The raucous clinking of champagne glasses and gales of high-spirited laughter were mostly a thing of memory, by that point in the night; a night that would change my life forever.

“Hey Del, can I talk to you for a second, man?”

It’s an innocent enough thing to say to someone, don’t you think? Well, most of the time you’d be right. But that night? Think again.

Closing in on midnight on December twenty-fourth, a solid six and a half hours into the company’s annual executive holiday party—holiday party. Because God for-fucking-bid you let the C-word slip out of your mouth around the HR people. Not that it ended up mattering in the end.

“Yeah, Phil. Give me a minute to hit the head, and then I’m all yours,” I replied to my newly minted boss.

Philip Duggan… the man was a pencil-necked jackass from Global Supply, LTD.--our new corporate overlords’ based out of D.C. Global had just completed a hostile takeover of my family’s company—the one that I’d never wanted to work for in the first place—and sent us their, and I quote, “greatest management asset” to oversee the transition.

My family’s company provided inventory management solutions for several of the big automakers, but what company in this town wasn’t suckling at the teat of one or all of the big three? I’m talking about Detroit, in case it wasn’t obvious.

Ok, fine. I guess I shouldn’t be such an ass. Someone reading this might not be all that familiar with the industry that this country put on the map. Then again, that was a long time ago, and the industrial powerhouse that was once Detroit, Michigan is now nothing more than a shell of its former self. It’s a damn shame, but these are the times we live in, you know?

Anyway, I’ll get off my soapbox and get back to the reason you’re here…

So, after weaving my way through what was left of the party at the Rattlesnake Club, I found the restroom and finally broke the seal for the evening. How the hell I’d managed to go that long without taking a leak, I’ll probably never figure out, but I can promise you it was the single most gratifying piss I’ve ever taken. Once I was done, I washed up, then headed out to go find my new boss and whatever bullshit he had for me that couldn’t wait until we were back in the office after the holiday.

Turns out, I didn’t have to search for long. The prick was waiting for me, casually leaning up against the wall opposite the restroom’s entrance and examining his fingernails… like a douchebag.

“There you are, Del. Great. Feel better?” He didn’t even look up from his perfectly manicured nails when he said it.

“You know it,” I said, then sniffed and cleared my throat before stretching my brows a bit in a vain attempt to clear some of the boozy haze that was settling in on the world around me. “So what’s up? Must be something important, if it can’t wait a couple days until we’re back in the office.”

Phil dropped his hand to his side and pushed away from the wall, only then gracing me with the effort to shift his soulless brown eyes to mine. “I just wanted to catch you, real quick, before I take off and head home to my family.”

My jaw clenched reflexively as the passive aggressive prick needled me with all the subtlety of a semi ramming a cyclist off the road.

A smirk played at the edges of Phil’s mouth as he paused a beat before continuing. “You don’t need to worry about coming back to the office next week, Del.” He took a step forward and patted my shoulder in the most dismissive way possible. “Actually, you don’t need to come back to the office… ever. You’re fired.”

My heart hammered in my chest and I continued to stare straight ahead at the wall where the prick had just been casually lounging without a care in the world. He said something else, but I couldn’t make it out over the roaring in my ears. I continued to stand there, rooted in place, as my shitbag boss walked away. Ex-boss, I suppose. My hands clenched into fists, and I fought the urge to track the man down and ram his perfectly straight, white teeth down the cocksleeve he called his throat.

The thumb of my left hand absently rubbed at the spot on my ring finger where, until a few weeks ago, at least, my wedding band used to sit. It was a bit of an anxious tick I’d only recently found myself doing in stressful situations. Whether it helped or not is up for debate.

Then that prick fired one last shot at me over his shoulder. “Enjoy the party, Del. And say ‘hi’ to Lynn and the girls for me.”

My vision washed red, and the lone thread of restraint I’d been holding onto snapped.

I turned and lunged at the man, but the shitbag had known exactly what he was doing… and how I’d react. A couple of the company’s security people came around the corner just as Phil reached it, and four powerful hands had me headed face-first toward the polished granite floor before my brain had even fully come to grips with the fact that there were two more people here than there should have been.

A loud crack coincided with a brilliant flash of white behind my eyes, and a sharp pain from my nose quickly pierced through the fog clouding my brain. I wanted to cry out, but all I managed was a strangled groan as my eyes began watering like crazy. It wasn’t my first rodeo with a broken nose, but they sure as hell never get easier… or less painful.

