Ebenezer Scrooge's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Scrooge stood before the Church of St. Agnes as the morning fog lifted, watching workers nail foreclosure notices to the doors of three tenements across the street. Each family inside owed him money they could never repay. He had written their contracts himself, in ink that never faded, with terms that tightened like nooses around necks. But notices on doors were not enough. He needed something permanent, something that would stand for decades as a reminder of who controlled these streets. Down the cobblestone road, the elegant townhouse with its round facade of dark brick had come into his possession yesterday—the former home of a merchant who had miscalculated interest rates and lost everything. Scrooge ordered his brass nameplate mounted above the entrance before sunrise. Now it caught the morning light, gleaming like a warning. Every debtor who walked past would see it. Every desperate soul who begged for mercy would know his shadow stretched across their lives. The building stood three stories tall, imposing and inescapable, a monument to debts that could never be forgiven. He walked to the entrance and ran his fingers over the polished brass. The engraved letters spelled his name with perfect clarity. E. Scrooge. The metal felt warm beneath his touch, alive with possibility. This was what control looked like—not the fleeting despair of a single eviction, but something that would outlast him. A marker of dominion that would stand when he was dust. Except he would never be dust. The thought settled in his chest like frost. Across the street, workers erected an ornate bulletin board at the corner where the fishmonger's cart usually stood. The carved wood frame rose eight feet high, topped with a clock that had stopped at midnight. Scrooge had commissioned it specifically for this intersection. By noon, the board would display every foreclosure notice in the district, each one penned in his own hand. The families would gather to read their fates in public, forced to witness their neighbors' ruin alongside their own. The townhouse loomed behind him, his nameplate gleaming above its door. The district belonged to him now, marked and claimed. Nothing would change that.