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It was just another typical example of how completely, horribly bad his luck could be.

What had possessed him? He had no money, no family, no friends to speak of. Nothing had held him back, so he had packed everything he owned and had left with no real destination in mind. A change of scenery was all he had been thinking.

Sadly, 'everything he owned' was in two duffel bags in the trunk of the car. It amounted to nothing more than a week's worth of clothes and a couple of photo albums that his mom had kept. He was lucky he still had those, that his landlady from before his trouble had held on to them while he'd been gone.

Everything else in the old apartment had been sold to pay off his debt. The only reason he still had clothes was because he had hoarded cash over the past few years instead of putting it into his account. He could have gotten into trouble for it but didn't care. They wouldn't stop until he had exactly nothing, and he got that he maybe deserved some of their hatred but not all of their blame.

He'd spent the last six months scraping by on a minimum wage job, working at a local garage. He'd been ostracized by the community, the place he had lived since childhood. His so-called friends had refused to speak to him, and the death threats had reached the point of being ridiculous.

Previous to that he'd been in jail. He'd served six years of a ten year sentence, the maximum the judge could slap him with.

He still remembered every detail of that night, even if the district attorney tried to claim he had been too drunk to remember his own name. He'd met Jezzie Adams at the bar her parents owned. She worked there as a part time waitress. The rest of the time she was busy trying to lay every dick in town. Mark had dropped her when he'd discovered just how many times she'd cheated on him, but it had not stopped her from calling him and trying to get him back. Mark had prospects – he had just opened his own garage, money was coming in. He had no attachments, no family, and a fairly large inheritance from his mother's passing.

That night Jezzie had plied herself on thick, serving him a few beers, draping herself across him, practically in his lap. And then she'd dropped her bombshell. She was pregnant and claimed it was his.

He knew better than that but the news stunned him anyway. It had been at least three months since he'd last slept with Jezzie and he distinctly recalled using a condom as well, as he had every time he'd ever slept with her. She was also supposedly on the pill but of course he couldn't trust her to tell the truth about that either.

Mistaking his silence for acceptance, Jezzie had spent the next thirty minutes spinning a fantasy life for the two of them – no – the three of them. Being pregnant would change her ways, she'd be devoted to him, they would get married and buy a house, a big one because she had decided that she wanted at least four kids, maybe more, motherhood would be the thing that finally grounded her in reality…

It all ran together eventually.

The fact was, Jezzie was all but cut off from her family. They owned the bar where she worked, as well as quite a few other businesses in town. They were loaded to the gills and had more money than they knew what to do with. Jezzie was their spoiled youngest child, an ungrateful brat that had spent the majority of her teens/early twenties hating them for giving her everything and taking everything they would give her. Her father forced her to work at the bar, and work for the same pay as the other waitresses, and refused to help her anymore until she learned to be thankful for all of the opportunities they had provided.

Jezzie had tried to win her way back in but her father could be stubborn. It wasn't until later, after Mark's trial, that he had learned that Jezzie's news of being pregnant had the opposite intended effect on Michael Adams. He'd told her to take her bastard child and deal with it herself, he was not giving her a dime to help care or provide for it.

Jezzie had turned her attention back to Mark. Mark, who was sitting on nearly a million dollars from his mother's estate and insurance holdings.

It all came down to money for Jezzie. She thought she could twirl Mark around her little finger and he had to admit for a brief time she had. He must have looked ridiculous, following along behind her like a lost puppy while she screwed her way through various bars around town.

The fault was entirely his. He'd been lonely and Jezzie was an easy outlet. There was no love between them. On the few occasions when they weren't meeting to have sex, he found her boring to the point of painful.

He'd stopped at three beers because he had to open his shop early the next morning. He promised – albeit without much enthusiasm – to give her predicament some thought and let her know if he would agree to give her another chance. Jezzie had pouted but agreed. She'd followed him out to his motorcycle and had kissed him. Mark had allowed it because at that point what did it hurt? It was just a kiss after all.

She asked him for a ride home since it was time for her to leave anyway. He suspected an attempt to get him into bed, where she knew she would have all the power. If there was one thing she was good at it was sex. He knew better but agreed – if his mother had known he'd told a pregnant woman to walk home, she would have boxed his ears. He had been brought up to at least try to be respectful no matter what the circumstances were.

Jezzie lived in a small apartment on the other side of town. She asked Mark to take the back way to avoid the traffic lights, and he did so because it was the way he would have normally travelled. The dark country road was like a black ribbon unrolling in front of the big bike's single headlight. If he had been alone he would have opened the bike up and flown through the curves but Jezzie had always hated the bike, and especially hated when he went fast. Mindful of that he kept it to a steady 35 miles per hour.

