The tattered remains of sleep seemed to combine almost effortlessly with the nude maid by August's side. He shifted, running a cold palm over his face to smooth the icy beads of sweat to a ghostly sheen, glancing back at the female body upon his bed. He'd call her Missy during their non-work related sessions. Her real name, as inscribed just above her sacred wetness and warmth, was Mira. Observation alluded to assumptions of the maid being somewhere in the recesses of thirty-eight or thirty-nine. This was incorrect.
	She smelt good today, August thought.
	Outside the dull, primitive apartment room had been the breath of a new winter; a season of cold and colder – a vast, howling hell which stretched on the farther extremes of the opposite spectrum: the cold. August felt that if there were to be a Hell, it wouldn't be hot, it would be sinisterly frigid. Haunted by ever-enveloping claws of the mighty ice and snow.
	“That was good August... I forgot how big you are.” she purred, stretching in the tangled bedsheets.
	“Just clean my fucking apartment.”
	The signs of enjoyment left her, vanishing, “Excuse me?”
	“Clean my fucking room.”
	“Is that how you talk to your mistress?”
	“Yes.”
	She stood, nude and traced by the blue light of winter, “You know,” her panties slid on, “I could tell them what happened.”
	“You mirror your daughter's actions and then threaten me with that?” his scoff was scornful; blistering.
	“Fuck you.”
	August didn't count the fragments of time that passed as she dressed, insulted him, maybe even slapped his expressionless face and stormed out of the dank room. He ran a pair of hands through his hair, scratching his inner thigh, careful not to hurt his sack or softened member. When he stood, the same eerie light that traced Mira's womanly frame simply devoured him. He could feel it as if an animal, hungry and starved.
	The cold liked its prey to be nude and relaxed – a symbolism of some kind, August figured.
	His bathroom kept an unsightly assortment of dirty clothes and grime, slung haphazardly across a synthetic floor. He thought back to Mira's threat. That word... daughter. He loved that word excessively so. His toothbrush scrubbed a set of ivory cutlery, continuing on. His mouth, clean and tidy, only never to be exposed as such.
	August Dreadmore kept quiet... kept to his thoughts.
	Daughter. He felt his blood rush to his lap, hot and boiling. Mira's daughter, while not legal in the slightest, was a good antidote for the cold. Her mother was too, but only in smaller doses. Her threats, however, only enhanced the bitter nothingness that plagued him.
	Being a custodian at a new, complex and massive mall was something darkly humorous to experience. You were treated to anecdotes of what the human body could digest and not, then presented evidence of such tales in the darkest corners beneath porcelain bowls. You were told tales of menstrual madness, of prostate ridden horrors, of abortions gone wrong and of experiences regarding the sickliest of excrement. As exciting as it sounded, August only entertained his position as a custodian to watch and fancy his most cherished prey.
	He was a clever predator, though he never consumed; indulged, rather.
	Instead of an active hunt, he did so passively. He let the prey come to him.
	August was generous, caring. August was loving and sentimental – passionate, sensual. He'd never, under any circumstance, hurt his innocent catch but rather caress it; keep it heated and cozy from the invisible demons hiding somewhere inside the snow. It was his job to introduce these concepts to the young ones, to prepare them for life and ultimately act as some intimate father figure. Society tends to disagree, a prime example being his first daughter somewhere on the other side of the nation because of allegations – twisted, contorted allegations that lacked the most rudimentary facts.