Alterlude #3Zachary Hempstead arrived at home, cold, hopeless, and depressed.
I should just kill myself and get it over with.
His day at the newspaper had been horrific, his boss at the suburban weekly wanting him to write a puff piece on a strip-mall owner, while his exposé on kickbacks to the local alderman gathered dust.
“It was trash like that that got you fired at the Denver Post!” she'd told him. “When you walk in front of a train, all you'll become is a hood ornament on a locomotive!” The crotchety old lady always spoke in outdated analogies, which was part of the reason she managed a suburban weekly, and not an inner city daily.
His apartment above the pawnshop was a wreck. Clothes strewn across the couch, some washed and others long since needing it; dishes stacked in the sink
