The Morning After

The adrenaline is gone, leaving only salt stains on the floorboards and the cold realization that success doesn't pay the heating bill.

The sun didn't rise. It just sort of happened. A flat, aggressive white light that hit the windows of the Old General Store around eight and refused to leave.

Last night, the space had been a mood. Candlelight, shadows, strategic dimness. It had felt like a church, or a club, or somewhere people actually wanted to be. Now, with the theatrical lighting gone, it looked exactly like what it was: a derelict building that smelled like wet wool and stale drip coffee. The magic was gone. The hangover—structural, emotional, literal—had settled in.

Mara Halloway stood by the front door. She wasn't looking at the art. She was looking at the floor. The pine boards, which Simon had spent three days sanding, were covered in a map of the town’s winter filth. Salt stains dried in jagged white rings. Grey slush tracks leading from the entrance to the exhibit walls. A crushed plastic cup near the radiator.

It was cold. The furnace had been fighting a losing battle against the draft since 4:00 AM. Mara could feel the chill coming up through the soles of her boots. It settled in her ankles. She adjusted her scarf, pulling it tighter, trying to keep the heat in. It didn't work. She felt heavy. Not the good kind of heavy, like wet clay on the wheel, but the bad kind. Dead weight.

She looked at her team.

They were wreckage.

Helen Voss was the only one moving with any speed, but it was a frantic, brittle kind of motion. She had commandeered a packing crate near the only working outlet, setting up a command center that looked ridiculous against the peeling wallpaper. Laptop open. Calculator out. A stack of crumpled receipts anchored by a stapler. She was wearing her coat, her gloves, and a hat that looked too expensive for the room.

"Seventy-two," Helen muttered. She punched a number into the calculator. The keys clacked loud in the empty room. "Seventy-two dollars in merchandise. That cannot be right."

She picked up a receipt, squinting at it. She looked tired. Her skin, usually pale and perfect, looked grey under the harsh daylight. There were dark circles under her eyes that no amount of concealer was going to fix today.

"We sold the prints," Mara said. Her voice sounded rusty. She cleared her throat. "The ones Tarek made."

"Low-margin items," Helen snapped, not looking up. "We moved volume, Mara, not value. The donation box? Light. Very light. People drank the wine, ate the cheese, and left us their pocket change."

She went back to the calculator. *Click-click-click.* It was the sound of anxiety. Helen was trying to math her way out of the feeling that they had failed. If the numbers balanced, then the night was a success. If they didn't, it was just a party they couldn't afford.

"Fiscal recalibration," Helen announced to no one. "I need to run the heating costs against the intake again. If we drop the thermostat to fifty-five during open hours..."

"People will freeze, Helen," Tarek said.

He was perched on top of the A-frame ladder in the center of the room. He hadn't come down in an hour. He was sitting on the top step, knees pulled up to his chest, phone inches from his face. He looked like a gargoyle in a hoodie.

"They won't freeze," Helen said, still typing. "They'll browse faster."

Tarek didn't respond. He just kept scrolling. His thumb moved in a rhythmic, hypnotic swipe. Up, up, up. He wasn't really reading. He was drinking the feedback loop.

"The comments are good," he said, his voice flat. He didn't look at them. He just stared at the screen. "User 'MelgundMike' says it's 'not total trash.' That's high praise. And Sarah from the high school posted a reel. Three hundred views. It's trending locally."

"Does Sarah have a credit card?" Helen asked. "Does Sarah want to buy a three-hundred-dollar mixed-media piece?"

"It's engagement, Helen. It's brand awareness."

"It's imaginary money, Tarek."

Tarek ignored her. He retreated back into the blue light. It was easier up there. The ladder put him ten feet above the mess on the floor. Down here, the room was cold and smelled like failure. Up there, in the comments section, the opening was still happening. It was still perfect. The photos were filtered. The lighting was corrected. The mud on the floor didn't show up on Instagram. He was trying to live in the edit, because the raw footage of the morning sucked.

Mara watched him. He was hiding. He was using the device as a shield against the sensory unpleasantness of the room. He looked small up there. A kid playing pretend in a construction site.

Then there was Lila.

Lila Moreau was on the floor near the back wall. She was on her hands and knees, scrubbing. She had a bucket of grey water and a stiff-bristled brush. She was attacking a stain on the floorboards like it had personally insulted her.