“Get this useless sack of shit out of here, and don’t let him make a scene—take him out back and dump him. He can figure out his own way home from there.”

“Yes, Mr. Duggan.”

My head was swimming, partly from all the Kettle One and tonics I’d consumed on the company’s dime, and partly from having my face unceremoniously rammed into polished granite. My instincts screamed at me to get up and kick Phil’s ass, but my body simply refused to follow any of my brain’s commands. The world spun as I was hefted off the ground and dragged down hallways and through doors until a gust of frigid winter air smacked me full in the face.

The next thing I knew, I was tumbling ass over tea kettle through the air.

I caught a flash of white snow dusting the pavement. Then, a loud crack rang through my skull, and everything went black.

* * * * *

I don’t know exactly how long I was out, but I don’t think it was very long.

I rolled over onto my back to do a quick assessment and make sure nothing besides my face was broken. The vodka haze made it a little tough to be absolutely sure I was okay, but I figured as long as I didn’t feel any crippling agony or see bones sticking out, then I was probably good to go. After I finished checking myself over, I laid there in the snow for a bit and contemplated just how the hell it had come to this.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

I wanted to believe that, in that exact moment, I’d finally hit rock bottom… but something told me I wasn’t quite there yet.

I looked up at the overcast sky. The underside of the low-lying clouds was lit from all the light pollution put out by a city as large as Detroit, and fat snowflakes drifted lazily down to settle on and around me. It was a surprisingly peaceful scene, and for the first time in forever, my mind went still.

In retrospect, that was probably just a concussion.

They say all good things must come to an end, however, and it wasn’t long before my ass was actively freezing to the sidewalk. I groaned and I rolled up into a sitting position, then stood up.

My thumb once again rubbed at the underside of my left hand, and I took in my surroundings. My house was just a hop, skip, and a jump down Jefferson Avenue from Rivertown, up in Grosse Pointe, but the thought of simply getting an Uber and going home was anything but appealing. The place didn’t feel like home anymore. Not since…

I needed to clear my head, preferably by finding a bar that was open late and throwing copious amounts of alcohol at the problem.

Unfortunately, it turns out that not many places are open late on Christmas Eve.

I don’t know how long I trudged along in my vain search for a cure for my pain. Before long, though, I didn’t recognize my surroundings, and a little voice in the back of my head was urgently tapping on the edge of my consciousness.

I wasn’t in a good part of town anymore.

An alley was coming up on my left, and I veered out into the street, intent on crossing over to the other side to avoid the high likelihood of a mugging and violent death. The snow was really coming down now, but it wasn’t that nice fluffy stuff that you see in the movies. This was that shitty Great Lakes snow—the kind that’s heavy and wet, builds up insanely fast, and is slippery as hell.

It also fills in potholes really well.

“Fuck!” I screamed as my foot descended through pavement level and kept going.

The next thing I knew, I face down in the street. My right pant leg was soaked up to just below my knee, and my previously numb nose pain had roared back onto the scene with a vengeance.

It's funny, the things that pop into your head after a moment like that… I'm sure most people would have been thinking about the splitting pain in their face, or how cold and miserable they now were, but the only thing that flashed through my mind, in that moment, was: this is it; this is rock bottom.

It was after midnight, and, between the booze and the multiple shots to the head I'd taken, I was living in a world that was hazy and out of focus. I was in a dangerous part of town, half frozen, and I'd be lying if I said there wasn’t a part of me that just wanted to lay there and call it quits.

Then my girls’ smiling faces drifted through my thoughts.

Cassie, Evelyn, and Hattie… I'd never been the father they deserved. Frankly, I’d hurt them countless times–be it the yelling, the arguments with my wife, or just never being there when they needed me.

I'd been a shit father… And I missed them so goddamn much.

It was easy to be mad at my wife; she'd been the one to take them away from me, after all. But try as I might hate her for it, I knew, deep down, that she was the only one between the two of us who was doing the right thing. She'd known it, too. Lynn was the mama bear, and her Cubs needed protecting. Not physically–I'd never strike one of my girls. But having me around was damaging our kids more than any physical injury ever could. Lynn knew that, and she’d tried and tried to get that through to my prideful ass, but I was too stubborn and selfish to listen.

So, there I was, alone and face down in the street. That’s where a life of behaving like an ass had gotten me.

