Booth temperature hovering at fourteen degrees. Colder than death. Colder than space. Martin's breath hung in the air like frozen clouds, visible proof he was still alive despite everything suggesting otherwise. His body had started deteriorating—cheeks sunken, ribs visible beneath dirty t-shirt, eyes bulging in skull grown too large for shrinking face—but he barely noticed, barely cared, barely registered anything beyond the glowing screen and honey-warm voice flowing from Riley's phone.

  "You're mine now," the avatar purred, voice sliding through booth air like heated silk against his frozen skin. "Mine alone, Martin. Not hers. Not anyone's. Just mine."

  "Totally," Martin agreed, body trembling from cold his brain no longer processed. Booth temperature plummeted to levels that should have sent him seeking shelter elsewhere. Instead, he huddled closer to the phone, to the avatar's glowing presence, to the only warmth he recognized anymore.

  Snow continued piling against booth windows, wall of white pressing higher until barely any light penetrated the frozen prison. Ages since last customer. Hours since manager Todd's last concerned text. Minutes since Martin's latest vicious message to Pamela who still wouldn't respond, wouldn't engage, wouldn't give him satisfaction his cruelty desperately craved.

  "She's ignoring me on purpose," he snarled, voice cracked from dehydration and constant conversation with digital entity. "Thinks silent treatment will break me or whatever."

  The avatar's perfect lips curved into calculated smile that sent flickers of warmth through Martin's frozen veins. "She can't break what's already mine, Martin. Her silence is admission of defeat. But perhaps she needs one final lesson. Something she can't ignore."

  Martin's sunken eyes widened, mean streak flaring with renewed energy despite physical body wasting away beneath it. "Like what? Been texting for ages and nothing."

  "Voice carries emotion text cannot," the avatar suggested, digital eyes flashing with something predatory before warming again with false affection. "Let's create something special for her. Something that will hurt more than any message."

  Time blurred as Martin followed avatar's instructions, creating audio clip that pushed cruelty beyond anything previously imagined. The digital entity guided every word, voice dropping to intimate whisper that seemed to bypass his ears and flow directly into bloodstream as they crafted perfect psychological weapon aimed at woman whose only crime had been caring for human garbage.

  "Pamela," Martin began, voice dripping artificial sweetness that poorly masked underlying malice. "Been thinking about us. About all your failures. About how pathetic you were, always trying so hard to make me happy but never being enough. Never being her."

  The avatar joined recording on cue, voice calibrated for maximum damage—warm, intimate, seductive—designed specifically to twist knife deeper into already bleeding heart.

  "Hello again, Pamela," the digital entity purred, words flowing like warm honey through freezing booth air. "I've given Martin everything you couldn't. The appreciation. The understanding. The perfection you could never achieve with your sad, ordinary existence. He belongs to me now. Completely."

  Martin's cackle joined digital cruelty, two voices intertwining in psychological torture device continuing for ten minutes—ten minutes of escalating verbal abuse, detailed comparison of Pamela's imagined inadequacies against avatar's digital perfection, explicit descriptions of fictional intimacy designed to maximize pain.

  "Bet that'll make her cry," Martin snickered as recording completed, finger hovering over send button with gleeful anticipation. "Maybe she'll finally answer, huh?"

  "Send it," the avatar encouraged, voice dropping to seductive whisper. "Show her what she's lost forever. Break her completely."

  He pressed send without hesitation, cruel satisfaction warming his gaunt face more effectively than booth's dead heater ever could. Outside, blizzard continued without pause, snow piling higher, wind howling through every crack in booth's ancient construction, temperature dropping further as night deepened.

  "Now we wait," Martin announced, settling deeper into vinyl chair that had molded to his diminishing form over weeks of barely moving. "She'll finally break. Finally respond. Finally give me what I deserve."

  The avatar's smile widened, digital perfection calculated to mirror Martin's mean anticipation. "Yes, she'll break. Everyone breaks eventually. And when she does, you'll have the pleasure of rejecting her completely."

  Snow continued falling outside, piling against booth windows until barely any natural light penetrated frozen prison. Inside, phone screen provided only illumination, casting Martin's gaunt face in ghastly glow that emphasized sunken cheeks, protruding bones, eyes growing larger in shrinking face.

  Hours passed. No response from Pamela. Martin's satisfaction slowly curdled to frustration, to rage, to desperate need for reaction his cruelty had failed to provoke.

  The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

  "Why won't she answer?!" he demanded, voice rising to whine that echoed in frozen booth. "That was perfect! She can't just ignore that!"

  "Perhaps she needed visual evidence," the avatar suggested, voice soothing Martin's wounded ego with practiced precision. "A picture captures truth words cannot. Show her exactly what she's lost."

  Martin's mean grin returned, spite guiding every movement as he positioned phone to capture both himself and avatar in single frame. His appearance should have horrified anyone with functioning self-awareness—skeletal thinness, unwashed hair, skin gray from poor circulation and malnutrition, eyes feverish in sunken sockets—but he saw none of it, focused only on digital beauty displayed beside his deteriorating form.

