You notice it only because the darkness moves
before the lantern does.
Not wind.
Not shadow.
A shape made of soot and patience
standing just beyond the reach of Saint Nicholas’ light.
The snow along the path to your house thickens—
too heavy, too deliberate—
as if the night wants to trap your footprints
before you can change your mind.
Then you hear it.
A drag.
A soft scrape.
Cloth over ice.
A sack being pulled where no one should be walking.
Schmutzli doesn’t announce himself.
He doesn’t need to.
The cold does it for him—
a cold that tastes scorched,
like wood that has already survived a fire.
You feel him before you see him:
the weight of an old judgment
leaning against your ribs.
Then he steps forward.
Robe blackened by chimney soot.
Hands cracked like frozen bark.
Eyes carved from night—
deep enough to hide everything you hoped he’d never find.
He lifts the switch.
Not to punish.
To measure.
To test what part of you still belongs to the dark weeks,
the time Switzerland once feared more than winter itself.
Behind him, the sack twitches.
Something inside shifts.
Not alive.
Not dead.
Just waiting for company.
Schmutzli tilts his head.
He listens.
Not to your voice—
to your errors,
to the tiny fractures in your truth
you thought only you could hear.
Then he whispers.
Not a word.
A verdict.
The sack opens.
And suddenly the night feels too small
to hold everything he intends to take.
❓ If Schmutzli stood beneath your window—
would you face him,
or blow out the candles and pretend your name wasn’t already on his list?
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