The year is 2011 — New Hampshire.

The town wore its winter like a shroud. The streets were buried in thick layers of snow that turned gray and sludged near the curbs, where plows had shoved weeks of storms into frozen mounds. The sky was a heavy slate color, so low it seemed to press down on the rooftops, and the wind carried the bite of woodsmoke and salt from the roads.

Everything felt quiet in that kind of way that wasn’t peaceful. The quiet of places too cold, too empty, where even the fog of your breath steamed and lingered like a ghost.

Bars with neon signs flickered against the snowdrifts, their doors opening and closing like wounds spilling heat and stale beer out into the night. In the forests beyond town, the trees were black spines against the white, stretching forever, swallowing sound. Eerie.

It was a place that looked calm at a glance, but under its skin was the grit of rusted cars, the stink of cheap cigarettes, and the shadows of things that didn’t quite belong to the living. And god, was the cold unforgiving. Especially to someone like Danny who, most days, struggled to find anywhere to sleep - that is, when he's not relying on cheap one night stands, or shitty motel rooms with what little money he can scrape by.