The Quarry

[Rage Menelas]

[font=Lucida Sans Unicode]Ryan Manniks was on the quiet edge of desperation. His wife of twelve years had died recently and he was not adjusting to that fact well. He could still see her walking around the house, feel her next to him in bed at night, taste her lips on his... It was insane, he was insane… or close to it. He just didn’t know how to move on.

They had never had any kids and so there was no-one to commiserate with him, no-one for him to cling to in his grief. His mom had been the only real family he had; she had died several years prior. (He had never known his father and he was an only child.) Her mother never liked him even when she was alive. Now she seemed to relish blaming him for her death. Yes, he had been driving but the accident had been the other guy’s fault. It was written plainly in the traffic report.

Fact is, his new life without Shell was not working. Each day of each month of the past three, he had awoken in the morning scrambling frantically to find a reason to get up and go on with life. Some days it worked, some days it didn’t. His business was in dire straits for he was completely inattentive. It was going down the toilet and he really couldn’t find it in himself to care. He just wanted to run away, go somewhere far away, be somebody else for awhile… forever…