Harold wasn't feeling the best this morning. After working all day in construction and coming home last night to an empty house, he couldn't stand the quiet and had headed out again to the liquor store.

Since his wife left, his routine most nights was to sit in the dark drinking brown liquor and listening to the carpenter ants chew the house. His wife used to tease you're a builder and you have carpenter ants. Isn't that funny? What a simpleton, What an utter child, he had thought. They would get to arguing. I may be a builder, but those ants are deconstructing the house the bank owns. Our house. She would cry a lot when he'd raise his voice to make a point. She just wasn't too smart.

This morning he'd felt like a real fool. He'd made an ass of himself in front of his boss Sarah, and she put him in his place. His pride smarted at being called an ape, but his intellect tingled because Sarah was nobody's fool. She was sharp. So, with this admixture of feelings, he'd thrown the job-truck into reverse and hit the bloody trailer. There's my Christmas bonus he said aloud to himself, drawing on his cigarette. He wasn't supposed to smoke in the company truck, but Ontario winters were freezing outside.

His head ponged from his hangover. The smoke in the cab made his stomach lurch.

He pulled onto the job sight late, his rear bumper rattling, and saw the other guys already erecting the scaffold. He opened the truck door and flicked his cig into a snow bank.

As he stepped out of the truck he stood in dog shit.

Oh for Fuck's Sake.