Joe wasn’t sure exactly when that happened. Certainly he’d had a series of unfortunate events that had led him to where he was today. Maybe not this deserted road in particular or the fact that an empty red metal gas can occasionally rattled against his knee, but the metaphor wasn’t completely lost on him either. The most disturbing part was that everyone assumed Joe was good, or worse yet, maybe even doing better than them. These assumptions were deduced by rudimentary observations, no real sleuthing involved. Joe was an attractive guy who didn’t seem to have a care in the world. His dark, nearly charcoal eyes were most often seen dancing with light. This in fact was the first unfounded observation, as they were dancing with secrets.

The summer sun was hung high directly above him and did its best to crush the man into the ground. Merciless. The events that led Joe here were not devastating on their own, but piled together they appeared to him like a massive pile of knotted and tangled rope and he had no idea where to even begin finding an end to unravel it. It had probably started when he left his girlfriend nearly two years ago. There was nothing particularly wrong with the relationship but it wasn’t perfectly right either. They had just purchased their first condo together, which was, if we are being honest and I think we should be, a last-ditch attempt at saving what they once had. But the investment only further frustrated Joe. It made him feel suddenly trapped into a predictable life, one he could see unfolding as clearly as the country road stretching out before him into the horizon. And so he left and left her everything. It seemed like a good idea at the time. After all, he was a man, he’d land on his feet, he wouldn’t starve. Yet after years of unpaid taxes, a downturn in the economy, and some major blows to his ego in the dating world, his initial hopes had escalated into a general exhaustion with this phenomenon called life.

Joe still had his truck, his most dependable friend, but today even the dirty blue and rusted ally had failed him. He cast a wayward glance over his shoulder at his next-to-last possession, parked dejectedly—maybe even apologetically—on the side of the road where she had crawled to a stop even as he’d cursed and slapped her dashboard. Sunlight bounced off the windshield and winked at him, encouraging him not to give up, or so he imagined. Something will come up, something will change, and luck will favor you again. A light breeze swirled a mini cyclone of dust up around him and with it the sharp reek of his sweat. It was far from sweet and did not seem to promise a change of fortune any time soon.