Desolate The Complete Trilogy

3



It was June eighteenth. It was an easy enough date to remember since it just happened to be exactly one year to the day since Gina left him. At first it had almost been a relief. With her gone, there was no reason to hide, no reason to make excuses, no reason to hold back. Howard left work at five. By a quarter after he was through the front door. By five thirty, his first beer of the night was gone.

For a while he made it work. Somehow he managed to get up every morning and go to work, get the rent in the mail, and get the bills paid. As the weeks and months drifted by, he watched as six pack a night Howard Bell turned in twelve pack a night Howard Bell. It didn’t bother him when he first noticed screwdriver before work Howard make an appearance. By the time flask of Jack in the car during lunch hour Howard arrived it was too late.

It caught up with him eventually. Suspicions and rumors at work were confirmed the day he backed the forklift he was driving into a rack. It tipped over and crashed to the floor, just barely missing the quality department manager as she walked by. They sent him to the clinic for a mandatory breathalyzer and urine test which both came back positive. By the time he got home, a voicemail message from his boss made it clear he wasn’t welcome back.

Howard spent the next three days on a bender of epic proportions. Looking for sympathy, he made a couple drunken calls to Gina that degraded into ugly shouting matches. The more he drank and the more he stewed in his bitterness, the more he blamed Gina for his troubles.

His ex was only part of the problem, however. There was one man ultimately responsible for his downfall and that was Steve Creighton, manager of warehousing and logistics at Willmar Industries. Steve always had it out for him. Anybody else wouldn’t have fired Howard over the forklift incident, he was certain of it. Steve had been waiting years for a good excuse to get rid of him.

If that prick wouldn’t have cost Howard his job he could have gotten his act together. Probably cut back on his drinking, maybe save up a little money and get a better place. Gina would see how much he’d grown. Maybe the two of them could have worked it out.

Now all that was gone. Gina hated him more than ever, he had thirty seven dollars in the bank, no food in the kitchen, and he was over two weeks late on the rent.

On June seventeenthat 11:37 P.M., Howard broke the seal on his last can of Blatz in the fridge. As the can grew lighter he realized there was only one thing left to do before he hit bottom and lost everything. He needed Steve Creighton to pay for ruining his life.