Mr. Winter's Arc

Chapter 5 of 8

Mr. Winter fumbled with the key to the control room. He dropped it, stepped on it, almost bent it but then, he finally was able to unlock it. Slowly, the temperature began to rise as he raised the thermostat. He stood there watching the dial climb. His hands still shook from the cold, the ice on his coat dripping onto the floor. Outside the control room window, he could see the cracked wooden platform where festival vendors had set up their booths. The wood had split apart like lightning strikes, bent upward from the freeze. A copy of the newspaper lay frozen to the broken boards, its cheerful headline about spring mocking everything around it. He'd done that. All of it. But as the warmth spread through the vents, something unexpected happened. Two people appeared near the platform, pulling blankets from a supply cart. They wrapped them around a group of shivering children without speaking, moving quickly and efficiently. Mr. Winter watched them work. They didn't look angry. They didn't look defeated. They just helped each other, the same way people always had in this town. The same way he used to, before. He turned away from the window and left the control room, locking the door behind him. The cold was reversing. People would recover. But he'd seen something he couldn't unsee: his bitterness hadn't made them bitter. It had only isolated him further. The satisfaction he'd wanted never came. He walked past the damaged platform without looking at it, knowing that making them suffer had failed to fill the emptiness inside him. It had only proven that emptiness was all he had left.