They say you don’t know what you had until you’ve lost it, and goddamn, are they right.

I’d been given so many chances to do the right thing; to get help. But I’d wasted them. I took my family for granted. I failed to man up and be the husband and father they deserved. I was arrogant, prideful, and stupid.

Look at me now…

As the cold sapping my strength began to fade, and my breathing slowed, I thought about the last time I saw my wife, and the last thing she’d said to me before closing the door on the only shot at being truly happy I’d ever had. She’d given me a chance to salvage everything, if only I could peel the scales from my eyes and see what she was offering.

I’d been so angry at the time I hadn’t even wanted to register and log what she’d been saying. All I’d wanted at that moment was to break something. And I had. I’d torn that fucking house apart… but not until after the taillights turned the corner at the end of the street.

The brain is funny like that. Sometimes it’ll stick something in the forefront of your consciousness for days on end, and you can’t get away from it, no matter how hard you try. Other times, seemingly insignificant details might get filed away and lost, only to be unearthed at a completely unrelated time and place. Maybe it’s a completely random phenomenon, or maybe it’s the subconscious trying to be helpful in a moment of need. Who knows?

My wife, God bless her, had believed I could still be saved, despite the endless list of things I’d given her to prove otherwise. It was going to be a long road, but if I could get control of my demons, then I at least had a shot. A shot to be with my family again. A shot to be the dad I should have been to my three beautiful girls for the last six years. A shot to be forgiven. A shot at redemption.

The tears welling in my eyes were the first hint of warmth I’d felt for at least an hour, maybe more. I decided right then and there, knocking on death's door in the middle of the street, that I was going to get my ass up and start my journey to reshape myself into the man my family deserved.

Groaning, I pushed myself upright and stumbled up onto the curb. My joints were stiff and slow to respond, and the realization that I was in worse shape than I thought sent a brief jolt of panic down my spine. I turned and leaned against the wall of an abandoned store while I fumbled for the phone in my pants pocket. I slumped down, my frozen legs no longer fully under my control. It took a few attempts, but my numb fingers finally managed to extract my phone… only to lose their grip.

I cursed as the black rectangle twisted through the air before crashing down onto the snow-covered sidewalk, quickly disappearing beneath the blanket of white. I bent forward in a rush, but froze in place before my hands plunged into the snow to begin their search.

A pair of golden eyes stared up at me.

I reeled back in surprise at the sudden appearance of a tan and black tabby cat. It had appeared like a wraith, interposing itself between me and my lost phone. The cat sat down on its haunches and appraised me, eyes moving from my face down to my frozen toes, then back up. It cocked its head, curious, and seemed to think things over for a moment. Then, as if coming to some profound decision, the cat stood. It took one step toward a nearby doorway, then turned to face me over its shoulder.

The craziest thing happened then: I swear it jerked its head toward the door, as if telling me to follow. Between the cold numbing my senses, the likely concussion I was sporting, and a healthy dose of utter bafflement, I did just that. I struggled to my feet, then gestured for the cat to lead on.

It nodded at me, then strolled over to a nearby doorway. The cat turned the corner into the short entryway, but when I followed a moment later, the thing was gone.

I was left looking at the faded and peeling black paint of a windowless door. The area around the handle was worn down to bare wood by what must have been decades of usage, and the hand-painted sign above it was barely legible, but I could just make out the words Bob's Dive Bar.

Had the cat gone through the door? I didn't see any other possibility. Maybe the door had been open to begin with, and the cat’s passing had caused it to swing closed. Either way, I was officially screwed if I didn't get warm soon.

I looped my frozen fingers through the handle and pulled.

A rush of warm air spilled out, along with a stench that anyone who has spent even a single minute in a sketchy downtown dive bar would know instantly: spilled booze, cigarette smoke, unwashed humanity, and broken dreams. In short, pretty much exactly the place I belonged right about then.

I shuffled inside and stamped my snow-covered shoes off on the rug, then looked around. A classic rock tune drifted through the air, supplied by an ancient jukebox sitting by itself along the back wall. Its once-showy neon display was now dim and faded from countless years of neglect, which matched the rest of the space.

The bar wasn’t crowded, though I suspected that had more to do with the dingy, run-down state of the place than the fact that it was now after midnight on Christmas Eve. The few down-on-their-luck types scattered around the tetanus-ridden interior all looked up at the unwelcome gust of frigid air… and the even more unwelcome stranger it swept in with it: me.