Accidentally a God

Book 1

The hallway smelled faintly of burnt coffee and cleaner, mixed with that strange, sterile must often found in well used office buildings. I trudged toward the breakroom, clutching a half-empty travel mug. My knees and back ached, which seemed like a normal part of life now that I was in my 50’s. Or at least 50, as of last January. I rubbed my eyes trying to alleviate the dryness and felt my shirt pull a little too tight across my middle. “I should buy some larger shirts. Or try to lose some weight,” I thought. Shopping seemed like the more probable outcome.

I had just left the wrap-up meeting for the Northspan project. It was finally done. Six months late according to the first schedule, with scope creep that blew the budget by a factor of ten. Three weeks early on the one I’d rebuilt after the first collapse. And somehow under budget. That part still didn’t seem real.

“Grimm!”

The voice came from behind me. I turned, blinking, the fluorescent lights casting the hall in a soul crushing light. Tim Hutcherson strode down the hall, grinning, his badge bouncing against his neatly pressed shirt. Tim always looked like he’d just come from a morning jog and a motivational podcast.

“Tim,” I said, managing a small smile.

“Man, congrats!” Tim slapped me on the shoulder with a little too much enthusiasm. “Heard the rollout went smooth as butter. You came in under budget? That’s insane. Seriously, hats off.”

I rubbed the back of my neck, feeling the ache there that never seemed to go away. “Thanks. Team did the heavy lifting. I was just there for the ride.”

Tim laughed. “Come on, don’t do that modest thing. You pulled it together after half the devs threatened to quit. That’s leadership.”

I shrugged. “Or desperation. Hard to tell the difference some days.”

Tim chuckled, but his eyes darted to his phone for a second, a reflex. “Still. Word is upper management noticed. Might be time you aimed a little higher, huh?”

I took a slow sip of my cold coffee. The word higher hung there like an idea meant for someone else. “I think I’ll just aim for breathing easy through Q4.”

Tim grinned again, already half-turned toward another meeting. “You’ve earned it, man. Drinks Friday? Whole PM team’s going.”

“Maybe,” I said. “We’ll see.”

“Don’t ‘we’ll see’ me, Grimm. You’re a legend right now.”

Tim gave me a mock salute and vanished around the corner.

I stood for a moment in the hum of the hallway, the flattery still echoing in my head. I wanted to feel proud, but all I could think about was how strange it felt to be congratulated for something that had taken nearly everything out of me.

I exhaled, rubbed my chest where the tightness never quite left anymore, and walked on toward the breakroom. The coffee there would be terrible. But it was free.

* * *

As I approached the door to my apartment, I noticed a manila envelope propped against the doorframe, right where I wouldn’t miss it. I stared at it for a long moment, keys still in my hand. I didn’t open it. I didn’t have to. I knew what was inside. The final draft. Just sign, initial, and be done.

Sighing, I bent to pick it up, my back popping with discomfort. “Christ,” I muttered, more to the quiet than anything else.

The door opened and clicked shut behind me, the sound seemed too loud for the small space. The apartment still didn’t feel like home - just somewhere to be when I wasn’t at work. The furniture was functional, not chosen, the walls bare except for a calendar from the moving company and a clock that ticked half a second off-beat.

I kicked my shoes off and tossed my keys in the bowl by the door. The envelope was tossed on the table. I’d deal with it later.

Another sigh escaped me as I took the 3 steps across the tiny kitchen to the old fridge stuffed in the corner. It hummed like it was thinking of dying - a feeling I was starting to understand. Yanking open the top door to the freezer, I grabbed a box at random, the cold of it biting my fingers. I pried it open and slid the plastic container of Salisbury steak into the microwave. A few beeps later, the lights dimmed, and the fridge’s hum was joined by the dull drone of the microwave, like a dirge of appliances.

While it turned, my eyes drifted back to the envelope on the counter. Jennifer. She’d been hounding me for a while. She was smarter than me, always planning ahead, always knew what she wanted. Things that originally attracted me to her now seemed like warning signs gone unheaded.

