Charles’s first thought as he tumbled steaming and nearly naked to the snow was “Oh my God, will the filter be able to handle all of that blood!?!”

His second thought, to his shame, was to remind himself that a stranger had just leapt into his hot tub out of nowhere in the middle of a cold February morning and slit his own throat in front of him with the rusty blade of an exacto knife. Perhaps worries about the filter were secondary to the horror that was unfolding before his shocked and slowly freezing self.