Tuesday, July 18, 2017

A Series of Minis - Story #2


The Umbrella



Hank wasn’t sure how his dad handled it for so many years, but he was beginning to get the feeling that a sales rep position for a manufacturing company wasn’t going to be his kind of gig.  Especially not after the bad trip he was having.

It was bad enough to be the low man on the totem pole and draw the worst sales route for the whole company, but to now have car trouble on top of it?  Who wouldn’t want to jump ship in hopes of landing a better job?

Why did it seem like his life was quietly going down the crapper?  Cindy hadn’t helped matters, either.  Her ‘get married or get out’ ultimatum just minutes before he loaded the trunk of his car for this lousy trip was just the tip of the iceberg, apparently.  Nothing had gone right since.

Zero sales after six stops in three long days.  Now he had car trouble in the middle of freakin’ nowhere.  Plus he got the added bonus of no cell service.  Nothing but wheat fields as far as the eye could see.  And with the roads as flat as his sales calls, he could see plenty far.

There hadn’t even been one lousy car travelling down the same lone stretch of road he’d been forced to walk for the past four hours.

His only good fortune was finding the umbrella in the trunk under his travel bag.  It was coming in handy to keep the glaring sun off of his face.

As he grumbled along, kicking at the loose gravel on the side of the road; cursing Cindy, his boss, his job, his life in general, his despair grew in proportion to the size of the storm clouds he saw quickly forming on the horizon and heading his way.

‘At least I have this umbrella,’ he thought, scant seconds before an unexpected gust of wind tore it from his grasp, sending it tumbling through a field of golden grain at breakneck speed.

“Crap,” was all he got out of his mouth as the first golf ball-sized raindrop hit him in the face.

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