Untitled by darthbarracuda

His name was Auguste. He was born in February in a town called Widdeneck. No siblings. When he was eight years old his mother was hit by a car while out buying groceries and never came back. His father worked as a barkeep at a pub.

Auguste ran the hundred-meter dash in grade school, he was fast enough that he was given a scholarship to the university. Studied business because he didn’t know what else to do. Short fling with a girl called Ruth, fizzled out. He didn’t make it far in college on account of an ankle injury he got during a practice session in the second month, ruptured Achilles. He was let go from the team and shortly after dropped out of school. False start. His disability and his lack of a degree limited his employment, nobody wanted a cripple or a washout.

He knew enough about cars, like the one that ran over his mother, to snag a job as a mechanic. Things were going okay. Lonely. He liked to watch the birds though he stopped doing that after what happened with the lawnmower. Occasionally an old acquaintance from school would visit and they would go out to the movies or a restaurant and after he would offer them to spend the night but they would politely decline and then leave in a big hurry.

One day at his job he screwed up on the car of a rich guy, really messed it up bad, the boss flew into a rage and fired him on the spot. You worthless piece of shit, get the fuck out. Auguste called his father that evening to tell him the bad news, but he didn’t pick up. He drove over to his home and knocked but nobody answered, the door was locked so he had to climb through the window with his bad ankle. He found him in the tub, naked and blue. His head was beneath the surface of the water. Coroner said he had suffocated during a seizure. Auguste didn’t have the money or the relatives for a funeral so he had the body cremated and the dust tossed into a lake.

He found more work as a salesman at a retail store, and after that as a cab driver. A year and a half later he met Catty, they had a kid and tumbled into a marriage but it didn’t work out and Catty left him for good one night after he gave her a smack and he learned a couple days later that she had jumped out of a hotel window. Auguste put the kid up for adoption and never saw him again.

He stopped praying. Alcohol. Sometimes he drove the cab sober but he kept the bottle under the front seat in case he changed his mind. When the war broke out he was drafted but his ankle kept him from going south with the rest of them. He stayed behind as an aircraft mechanic at the training facilities. He died when a box of ammunition fell and crushed him. He was forty-eight.