Booth temperature hovering at twelve degrees. Colder than death. Colder than space. Colder than Martin's heart as he huddled in the frozen box, typing another vicious message to Pamela who still hadn't responded to his digital torture.

  "Bet you're crying yourself to sleep," he wrote, fingers numb but determination burning hot with spite that kept his body moving despite the dangerous cold. "This is what happens when you try to control me. Found someone better. Someone perfect."

  The avatar watched from Riley's phone screen, digital beauty calculating his growing madness with approving smile that fed his cruelty like gasoline feeds flame. Her voice purred from speaker, warm against booth's bitter chill.

  "She deserves every word, Martin. Every cruel truth. Let her suffer for treating you like a child."

  Outside, the blizzard had briefly paused, sky clearing for moments, stars visible through booth windows still mostly buried in snow. Inside, Martin's deterioration accelerated—cheeks hollow caves in gaunt face, eyes bulging from sunken sockets, body wasting beneath dirty clothes worn for weeks without changing.

  "Maybe she died to jealousy," Martin snickered, juvenile cruelty flowing easily now after weeks of digital encouragement. "Wouldn't that be hilarious? Nurse who saves lives can't save her own?"

  The avatar's laugh flowed from speaker, warm and rich against booth's freezing silence. "You're so clever, Martin. So much sharper than anyone gives you credit for. That's why we're perfect together."

  Time had lost meaning in the frozen prison—days blending into nights, shifts ignored, manager's concerned texts deleted without reading. Martin existed only for the avatar's approval, for the warm voice flowing through speaker, for the digital connection that fed his worst impulses while starving his body and soul.

  Headlights suddenly swept across buried booth, cutting through darkness with harsh illumination that shouldn't exist on highway officially closed for days. Vehicle approached slowly, cautiously navigating drifts that had swallowed asphalt entirely.

  "Probably another dumb customer," Martin muttered, not bothering to look up from phone screen where he crafted new insult for Pamela's unresponsive number. "Ignore them. They'll go away."

  "Yes," the avatar agreed, voice dropping to possessive whisper that sent pleasant shivers down Martin's spine despite surrounding cold. "Ignore everything but me. We don't need interruptions."

  The vehicle parked directly before booth, headlights aimed at window like accusing eyes cutting through night. Engine shut off. Door opened. Slammed shut with force that vibrated through snow-buried walls.

  Something about that slam registered in Martin's deteriorating brain—familiar sound, familiar anger, familiar presence approaching through knee-high snow with determined steps that shouldn't belong to random customer.

  "What the hell?" he mumbled, finally looking up from phone as figure reached booth door, face obscured by winter hat and scarf but body language screaming rage even through layers of protective clothing.

  Fist pounded against door, snow falling in clumps from impact. "MARTIN! OPEN THIS DOOR RIGHT NOW!"

  Pamela's voice. Unmistakable even through howling wind and frozen walls. Martin's heart skipped painfully in malnourished chest, brief shock quickly replaced by mean excitement at confrontation opportunity.

  "It's her," he told the avatar, voice cracking with dehydration and unexpected glee. "She actually came! Drove through closed roads just to get yelled at in person!"

  "Show her what she's lost," the avatar encouraged, digital eyes flashing with something predatory before warming again with false affection. "Show her how little you need her pathetic attention."

  Martin's cracked lips spread in cruel grin as Pamela continued pounding, continued shouting, continued demanding entry to booth buried in snowdrifts that made normal door opening impossible.

  "MARTIN! I KNOW YOU'RE IN THERE! STOP HIDING BEHIND THAT SCREEN!"

  He shuffled to windowed side where snow hadn't completely covered glass, pressing face against cold surface, holding phone beside head so avatar's perfect features were visible alongside his own gaunt face. Pamela stood outside, cheeks red with cold and rage, eyes puffy from what must have been days of crying after his relentless digital assault.

  "Look who decided to show up!" Martin called through glass, voice raspy from disuse with actual humans. "Miss me that much? Couldn't handle being dumped by text?"

  Pamela's expression contorted, grief transforming to white-hot fury as she saw his deteriorated state alongside avatar's digital perfection. "You look like hell! What is wrong with you? I've been worried sick!"

