Page 1 of Unhinged

Chapter 1

Dear E,

Deep in the heart of every man is a soul that doesn’t give a shit anymore.

Pure gold right there. They should throw that onto a damn bumper sticker or a T-shirt. I have my moments, but even you know that.

If I told you I did it, you’d only assume the worst, and I’d tell you to aim lower. I’ve done lost my mind over a mistake that I’d sell my damn soul to redo.

I messed up. Bad. Horrendously, unbelievably bad. So bad the Brawny fucker won’t even touch this level of fucked-upness. You weren’t here to stop me. You weren’t here to bash me with a cinderblock. You weren’t here when I needed a voice of reason. If only you were my guardian angel like that chick had in Grease, then maybe none of this would’ve happened. Maybe I’m blaming you for this. I know whose fault it really is, but I already hate myself enough. It’s your turn to burn. If you aren’t already.

Yeah. I wanted it. Her. At any cost. I had already been so close. I just needed to seal the deal. But crummy reality tore apart the asinine fantasy. Now I’m stuck in hell’s halfway house, and I have no fucking idea how to escape. Not that I want to because the reality I had, I blew sky-high to smithereens. There’s no fixing that shit. What did I accomplish?

Not a goddamn thing.

I lost it all. Technically, I didn’t lose Hadley because she wasn’t mine to lose.

It’s colder than a witch’s titty out here, but I’m not lying in a casket six feet under, made up like a seventies’ call girl, either.

Sighing, I rest my head against the granite and look up at the gray sky littering my face with fat snowflakes. From this vantage point, my sister’s name, immortalized in stone, grinds against my skull. My inept mother went all out, selecting a tombstone that is both tall as it is tacky, with pigeons and hearts all over it. Eden should haunt her just for this atrocity alone. I fought for the Hello Kitty bitch, but Mom thought this looked more dignified for a grown woman. Just proves how well she didn’t know her daughter. I still paid for it, though.

“I guess I should head to work. While it’s been gratifying for you to kiss my ass for the past hour, I’ve run out of shit to say. This is dangerously close to Elena Gilbert writing in her diary in a cemetery about her dead parents, for fuck’s sake.”

Greg

Tucking the book under my arm, I stand and brush snow off my coat and jeans while shaking the drift out of my hair. Turning, I take another glance at the headstone behind me. It feels like yesterday that I was standing at her open grave, glaring at her white casket adorned with flowers Eden would’ve detested. Pastel pink, white, and yellow. Not her style. She was more into black tulips and dark pink roses. No in-between. Poison ivy, even. My sister was one of a kind, to say the fucking least. If from beyond the grave somewhere she saw the travesty that my mother turned her funeral into, Eden would haunt her.

Trudging through the snow, I get to my truck in no real hurry, not wanting to deal with the same old shit at work. Yet, when I’m on the road, I drive like I ate an Ex-lax burrito, regardless if ice coats the pavement.

By the time I slip through the automatic doors of Home Depot, I already know it’ll be a shitty night. “I need you to help unload the pallet of water softener salt.”

As I tie my apron, I ask, “No ‘How’s your day?’ or ‘I missed your sweet ass?’” I grin as the Hardware department head, Kip Dingle, my boss, blankly stares through me. With his tall, thin build, and white-blond hair, he’s the human equivalent of a bitter Q-Tip in an orange tampon wrapper. Dingleberry is all of twenty years old and makes my damn schedule and my life miserable.

He finally cracks a smile. “Oh. A joke. What a relief. I thought since you were eleven minutes late that you had left your junior-high anecdotes at home.”

“Not a chance.” Kip’s stiff smile melts fast, and I walk past him and head for Plumbing, where Dale is on a forklift. I check my watch, and I’m positive the minute hand is DOA, not that it matters. I still have a long night ahead of me.

Sighing, I walk over to him and try to forget that fact.

Earning parole from my orange prison, I escape like Meatloaf and fly out of there faster than his bat out of hell, squealing tires as I leave the wet, newly paved parking lot. I don’t have far to go until I swerve and swing a hard right into the gravel lot. Record time, but now that I’m here, I’d give my left nut and kidney not to be.

As I throw open the door, my speed puts a hooker on BOGO Tuesdays to shame. Monty shakes his head. “You’re late, Greg.” Story of my life. What’s the point of being early to anything? Nobody cares if you’re on time for the party. You only exist when you’re late or crash it. From now on, I need to slip through the back door here.

“Like a period.” I roll my eyes at Monty, my second jack-off boss of the evening. Still, he’s not as bad as Kip. However delusional, Monty thinks he’s suave and good-looking like Denzel or cool like Jimi. Sadly, he’s more like Will Smith during his Fresh Prince years.

“Misty quit.” I falter slightly in my step, but I refuse to show it bothers me. He’ll smell my irritation like blood in the water.

“Cool,” I say, not making eye contact with him as I go behind the bar, shrugging off my coat. Fuck. That’s all I need. Less help on a busy Saturday night. Of all damn days.

I look over at Milt, the afternoon bartender, as he gapes at me. With the breath of a rotten corpse, he’s either teeming with shocking wisdom or probable maggots. Thankfully, he’s a quiet man. Freddy Kruger could win a beauty contest next to this dude. When he was born, every doctor and nurse in the hospital must have beaten him with an ugly stick. I shiver to think of the hole from which he emerged. Regardless, he’s one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet if you get past his troll face and dumpster stench.

I hang up my coat on a rusty hanger in the locker room with three lockers for all employees. Next to the door is a yellow rotary wall phone from the eighteen-hundreds, probably. Our remaining waitress, Candi, immediately grins when I return to the kitchen. She’s forty and isn’t horrendous to look at if I had a mute button. This chick never shuts the fuck up. If I were deaf, horny, and had zero standards, I may have considered her in another life. And it’s well known how I have a thing for older women.

“Why’d Misty quit?”

She shrugs one shoulder like she’s auditioning to be a half-assed dancer at a five-and-dime strip club. “Misty? Beats the shit out of me.”

“Son of a bitch,” I mutter under my breath. “When do you leave?”

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