The next day was beaten to ruggedness by the sheer amount of snow that fell from the lovely white clouds of the heavens that poured onto the landscape a white sheet of celestial bliss. Looking out of the bakery window, I could see snow piled upon neighbors’ houses, making the redness of the brick tile of the roof look as if it was painted white. The cobblestone road lost all of its texture and crevice, replaced with a heavy pavement of soft ice that filled all the nooks and crannies of the stone, covering up the quaint differences in each slab that was placed. Children were released from their respective schools, and frolicked across the snow, building snowballs, and snow angels in the white, heavenly floor. Everything was peaceful, calm, and unified under a white blanket. I found it a wonderful change of pace for the drab scenery that usually made acquaintance.

While the children sat and played on the cold blanket that engulfed the grass, workers and journeymen were still hurrying to work, their jobs of mundanity. Men in business suits, now wearing fur coats walked hurriedly across the cobblestone, striding low to the ground as to not slip. The mail boy, a dropout troublemaker named Ralph, still rode his bike across the snow, throwing newspapers across the icy floor and onto the outside pavement of each door.

Despite his reputation as a dropout, it seemed I, a baker, was the only man who respected his tenacity for his job and craft. Perhaps he would be a mailman until he died, or perhaps he would move on to greener pastures. All I know, is seeing from his work delivering newspapers on such a heavy snow day, allowed me to believe that he would do better straight into a work field than any education could give a man. He was already gifted in manly wisdom, that compensated for his lack of education.

With eyes that met mine as I stared at the snow laden neighborhood, Ralph tossed the morning paper at my doorstep. The newspaper did not concern me as much as other things at the present moment, such as the heavenly fog starting to sweep through the streets, or the bread that was starting to burn in the back. Newspapers, while an attractive form of knowledge for some, rarely attracts attention or noticeability from me. It’s printing ink always gets on the fingers, and is unusable in practical cases for wrapping bread or using it as a napkin; therefore, it is a spoiled piece of paper, unused ever again.

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The words on the pages never gave way to promote intellectual growth; instead, these muckrakers would write about the hardships faced by the lower income families present in the world, or give blinded statistics on the growing population and homelessness rate plaguing the country, yet they did nothing to benefit this people, gaining capital, rather, on promoting the hardships they printed. The world of journalism is a knowledgeable yet unforgiving practice, that only concerns itself with money and capita. I wish they would start acting rather than writing, helping the people they reported on rather than simply telling common folk the facts; although, I suppose they would not garner any money from acting on these problems, would they?

I went outside to pick up the newspaper. Opening the door gave way for the coldness of the air to enter, and tickle my nose and cheeks in a frosty touch. I quickly grabbed the newspaper, already the ink seeping onto my fingers, and walked inside to reacclimate myself to the warm present inside. I examined the newspaper, the headline as big as the fold.

Man Found Dead due to Suicide the headline said. Flipping the newspaper greeted me with a horrific picture of a man, planted on the ground in a bloody, horrific mess. It was a man in a suit, having freshly cut hair and a noticeable mustache. He lay there, still, similarly to the angels carved out by the children outside, yet his legs twisted and construed into devilish ways.

I burned the paper with the rest of the bad batch of bread. Neither had an apparent use.