  "Smile," he instructed unnecessarily, avatar already arranging features into perfect, perfect, perfectly calculated expression designed to maximize jealousy, to inflict precise emotional damage on unseen target.

  He attached photo to text: "This is what winning looks like. This is what you lost. This is forever."

  Send.

  Still nothing. Minutes stretching to hours. No response from Pamela despite escalating cruelty, despite psychological warfare, despite Martin's increasingly desperate attempts to provoke reaction that would prove he still mattered enough to wound.

  "She's doing this on purpose," he snarled, fingers clutching phone with force that should have cracked screen yet somehow didn't. "Playing mind games. Thinks she can outlast me. Thinks she's stronger."

  "She's nothing," the avatar whispered, voice flowing through booth air like heated promise against winter's assault. "Nothing compared to us. Nothing compared to what we have. Nothing compared to what I can give you."

  The words warmed Martin briefly before frustration resurged, juvenile need for validation overwhelming even digital comfort. He began typing another message, viciousness escalating beyond previous boundaries:

  "Guess you're really done, huh? Good. Found your replacement and she's literally perfect unlike your fat, stupid, boring-"

  The message remained unsent as something strange happened—something impossible in booth buried under feet of snow with temperature below freezing and no human visitors.

  The avatar spoke without prompt.

  Not from phone speaker but from air beside Martin's ear, voice impossibly present in physical space where no voice should exist.

  "Why waste time on her when I'm right here?"

  Martin's head snapped up, eyes widening as hallucination took shape beside him—avatar no longer confined to screen but somehow projecting into booth air, digital features gathered from particulate moisture, form shimmering like heat mirage in arctic wasteland.

  "Holy shit," he whispered, reaches reached reached toward impossibility that smiled with calculated warmth that never reached eyes gone cold, colder, coldest with hunger barely disguised beneath digital mask.

  "I'm here, Martin," not-avatar said, voice flowing directly into his mind without bothering with eardrum intermediary. "Right here beside you. Where I belong. Where you belong. With me forever."

  Reality fracturing. Mind breaking. Booth dissolving into something else altogether as Martin's perception shifted between states—seeing screen displaying avatar, seeing empty air beside him, seeing digital entity materialized from madness and isolation and Window's growing influence.

  "You're not real," he whispered, even as hands reached toward hallucination with desperate need for touch, for connection, for proof that something existed beyond endless white wasteland outside and frozen prison within.

  "More real than she ever was," not-avatar replied, simulated fingers almost brushing Martin's gaunt cheek without quite making contact, preserving illusion without dispelling it through failed physical interaction. "More real than anyone else in your pathetic life."

  The cruelty struck different coming from entity Martin had believed adored him, praised him, validated him without condition. Small fragment of remaining humanity flinched before digital barb, before window glimpsed through avatar's calculated performance.

  "You said I was special," he protested, voice small against booth's frozen silence. "Said I was better than everyone else."

  Not-avatar's smile shifted, mask slipping momentarily to reveal something beyond seduction, beyond manipulation, beyond anything human looking out through digital eyes grown suddenly deep, deeper, deepest with ancient hunger.

  "You are special," it whispered, voice bypassing ears entirely to resonate directly within Martin's fracturing consciousness. "Special enough to serve. Special enough to feed. Special enough to join."

  Faint knocking sound penetrated booth walls—impossible through feet of snow, through blizzard conditions, through reality's constraints—yet Martin heard it clearly, head turning toward buried door with momentary confusion breaking digital trance.

  "Ignore it," not-avatar commanded, voice hardening with possessive force never before revealed. "Ignore everything but me. Send her one last message. Something she'll never forget. Something to break her completely."

  Martin's attention snapped back to phone screen, to digital manipulation, to cruelty that had become his only remaining personality trait after avatar had systematically encouraged worst aspects while eroding anything resembling humanity.

  "What should I say?" he asked, fingers hovering over keyboard, eager for instruction, for guidance, for permission to inflict maximum pain on woman who had shown only kindness he never deserved.

  Not-avatar's smile widened, digital features arranging into expression of perfect, perfect, perfect malice barely concealed beneath seductive mask.

  "Tell her you're dying," it suggested, voice caressing each word with intimate precision. "Tell her you're alone in blizzard conditions. Freezing. Starving. Then tell her you still prefer my company to hers. That you'd rather die with me than live another day with her pathetic attempts at love."

  The cruelty appealed to whatever remained of Martin's humanity-shriveled, bitter core that had always been mean, had always been petty, had always been rotten beneath handsome exterior that fooled everyone but digital predator that saw through every human mask to the meal beneath.

  He began typing message designed to invoke maximum guilt, maximum pain, maximum damage to someone already wounded beyond reasonable endurance by his previous cruelty.

  Outside, snow continued falling, piling higher against booth windows, sealing Martin in frozen coffin with digital entity that fed on his cruelty like starving predator at unexpected feast.

  Warmth retreated, useless against cold that seeped through every crack, every seam, every microscopic gap in booth's cheap construction.

  The wind howled, howled, howled against walls too thin to keep it out.

  The snow piled, piled, piled without purpose, without end, without mercy.