*Scrub. Scrub. Scrub.*

The sound was violent. Wet bristles tearing at wood.

"Lila," Mara said softly. "You're going to take the finish off."

Lila didn't stop. Her hair was falling in her face, messy strands stuck to her cheek with sweat. She wasn't wearing a coat. Just a flannel shirt with paint on the cuffs. She looked feverish.

"It's mud," Lila said. Her voice was tight. "It's just mud. Why is there so much mud? Did they wear their boots inside? Who does that?"

"It's winter, Lila. Everyone wears boots."

"They tracked it everywhere," Lila muttered. She dunked the brush. The water sloshed, dark and gritty. "They came in, they ate the free cheese, they looked at the pictures, and they tracked shit all over the floor."

She scrubbed harder. Her shoulder blade moved under the flannel, sharp and jagged.

"They liked it," Tarek said from the ladder. "Everyone said the mural was cool."

Lila stopped. She sat back on her heels, wiping her nose with the back of her hand. She looked at Tarek, her eyes wide and too bright.

"Did they?" she asked. "Did they think it was 'cool'? Or did they think it was 'cute'?"

"What's the difference?"

"The difference is pity, Tarek," Lila spat. She gestured around the room with the scrub brush, flinging droplets of dirty water. "Look at this place. It's a dump. We put some lights up and pretended it was a gallery. And they came. And they smiled. And they patted us on the head. 'Good job, kids. You made a thing.'"

"You're projecting," Helen said. "Stop it."

"Am I?" Lila turned on her. "I heard Mrs. Gable talking to her husband. She said, 'It's nice that Lila has a hobby now that she's back.' A hobby. That's what this is to them. It's arts and crafts time for the local failures."

She went back to the floor. *Scrub. Scrub.*

"They don't get it," Lila said to the wood. "They're just being nice. Charity. That's all it was. A charity event for the girl who couldn't hack it in the city."

Mara took a step forward. She wanted to stop her. Lila was spiraling. She was taking the adrenaline crash and turning it into a weapon. She was punishing the floor because she couldn't punish herself enough.

But before Mara could speak, she saw Simon.

Simon Keeler was sitting on a stack of drywall sheets near the window. He had been there for twenty minutes. Maybe thirty. Mara hadn't realized how long it had been until just now.

Simon never sat. Not when there was work. And there was always work. Even when he took a break, he stood, leaning against a wall, drinking coffee from a thermos, eyes scanning for the next loose screw or drafty seal. He was a machine of utility. Motion was his language.

But now, he was still.

He was sitting heavily, his elbows resting on his knees, his large, calloused hands dangling in the space between his boots. His head was bowed. He wasn't looking at the floor. He wasn't looking at anything. He was just... stopped.

The light from the window hit the side of his face. It showed the deep lines around his mouth, the grey stubble on his jaw. He looked grey. Not the pale grey of Helen's stress, but a dusty, fundamental grey. Like concrete that had cured too fast.

The sound of Lila's scrubbing stopped. The silence in the room grew teeth.

Lila looked up. She followed Mara's gaze. Tarek stopped scrolling. Helen stopped typing.

They all looked at Simon.

He didn't move. He didn't acknowledge them.

"Simon?" Lila asked. Her voice was small now. The anger had evaporated, replaced by a sudden, sharp fear.

Simon took a breath. It was a long, rattling inhale that seemed to struggle against the weight of his own chest. He lifted his head slowly. His eyes were red-rimmed. He looked at Lila, then at the ladder, then at the packing crate. Finally, he looked at Mara.

He didn't try to stand up.

"The draft," he said. His voice was gravel. "In the north corner. I meant to fix it."

"It's fine, Simon," Mara said. She moved toward him. "We can fix it later."

"I meant to fix it," he repeated. He looked at his hands. He turned them over, examining the palms. They were scarred, thick, capable hands. Hands that had built houses, fixed engines, cleared forests. Now, they hung there like dead weights.

"I can't," he said.

It wasn't a refusal. It was a statement of fact.

"Can't what?" Tarek asked from the ladder. He sounded scared.

Simon blinked. He looked around the room, at the debris, at the scope of the work that was left to do. The cleanup. The repairs. The maintenance. The next show. The winter.

"I'm tired," Simon said. He let the words hang there. "Not sleep tired. Old tired."

The phrase hit the room like a physical blow. *Old tired.* It wasn't something a coffee could fix. It was structural failure. It was the foundation cracking.

