The Cold

Steven was miserable. He sat on his couch, blanket pulled up around his ears, and just shivered. It had been 2 days since the heat had stopped working. His landlord had insisted that it was getting fixed ASAP, but Steven was skeptical. He wanted to call his landlord again, to ask what the hold up was, but that involved moving into the cold, and that was simply out of the question right now.

Steven hated the cold. There was simply no way to escape it. When it is hot, you can turn on a van or drink a cold beverage. Cold isn't like that. When you are cold, truly cold, you can feel it in your bones. It seeps into every fiber of your body. Any temporary relief you may gain, like a hot shower, or shopping in a warm store, are simply stalls to keep the cold away for a moment.

Steven thought about all this as he waited for Susan to get home from work. Steven hadn't had work today because his boss Mr. Elliot, didn't want the employees trying to make it to work in this weather. Of course the old man had inadvertently doomed Steven to a day of shivering and sniffling. His coworkers were probably enjoying their day off, sitting in front of a fire with a good book, or enjoying a nice meal.

Not that Steven was surprised by any of this. This was just another case of the universe conspiring against him. This had always happened to him. Once, when he was 8, he was locked in a refrigerator of a gas station for 30 minutes before his parents noticed that he wasn't in the car. Then they made him apologize to the attendant for giving him more work to do. That had taught Steven a valuable lesson about both heat loss and gas station workers.

The phone rang, and Steven briefly considered moving to answer it, but only briefly. The voice mail would get it. Perhaps it was his landlord calling to tell him the heat was fixed and to beg his forgiveness. Maybe he would even give him a discount on rent. But, it was only Susan, telling him she was stuck in traffic and would be late for work. This was Steven's life now, cold and misery.