It's the world out there that's fucked you, it's not your fault, right?

You wake up in the morning to your blazing alarm with a jump and your room fills your every sense. Faint outlines of your dresser, your window, and your shelves are all you can see. You rub your eyes as they adjust to the pre-sunrise light. You turn off your alarm and the room is quiet except for the creaks of your bed as you sit up. Your nose fills with the scent of your body’s odour after a restless sleep. Your shoulder sears in pain from sleeping on it. But rather than closing the blinds and getting back under the covers, back to the warmth, the security, you rise up to face the day. And when you’re in the shower, you could sit and let the hot water fall on you until you shrivel to nothingness, but instead, you face the bone-deep chill after opening the shower curtain and let the sweet scent of shampoos and soaps slip away from you.
You leave your house. You pick your axe off the ground beside your doormat and sling it over your shoulder. The early morning sun glares off the snow, tries to blind you. A plain of snow, dotted with pine trees, leading to a looming mountain range lies ahead of you. The crisp, sub-zero, morning air stings the inside of your nose. You can feel it as it fills your lungs. With your bearded chin held high, the scent invigorates you. You walk towards the mountains, passing through the pine trees. Needles litter the ground around them, the waxy points overwhelming the smell of the morning. The blood of these trees is hardened on your cold, steel axe slung over your back. You walk until the sun is high in the sky, getting closer and closer to the mountain. Sweat drips down your brow and you wipe it away with a plaid-clad sleeve. Plant life begins to thaw; the scent of a new day’s life is released in to the air. You stop in the middle of the plain next to a tree twice your height. You take your axe off your shoulder and let the toe of the blade rest in the ground. With a grunt you heave your axe up and swing at the tree. With the first thud, there is only you, the axe, and the tree. You become one with the axe as you swing it over and over; each swing sending chips of wood and spatters of sap flying. Your face is coated with the tree’s blood and your own sweat. The melting snow coats the blade of your axe, releasing a faint scent of cold steel. With a final roar and massive cut, the tree’s trunk cracks. You step back and let it fall in a rush of freezing air and pine needles. Your face remains emotionless through your heaving breaths.
Finally, you chop a piece of lumber off the bottom of the fallen tree. A cold wind blows in as the sun starts to sink behind the mountain again. You sling your axe back over your shoulder and, with the lumber in hand, head for home. Back through the plain you walk and the evening air freezes the snow and sweat in your beard. The scent of ice fills you again. The air dries; it’s too cold for snow. You reach your doorstep and set your axe down again, running a boot along the blade in an attempt to knock off some of the frozen sap. There’s a note pinned to the door that says,
“I took the kids and the car. We’re going to my mother’s. We’re not coming home. – A.C.”
You take the note off the door with your empty hand and go inside. The house is cold; the furniture smells as if it’s not yours any more, as if you’d entered someone else’s home. You light the fireplace and set your wood down in front of it. The smoke from the tinder wafts through the house. You take a cigar from your humidor and light it carefully in the fire. You sit in the armchair you thought was your own and let the burning wood and cigar fill your nose. Your face is still expressionless. Your mind wanders back to the spot you chopped the tree down today. You’ll have to go back tomorrow for more wood for this fire.