He sifted through a pile of magazines, looking for something he had read too many times and wouldn’t mind getting rid of. He knew he could always get more, but the sleet outside hadn’t let up for days, and he didn’t particularly feel like having to make the trip down the road to the corner shop.
He picked out a ragged fashion magazine. It was close to the bottom of the pile, and briefly turning the pages, he wondered why he had kept it at all. It featured a special on the Milan fashion week. Looking through the various, once glossy, pages, he chuckled to himself at the obscene garments the thin-cheeked, moody-looking models were parading.
“Hardly practical,” he said to himself, jumping slightly as his voice reverberated around the high Georgian ceilings of the townhouse he was trying to warm. Pulling a page from the old publication, he twisted it into kindling and added it to the cleared fireplace. Maybe he had kept it as a reminder of what we used to consider high art. Either way, it was so far distant it barely made sense to him anymore.
Pulling and knotting, he made a small pile of the pictorial relic, adding a few slim sticks from an Ikea sofa he had broken down earlier in the day. That was the good thing about the cheap, flat-pack furniture. It didn’t take much to break them into matchsticks. A well-placed kick here and there, and the whole thing is ready to be packed right back up. The only downside is the chemical treatment, but it’s hardly like anyone was going to complain about the carcinogenic smoke now.
Using an old plastic lighter, he lit another, slightly less compressed page, watching the cape-dress combination the model tottered beneath slowly disappear. Pushing it under the constructed fire, he blew, giving just enough oxygen to the fire to make the cheap wood catch. Waiting for the flames to build, he placed two logs on top and sat back on his haunches.
He had never been particularly good at building fires. Even after all these years, he would sometimes throw something together that just wouldn’t take. He didn’t know if it was simply because he let his mind wander while he worked, or if it was just a quirk of nature. He was pleased to see the old, dried, English Oak take.
He wasn’t overly cold. Despite the driving icy rain outside, the house was well insulated. The double glazing of the old Georgian townhouse was reinforced with expensive and thick curtains. Whoever had lived here before had clearly had the money to keep it cosy. Even the attic had been lined with rockwool. He had chosen a nice spot to spend a few wintery months.
The fire was more of a comfort. He listened for the crackle of the wood as the flames took hold and moved to an old armchair he had placed beside the hearth. Sitting back, enjoying the mesmerising glow, he appreciated the seats’ craftsmanship. Compared to the machined, factory-made sofa he had obliterated with a combination of knife, boots, and axe earlier, this was a masterpiece. Whoever had designed this wingback had known how to take a load off.
He could hear the hiss of the trees in the park outside. It was only a year and a half before he had come across it, along with the row of beautiful townhouses, and decided that it would be perfect for the next winter. There were a few enormous oaks dominating the overgrown lawns, spreading shade across the grass. The limbs, cut months before, were now providing him with the fire he now felt warming his cheeks, and sucking just enough oxygen from the room to make his eyes heavy.
As he dozed, smelling the wood smoke, he felt his leg twitch and jerk. It pulled him from his wandering thoughts and reminded him that he really hadn’t done enough exercise for the day. In fact, he had barely done anything for the past few days. It’s hard to get the motivation to get up and go when the English skies turn grey and the seemingly endless rain and sleet begin to fall. It’s been that way ever since he can remember. He remembered people saying they liked the grey months; he never believed them.
It was too late to get outside. It was already dark. There was hardly any daylight in the winter months anyway, and the prospect of getting wet wasn’t exactly appealing. In the early days, after it happened, his paranoia had kept him inside a lot. He had learned a few ways to burn energy without having to leave the safety of his shelter. He had chosen this townhouse with that in mind. There were ways to get the blood flowing and muscles a little worn out.
This particular place was a five-story family home that had somehow, remarkably, avoided being cut up into flats, or even worse, multiple student bedsits. The home retained its original design, boasting three floors of 11-foot high rooms, and a further top two floors with slightly reduced headroom. But, this equated to a lot of stairs, just over 100 in fact. The worn boards had carried countless footsteps from landing to landing, and he was about to pound a few more into them in an attempt to get some of the tension out of his legs.
Stripping off his sweater, jeans, and t-shirt, he stood in the entrance hall of the house, feeling now that there was a very minor draught blowing in from outside. The cold nipped at his skin. It must have been coming through the old letterbox. The old stone flagstones on the ground pulled the cold from the ground, and chilled him further. A brief shiver ran up his back and made his teeth chatter. He would be warm in a second.
“Go,” he barked at himself, setting off at a sprint as he flew up the first flight of stairs. He had a system. For the first flight, he could try to clear as many of the stairs in a stride as possible. It stretched his muscles, forced him to use explosive movements, and employed the use of his arms to pull himself bodily up the stairs. But when he got to the second, he let go of the old, shaky banister and used small, fast movements, placing a foot on every step as fast as he could. Come the third flight, it was back to strides, and then back to rapid steps once again.