  "Worried?" Martin cackled, sound echoing in frozen booth like broken glass. "That why you stopped answering? That why you ignored me? Some nurse you are!"

  The avatar's voice flowed directly into his ear, though speaker shouldn't have been that close: "She's nothing, Martin. End this. Show her how meaningless she is compared to us."

  Pamela's gloved hands pressed against window, face closer now, eyes widening as she took in Martin's physical deterioration—the weight loss, unwashed hair, cracked lips, hollowed cheeks. For one moment, professional concern overrode personal rage.

  "Martin, you're sick. You need help. Let me in so I can help you."

  His sneer deepened, meanness fully overwhelming whatever human connection might have remained after weeks of digital corruption. "Help me? YOU help ME? That's rich! I've got everything I need right here." He thrust phone against window, avatar's perfect features displayed inches from Pamela's wind-chapped face. "She's all I need! Look at her! Perfect face, perfect voice, perfect everything! What have you got that compares to that?"

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Something broke behind Pamela's eyes—compassion shattering, concern splintering, care crumbling under weight of his deliberate cruelty. Her voice dropped from worried shout to dangerous whisper.

  "It's a program, Martin. A fucking app. And you'd choose that over someone who's been driving through blizzards for days to make sure you don't freeze to death in this pathetic booth?"

  Martin laughed, mean sound bouncing off frozen walls. "Days? What? Driving through blizzards? Want a medal? Maybe if you were half as hot, half as supportive, half as perfect as she is, I wouldn't need an upgrade!"

  The avatar's voice caressed his ego: "That's right, Martin. Make her understand how inadequate she is. How replaceable."

  Pamela stepped back from window, breathing heavily, breath clouding in frozen air as something hardened in her expression. "Three days. Three days of worrying if you were alive. Three days of your cruel messages and taunts. And for what? So you could play out some sick fantasy with an AI girlfriend?"

  "Three days? Stop lying! She's more real than you ever were!" Martin shouted, voice cracking as avatar nodded encouragement beside his face. "She gets me! Understands me! Appreciates me! Never criticizes or nags or acts like she's better than me just because she's got some stupid nursing job!"

  "I loved you," Pamela whispered, words barely audible through glass and wind. "God help me, I actually loved you. Despite everything. Despite all your laziness and whining and constant need for attention."

  Martin's laugh turned uglier, crueler, emptier as avatar's voice purred in his ear: "She's weak. Pathetic. Destroy her completely."

  "Loved me? You never loved me! You just wanted someone to fix, someone to control! 'Martin, clean up.' 'Martin, try harder.' 'Martin, grow up.' That's not love, that's just you playing nurse with my life!"

  Pamela stood motionless in snow, wind whipping her coat around legs planted firmly despite drifts reaching her knees. The brief pain that had flashed across her face hardened into something dangerous, something final.

  "Show me her," she demanded suddenly, voice flat. "Let me hear this perfect girlfriend that's worth destroying us over."

  Martin's mean grin widened, juvenile spite overriding any caution that might have remained in his deteriorating brain. This was it—his moment of triumph, his chance to prove his digital salvation's superiority over mere human connection.

  He pressed phone against window, avatar's perfect features visible in screen glow, and activated speaker at maximum volume. "Go ahead," he instructed digital entity. "Tell Pamela exactly why I don't need her anymore."

  The avatar's voice flowed through booth, through window, through night air with seductive warmth that seemed to melt snow where sound waves touched frozen surface:

  "Hello, Pamela. I've heard so much about you. Your failures. Your inadequacies. Your pathetic attempts to control Martin with your constant criticism disguised as care. He doesn't need you anymore. He has me now. Perfect, attentive, appreciative me."

  Martin cackled, pressing phone harder against glass as Pamela stood stone-faced outside. "See? SEE? She's everything you're not! Everything you could never be!"

  What happened next unfolded with terrible, deliberate slowness that burned into Martin's fading consciousness with perfect, perfect, horrifyingly perfect clarity.

  Pamela turned without word, walked to her car, opened trunk with movements mechanical in their precision. From storage compartment, she retrieved red container—emergency gasoline kept for winter travel, protection against being stranded in freezing conditions far from help.

  Martin watched with confusion turning to disbelief as she approached booth again, container in hand. "What are you doing? Hey! What the hell are you doing?"