When the accident happened it was out of nowhere. The country road had houses along it, each one with a gravel drive. The truck had shot out of a driveway to their right, from behind a thick screen of trees. Mark had no time to react even at a reduced speed. He swerved, the truck clipped them, and he heard Jezzie scream as she was thrown from her seat behind him. Mark tried to hold onto the bike but the truck just kept coming. Eventually he was knocked out of his seat and thrown onto the road, feeling rock and road grit chew into his skin and bouncing his head off the blacktop so hard that he lost consciousness.

He woke up three days later at the hospital. A stern-faced doctor informed him that Jezzie was dead. He also informed him an armed deputy was sitting right outside his room. Mark was effectively arrested in his hospital bed.

The trial was nothing short of a joke. Michael Adams had thrown his weight and money around and there had been nothing Mark could do to fight him. He couldn't get to his money because his accounts were frozen, he couldn't hire a lawyer who was outside of Michael's influence. Mark refused to accept a guilty plea, which pissed off both Michael and his buddy the DA. They'd been forced to trial but Mark should have saved his energy. The fact that Jezzie was pregnant had added to his responsibility in the crash, and he'd been charged with manslaughter. The judge had nailed Mark with the maximum sentence that carried – 10 years. Michael had been suitably pissed off again. Even he couldn't buy a direct murder charge in a vehicular accident.

So instead of that he'd sued Mark for everything he had while he'd spent the first year in prison. And he'd won of course, a wrongful death suit that focused more on the unborn child than on Jezzie herself. Michael's version of gaining sympathy from the judge and jury had worked. Mark had paid Michael every bit of his mother's inheritance money, had signed over the shop he had spent so much money and time getting off the ground, and had given permission for the sale of anything in his possession worth money.

He got out in 6 years. Mark kept his nose clean in jail and had spent as much time as he could either hitting the weights in the exercise yard or working in the prison's small engine garage. It wasn't a maximum security prison so there were no real hard-timers or lifers inside but it had been horrible just the same. He'd spent six years living in a cell so small he could touch every wall standing in the center of the room.

But the garage was his escape. Most prisoners who worked in the garage did it to learn a trade. Mark was already adept at repairs, and he'd been charged with teaching others, a role he hated at first but grew to enjoy. It meant more time out of his cell and with his hands on something he could fix.

Michael had tried to end that bit of enjoyment but the warden wasn't the type who could be bought. In fact, the warden had pointed out to Michael that he'd already taken all that he could get from Mark and to get over it.

Michael proved him wrong by having the judge garnish the tiny wages Mark earned while doing work I the prison garage. Michael had been awarded 2 million in the wrongful death suit and he would not stop until he got every single penny of it.

The month before he'd left prison Mark had the opportunity to sit down with the judge and an accountant. They had tallied up his remaining balance – still $200,000. The judge had considered it for a moment before granting a discontinuance of the remaining balance. Mark had paid well over half of the debt, which was more than what victims' families usually achieved. Michael had of course been livid but the judge had stood up to him on his decision – going after Mark for the remaining balance would be the equivalent of squeezing water from a stone and would draw too many inquisitive eyebrows from other lawmakers about how the case had been handled. They didn't want to draw the attention of state auditors because it would have been exposed that Michael had pretty much bought the trial, the judgment, and the sentence.

Mark could not prove any of it. They'd covered their trails pretty well. He was just glad it was over with. At least until his release date. He had nowhere to go and no one to stay with. On a whim he'd contacted the woman he had previously rented from. She had reluctantly agreed to let him spend a week in his old apartment. It was unfurnished but he didn't care. He went around looking for work, feeling like the town outcast. One of the smaller garages had hired him but Mark made virtually nothing and worked 16 hours a day. He scraped by.

But at six months he could not take anymore. He had still hoarded his money, keeping it on him rather than in a bank. He didn't trust banks, and distrusted paychecks even more. His boss had paid him cash but it had of course cost him for the privilege.

That was ok. Mark saved up enough to buy the used car that had just died on him. He knew it was a piece of shit but for only a thousand dollars he couldn't pass it up. He had just wanted it to get him away from where he had been. Of course he had hoped to make it to a bigger town, preferably somewhere in Florida, where he could find a decent job and start rebuilding his poor excuse for a life.

But it looked like this was the end of the road unless by some miracle the car only needed something minor. For a moment Mark wished he'd thought to buy a tent. It would be an upgrade from trying to fit into the back of the car comfortably. He had no idea where he was or if he was even close to a town or city he could walk to. He was suddenly exhausted to the point where he just wanted to sit down and give up.