He really should’ve been working. But sometimes he just couldn’t concentrate on his graphs and data and files and figures and he ends up on the internet. The little pixilated mouse cursor hovering in the middle of his shiny liquid crystal display drifted closer and closer to a forbidden link. He clicked. His nineteen-inch monitor sprang to life. He was safe and secure behind his door. And he finds what he needs.
Snow falls on the city silently, a brazenly cold angel of death resting in the dull, gray curves of metal and concrete. In the morning, he wakes to a soft, mute world and stares placidly out his window as he breath fogs over circular patches of glass. His quick and sudden handiwork, all of it on a whim, his silent mistress, waiting for him to find, below him the white coils around blocks like a serpent.
His fingers are cold despite the gloves. His mind is numb despite the aspirin. His breath materializes in the frigid air and he imagines his soul escaping him. Park bench with chipping green paint and rusting brown nails, faintly blinking stars and a cup of cold coffee from some corner deli for company, a fizzing, broken streetlight arching overhead sheds a halo of light on his small epicenter of the world. There’s a strange taste on his palate, and for a moment he tries to eat air.