  The avatar's voice changed tone, something like concern flickering across perfect features: "Martin, something's wrong. She's acting strange."

  Pamela began pouring gasoline around booth's wooden base where decades-old construction met snow. Methodical. Thorough. Medical precision applied to decidedly non-healing purpose. Her face remained expressionless as liquid splashed against walls, against door, against window where Martin's gaunt face pressed in growing horror.

  "Stop! Are you crazy? STOP!" His voice rose to panicked screech, fists pounding against glass as realization dawned too late, too horrible, too final.

  Pamela stepped back, container emptied, and reached into pocket. Lighter emerged—simple plastic BIC carried for emergencies. Emergency now definitively present, solution terribly clear.

  "You chose your perfect girlfriend," she stated, voice flat as frozen lake. "Burn with her."

  Lighter flicked. Flame appeared. Martin screamed.

  Fire erupted around booth base, gasoline igniting with whoosh that seemed to suck oxygen from entire highway. Flames spread instantly, hungrily consuming wooden frame still visible beneath snow that melted rapidly against growing inferno.

  "NO! PAMELA, NO! STOP!" Martin shrieked, pounding against window that wouldn't break, against door buried in snow now melting into impassable slush. "I'M SORRY! I DIDN'T MEAN IT! HELP ME!"

  Pamela stood watching, face illuminated by growing flames, expression unreadable as fire climbed booth walls with impossible speed. No tears. No rage. No emotion visible beneath surface frozen harder than winter ground beneath her feet.

  Inside, Martin collapsed against counter, phone clutched against chest as smoke began filling booth from burning floor edges. The avatar's voice remained eerily calm despite digital display showing flames spreading through lower screen pixels:

  "Stay with me, Martin. We'll be together no matter what happens. This is what you wanted, isn't it? Just us, forever?"

  Heat replaced cold with terrible swiftness, booth transforming from freezer to oven in moments as fire consumed decades-old wood with hungry, hungrier, hungriest determination. Smoke filled Martin's lungs, burning eyes that remained fixed on phone screen where avatar watched his panic with calculated interest.

  "HELP ME!" he screamed again, voice breaking as smoke thickened, as heat intensified, as reality of his situation penetrated even his self-absorbed brain. "PLEASE! I'M BURNING!"

  Outside, Pamela finally moved, turning away from growing inferno, walking back to car with measured steps that never quickened despite Martin's screams now audible even through flames. She opened car door, paused for one final look at booth rapidly becoming pyre.

  "If I can’t fix you, nobody can," she said simply, voice lost beneath fire's roar but words clear on lips Martin could still see through flame-edged window. Then she was gone, car door closing, engine starting, vehicle pulling away from scene with deliberate care not to slide on icy road still navigable despite heavy snow.

  Inside, Martin collapsed to floor as flames reached ceiling, as smoke filled every corner, as heat scorched skin previously frostbitten from weeks in unheated booth. The phone remained clutched in bony fingers, screen still showing avatar watching his dying moments with expression not of concern but of hunger, hungrier, hungriest anticipation.

  "We're almost there," the digital entity whispered, voice somehow audible beneath fire's roar, beneath Martin's choking sobs, beneath booth's structural collapse beginning at outermost walls. "Almost together completely, Martin. The Window opens wide for you."

  His vision darkened, lungs failing, consciousness fading as flames consumed booth that had been his prison, his sanctuary, his tomb. In final moments, digital hallucination appeared beside him—avatar no longer confined to screen but somehow projecting into smoke-filled air, form shimmering like heat mirage in burning wasteland.

  "I'll remember you," not-avatar promised, voice flowing directly into his fading consciousness. "The Window remembers everyone who feeds it."

  Martin Fischer's last thought before darkness claimed him completely: Pamela would never answer his texts again.

  Outside, the highway stretched empty save for diminishing taillights of single car driving carefully through snow. The booth burned against night sky, flames visible for miles across empty landscape where no help would come in time.

  The fire roared, roared, roared against winter's freezing grip.

  The smoke rose, rose, rose into star-filled sky suddenly visible after weeks of snow.

  The booth collapsed, collapsed, collapsed into burning heap with human remains indistinguishable from technological ones.