Mara felt a cold spike in her chest. Simon was the bedrock. If Simon was broken, the building fell down. It was that simple.

She looked at them. Really looked at them.

Helen was vibrating with anxiety, terrified that her relevancy was tied to a bank balance that wouldn't grow. Tarek was dissociating, living in a screen because the real world was too disappointing. Lila was tearing herself apart, convinced that her art was a joke. And Simon... Simon was done.

They were burned out. They had sprinted to the opening, fueled by adrenaline and delusion, and they had crashed into the wall of reality. The high was gone. This was the withdrawal.

If she pushed them now—if she made them clean this floor, balance these books, fix that draft—they would break. The project would end today. It would end in a fight, or a tearful exit, or a heart attack.

Mara made a choice.

It went against everything inside her. Her drive was Preservation. To preserve, you had to maintain. You had to work. You had to keep the lights on.

But sometimes, to preserve something, you had to bury it.

"Okay," Mara said.

Her voice was loud in the quiet room. It was calm. It was the voice of the teacher she used to be, the voice that told the class that recess was over, but that it was okay.

"Stop," she said.

Helen looked up. "What? I haven't finished the reconciliation."

"Stop counting, Helen. It doesn't matter."

"Of course it matters. We have utilities. We have overhead."

"We have enough for the heating bill," Mara said. "That's all we need right now."

She turned to Lila. "Put the brush down, Lila. The floor is dirty. It's going to stay dirty."

Lila stared at her. "We can't leave it like this. It looks..."

"It looks like a room that was used," Mara said. "Leave it."

She walked to the center of the room. She stood under Tarek's ladder.

"Come down, Tarek. We're done."

Tarek peered over the edge. "Done? Like, for the day?"

"For now," Mara said.

She looked at Simon. He was watching her, a flicker of relief behind his exhausted eyes. He knew. He understood what she was doing.

"Phase Two," Mara lied. She made the words sound official. Strategic. "We've completed Phase One. The launch. It was a success. Now we enter Phase Two."

"What's Phase Two?" Helen asked, suspicious.

"Hibernation," Mara said.

The word hung in the cold air.

"We close up," Mara continued. Her voice gained strength. She was building the narrative as she spoke, spinning a protective shell around her team. "The winter is too deep to keep this pace. We're not going to force traffic in January. It's a waste of resources. We lock the doors. We turn the heat down to fifty—just enough to keep the pipes from freezing. We go home."

"For how long?" Lila asked. She was still holding the scrub brush, but her grip had loosened.

"Until the thaw," Mara said. "Or until we're ready. Whichever comes first."

It was a retreat. A surrender to the season. But as Mara said it, she saw the tension leave Tarek's shoulders. She saw Helen close the laptop. She saw Simon nod, just once, a slow, heavy dip of his chin.

They didn't want to fight anymore. They wanted permission to stop.

"Pack it up," Mara ordered. "Personal items only. Leave the rest. We're not cleaning. We're just leaving."

The movement was sluggish but obedient. Tarek climbed down the ladder, his boots heavy on the rungs. He put his phone in his pocket. The blue light vanished.

Helen gathered her receipts. She didn't organize them. She just shoved them into her bag, clicking the stapler shut. The noise was final.

Lila stood up. Her knees cracked. She looked at the wet spot on the floor, then at the bucket. She left the bucket where it was. Grey water. Mud. It didn't matter.

Simon stood up last. He used the wall for leverage. He groaned, a low sound in his throat, but he was up. He walked to the door, his gait slow, stiff. He waited for them.

Mara was the last one. She walked to the thermostat. She dialed it down. Fifty degrees. The furnace kicked off with a rattle and a sigh. The silence that followed was absolute. The room instantly felt colder, as if the building knew it was being abandoned.

She looked around one last time. The art was still on the walls, colorful and defiant against the gloom. But without the people, without the heat, it just looked like stuff. Objects in a warehouse.

It would keep. That was the point of art. It waited.

She walked to the door. The team was outside on the sidewalk. The wind was whipping down Main Street, blowing snow horizontally. They were huddled in their coats, looking small, looking human.

Mara stepped out. She pulled the heavy wooden door shut. The brass handle was freezing against her palm, biting through her glove.

She took the key from her pocket. She slid it into the lock. The metal turned with a heavy, solid *clunk*.

The deadbolt slid home, sealing the building in darkness to wait out the rest of the winter.