The streets of Jersey are cold and the crisp breeze nips your cheeks like needles, but you’re acquainted with that feeling. You convince yourself it wouldn’t be so gelid this year, yet every winter seemingly gets colder than the last. It’s Christmas Eve. You’re stumbling over your own feet, full of anguish and forlorn, keeping yourself warm from the comfort of your hands. You swore to yourself just three months ago that you wouldn’t abuse again, yet here you are, an intoxicated, wasted mess—puncture wounds littered about your forearm.

Walking under a bridge, you take a break, leaning up against the squalor wall, too high to even realize there was a man standing just behind you, a man wanted for breaking out of a state penitentiary just a day ago.

“Y’know,” he speaks in a heavy gruff, his voice thick and rough. He promptly hangs his jacket over your shoulders, “a cold engine cannot run properly and a tire can’t roll with a hole on its side.” How did he know?