by Mike Murphy
It knew it would never be criminally charged, so the job was simple – even pleasant.
The night it took their lives was very dark. No moon shone through their bedroom windows. Not a one of them uttered the slightest scream as the finely honed lawn shears taken from the shed did their work.
It hacked at the corpses to build what it needed. The chest belonged to the father – big and brawny. The hazel eyes came from the mother, the head from the toddler. The belly came from bits of them all.
It delicately placed its creation in front of the house. The pieces fit well together – the drying blood acting like glue. Satisfied, it packed snow all over the thing and then, its night’s work completed, proudly went back to its spot.
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Someday soon the remains would be found inside the house. When the snow began to melt, and the blood seeped out of the thing, the befuddled authorities would come as close to the truth as they ever would.
The snowman – God, he hated that word! – had struck a long-overdue blow for its kind. How dare inferior humans take something as noble, as wonderful, as beautiful as snow and form it into tributes to themselves!
Maybe this would teach them.
MIKE MURPHY has had over 150 audio plays produced in the U.S. and overseas. He’s won The Columbine Award and a dozen Moondance International Film Festival awards in their TV pilot, audio play, short screenplay, and short story categories.
His prose work has appeared in several magazines and anthologies.
Mike is the writer of two short films, Dark Chocolate and Hotline. In 2013, he won the inaugural Marion Thauer Brown Audio Drama Scriptwriting Competition. In 2020, he came in second.
Mike keeps a blog at audioauthor.blogspot.com.