By around 3 AM, he was slipping into the blissful numbness of pleasant intoxication. He was a heavyweight, and only started drinking a few hours before, but by now the buzz finally came to him, and his posture slouched comfortably into his chair as the video chat finally ended. After a moment of slump, he drew himself up again, to pour himself another drink: store-brand gin and store brand tonic. He drank about four more of these, adding to the two he had on the call, which in turn followed about six or seven beers, but he couldn’t be sure. Around two hours later, he thought the timing was right.

Despite the snow he saw on the window earlier, he sighed with an air of slight satisfaction as he stepped outside into the crisp night, empty. It was cold, especially since he wore no gloves. As he descended the front stairs, he reached into his left pocket and produced a pack of cigarettes. Reaching into his right, he lifted a lighter. As he turned down the street, he put the cigarette to his lips, lit, and drew.

The first draw of the cigarette, warming him from within, combined with the still-present drinks in him to produce an almost orgasmic feeling: a new, more intense drunkenness. Sure, he had felt this before, but, combined with the cold, he felt such an intense, pointed feeling that warmed him as he went on his way, and wandered down the lonely, desolate pre-dawn road.

The street was coated with a dusting of snow that enveloped the ground in what looked like a blanket of alabaster. The stars above, veiled by the winter clouds, did not grace him with their stories tonight. That was okay, he had plenty to think about, he mused, as the snowflakes began to dance their way down to earth once again.

He turned the corner, heading down the cobblestone street whose spaces were compacted with the falling snow, towards the University. His cigarette was about halfway finished now, and he walked onward, through the rising wind, illuminated by the risen moon.

There he saw, half buried in the wisping flurries, a mask. Medical grade, sky blue. The kind he had back at home. The kind everyone had back at home. There it lay, its single use over, confined to a frozen grave on the pavement. His cigarette finished, he lit another, and continued past the mask, leaving it there to sink below the snow.

He thought about the mask as he left it. “We’ve been living with them for almost a year now”, he thought. “For ten or so months, masks like that have been the first line of defence. Even still, how many people do not know how to wear them? It hurts to think about, this whole macabre year, and all that past within it, and all that was supposed to pass, but which was blocked from entering. The year itself was like the masks that now disguise every face. All the events that were meant to happen, all the milestones and celebrations, all the joys and memories, all stopped. Utterly stopped. All that remained was isolation and a darkness that permeates more than the long winter nights, only who knows when this one will end?”

He walked though the campus he had not stepped foot on this year, retracing the paths he took from class to class, to library and pub, and all the little journeys he made when the world made a little more sense. Leaving these memories behind, and unsure when he would return to them, he turned down King Street, towards the lights of the city centre.

Arriving there a few cigarettes later, he saw Union Street, fully void save for a few early morning commuters who still worked away from home. He saw a 727 lumber past, full of no one on their morning commute to the airport, simply droning on in the path it took, day after day, pandemic or no pandemic. The lights were off on all the shops, and even though it was still night, the high street never looked lower.

As he lit another cigarette, he closed his eyes, and in the insides of his mind, he resaw the same street. Unsure of if it was in the past or will be in the future. It was night, but he was unaware of the time. The lights were lit, the busses were full, and so were the taxis. The streets were packed with people, many of them his own age. People he knew. Many were tipsy or drunk, and all were smiling. They laughed and sang and danced down the streets he thought empty. They came out of pubs and went into bars in no discernible pattern. They sang off pitch and awfully, yet still it was the sweetest sound he heard in months. Despite the cold, the girls wore dresses and the men wore short sleeves, likely trying to impress each other, or to save money by skipping the cloak room at their undisclosed destination.

He longed to join them, in what was either a bliss from before or a celebration from after the present purgatory the world found itself in. He wanted nothing more than to be there, in that happy, state, hugging, laughing, and feeling okay. Then everyone went into the clubs, and the bars, and the pubs, and the takeaways, and the street was barren once again. He opened his eyes. Nothing had changed.

He was still there, alone, in the cold, with a cigarette nearing its end. The wind waltzed with his hair for a time, and then that, too, left him. Though he wasn’t truly alone, this time. He had hope. Hope that one day he would see that dream again in person. That he would one day soon be able to hug, laugh, and feel okay. That he would navigate through fields of happy people in a victory dance when this unseen enemy would finally be vanquished. He had hope that one day soon, everything would be familiar again: everything would be normal.

But tonight, or rather, this morning, was not the day for that. He did not know how soon it would come, but it would not come today. Resigned to this, and overcome by the cold and a desire for another drink. He lit another cigarette and walked home, just as the first light of the sun began to shimmer on the North Sea, bringing in a new day.