resistance he allowed his feet to drag him back to the place where he had watched the thing go under. Gazing downward he was met with a curious sight, and gripped by a sudden, manic urge he began to wipe away the white shavings of the freshly smoothed ice. Down, down, beyond the milky whiteness of the ice’s surface the man could make out the form of the thing. He pressed his face against its cold surface, and squinted desperately. First there were those yellow eyes, wide open and staring, and beneath them the man could make out the thing’s face, locked into a wide, blackened smile. Hot tears began to stream down the man’s face, forming in steaming pools below his contorted face.
Slowly the man lowered himself, his face stabbed by the grasping cold, and he let his lips rest against the ice. Every day he would watch the stickmen and wait, wait for the time when he could unleash the machine, and make the ice beautiful again – beautiful for the thing. And every night they would lie together, above and below the perfect ice, until the day came when the ice would take him too.