Jill MedingerWe’re now inviting writers to submit short works of fiction and non-fiction for consideration in an upcoming issue.
Selected works are published and provide authors with a platform, full credit, and a featured bio.
If you have a compelling story you’d like us to review, please send it our way.
Snow Without Color
The sound came before the pain. A thick beat, somewhere between storm crash and distant claps. Miles Bennington was in motion, mid-swing, when his horse slipped on frozen grass. The mallet twisted from his grip, flying off like the game had stopped caring. He opened his eyes. Just white.
Not the kind of white from snowfields or walls. This was flat. Empty. Like paper left out too long. Later, the doctor said something about retinal trauma, cone loss, “progressive desaturation.” Words that meant nothing to him except that color had quit.
The trophy room in his Vermont estate stayed lit through the night. He didn’t turn the lights off anymore. What was the point? Shelves lined with silver cups, all carved with his name. Some were real wins, others from tournaments that never existed. His old manager, Dalton Briggs, had ordered duplicates, saying it helped sponsors “see consistency.” Miles hadn’t argued.
He looked at them slow, one after another, trying to tell which were lies.
Snow fell heavy over the fields. A woman’s voice cut across the wind, sharp, familiar.
“Your step’s wrong again, Miles.”
He stopped near the training fence. The woman was Vera, his assistant through fifteen seasons, and probably the last person who still cared about the horses when the owners didn’t. She held the lead of a tall grey mare, the type that used to make his heart jump.
“Can’t tell the coloring,” he said. “Everything looks flat now.”
She turned, confused. “Shade?”
“The horse. Is it the dapple or the solid?”
“It’s the same mare you rode in Palm Springs,” she said quietly. “You named her Limon.”
He tried to remember that color, the yellow so strong it almost hurt to look at. Gone now.
At night he walked the stable path blindfolded, ears tuned to hooves rustling in straw. The rhythm helped him count distance. He could tell which horse by sound alone, the way one pawed slow, another snorted after drinking. Sometimes he caught himself humming to match the steps.
He had a small studio built beside the indoor ring years ago, full of framed photos from his prime. Now those photos meant nothing. Each image was a field of balanced shadows, the crowd behind him a blur of fog.
Dalton still called sometimes, always from a number that began with New York. “We’ve got another sponsor interested,” he said last week. “Retro pieces. They want your story.”
“I don’t ride anymore.”
“Sure you do,” Dalton laughed. “You’re the legend. You walk in, shake hands, pose with the horse. People love it. They don’t need to know what you see.”
Miles hung up.
Snow came early again. It didn’t melt even when the sky cleared. The estate looked like a blank photograph, the kind printed without ink. He took long walks around the property, mapping fences with his cane. The staff had been reduced to two: Vera and a groundskeeper named Silas who preferred fixing engines to speaking.
One afternoon Vera met him by the barn with two envelopes. “Invoices,” she said. “And one more from the club.”
He tore them open slowly. The paper felt heavier than usual.
“They’re asking about the scholarship fund,” she added. “Said payments stopped last fall.”
“I thought Dalton was handling that.”
She shook her head. “He’s not.”
He folded the letters. His hands trembled. “I’ll call him.”
“You won’t get him,” she said. “He left the circuit. Heard he’s in Scottsdale now.”
The snow under her boots made a dull sound, not crisp. He listened instead of answering.
That night he sat in the tack room. Heater droned. Air heavy with saddle oil and worn leather. He set each trophy down, arranging them by height. The silver looked dull, no reflection anymore. Maybe it never had any.
He reached the largest one, engraved with the date of his final championship. He traced the rim, noticed a bump, like a nick. Rubbed harder. A small sticker lifted. Underneath, the real engraving was someone else’s name.
The next morning he asked Vera to read the names from the rest. Two were correct. Five were not.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to.
Weeks passed. He avoided mirrors, though sometimes the window caught his face and startled him. His skin looked pale, his hair thinner. He didn’t care much. The only thing that bothered him was the silence in the stables. Horses gone, most sold to pay “maintenance.” Vera said the same word every time, like it meant air, water, anything but debt.
He started training again, though there was no audience. Each morning before sunrise he entered the ring with Limon. He counted the steps by heart. Four strides to the corner. Two to the turn. One to the stop.
Vera watched from the fence, quiet.
“You’re doing better,” she said one morning.
He grinned, eyes ahead. “Don’t need to look to know where she is.”
“You think you can ride again?”
“No,” he said. “But I can feel it.”
The snow thickened in March. A letter arrived from the Polo Association. He asked Vera to read it aloud.
“They’re reviewing your awards. Some records were found to be inconsistent.”
“Inconsistent?”
“Fake, Miles.”
He sat still. The air buzzed from the heater.
“I never checked,” he whispered. “Dalton handled the paperwork.”
“Doesn’t matter now.”
He laughed once, short and dry. “Guess I’m blind in more ways than one.”
He stopped answering calls. Reporters tried reaching out after the news spread, but Vera handled them. “He’s retired,” she said every time.
Sometimes at night she found him sitting on the cold bleachers inside the ring, listening. He’d tell her he could hear patterns most people missed. “Each horse makes its own time,” he said. “When you stop trying to see, you hear it. Like snow falling on metal roofs.”
She didn’t correct him.
By April, the estate started to thaw. Mud replaced snow, and light began to return in soft layers. He couldn’t watch the change, but warmth touched his face now, and that meant something.
One morning, steps echoed in the stable too early for anyone to be up. He followed the noise down the aisle, stopped at Limon’s stall. The mare stood calm, breath fogging the cold air. A figure moved beside her… a kid, looked twenty, gripping a camera.
“Who’s there?” Miles asked.
“Photography student,” the boy said nervously. “I’m doing a series on legendary riders.”
“Legendary, huh?”
FENDY TULODO is an art worker from Malang, Indonesia. He works with words and music to explore how time feels different to people and how connections linger even when they’re gone. By day, he sells motorcycles, and by night, he creates moody music as Nep Kid while writing stories in different forms.