I liked the space between things - the improvising, last-minute miracles that somehow worked, the way chaos suddenly snapped into order. We’d been fine until we weren’t. Until the excuses piled up - late nights, new friends, passwords changed.Until her phone started living face-down on the counter, until she smiled at messages that weren’t from me. Maybe I’d driven her to it. If I’d paid more attention, maybe I would have seen the signs. Maybe I could have stopped it. Maybe I could have done more.

My daughter - no, her daughter, never mine - had been like her mother from the start. Scornful, vigilant, always weighing what people were worth. She’d learned early how to twist kindness into leverage. I tried - jokes, gifts, patience - but every gesture just was another transaction to her. Maybe I should’ve pushed harder, found some way past that sneer she wore like armor. Or maybe she’d been right about me all along - just a paycheck for her mother, for her.

The microwave beeped. I pulled out the plastic tray and peeled back the film, the smell of salt and processed gravy filling the room.

I sat on the couch, fork in hand, the TV glowing in the dim light of the single lamp. I ate mechanically, not tasting much ,watching some talk show I didn’t recognize. People laughing at something I didn’t catch. The laughter from the TV felt like it was coming from another room, another world. Nothing I cared about.

When I finished, I left the tray on the coffee table and leaned back, staring at the ceiling. The envelope still sat there, across the room, glaring at me, unmoving on the table, a silent thing that had already won. I closed my eyes and told myself I’d deal with it tomorrow.

An hour later, I booted my laptop and sat in the darkness, illuminated only by the glowing screen. A quick search for porn later and I was sitting there rubbing one out. I wasn’t horny, not particularly. It was just another way to turn my brain off before bed. The end of another day that I was happy to be done with.

* * *

Tim caught me just as I was packing up my laptop, his grin too bright for the fluorescent lights. “Grimm! PM team’s grabbing drinks tonight. You should come. We’re celebrating the launch.”

My stomach tightened the way it always did when someone used celebrating and me in the same sentence. I **** a smile. “Ah, I probably shouldn’t. Long day. I think I’m just gonna head home.”

Tim’s grin faltered for a brief moment. “C’mon, man. You pulled off a miracle with this one. You earned it.”

Earned it. Right.

I felt the familiar voice in the back of my mind rise up - the one that lambasted me for every mistake I made, criticized every success for how it could have been better, assured me that I wasn’t really good enough… for anything. They wouldn’t be thanking me if they knew how much of it was luck. How much was me pulling my hair out because I have no idea what in the actual fuck I’m doing. How much was fake confidence to hide my incompetence.

“I can’t tonight,” I said, pretending to check my phone like I had somewhere urgent to be. “I’ve got a thing. Raincheck, okay?”

Tim hesitated. I saw it in the glint in his eye, the tiny pinch between his eyebrows. Concern? Pity? I wasn’t sure which was worse.

“Yeah. Sure. Raincheck,” he said, but his voice had softened. He clapped me on the shoulder before walking off to join the others.

I stood there for a second, pretending to reorganize my bag just so I wouldn’t have to pass the group gathering near the elevators. Their voices echoed down the hall - laughing, joking, alive in a way I felt like I hadn’t been in a long time.

I could’ve gone with them. I could’ve **** myself into the noise, the small talk, the clinking of glasses. But the thought of trying to act normal or happy, of pretending I was proud of anything I’d done - it made my chest tighten.

Every time I was around them, I felt like a cutout of a person - flat and flimsy, like if anyone looked too closely they’d notice I was hollow. They’d see how awkward I was. All the missteps, cracks, and failures.

I was too tired to be “on.” Too tired to pretend I’m not the weak link in the team. Too tired to risk slipping up and proving them right.

I took the stairs instead of the elevator - there were fewer eyes that way - and headed out into the evening alone. I told myself I preferred it that way. Solitude was easier, cleaner. But the truth followed me on the long walk home.

I don’t avoid people because I don’t like them. I avoid them because I don’t like me. I don’t like the person I have to pretend to be when I’m out. And because I’m afraid that someday they’ll stop inviting me and I don’t have an excuse ready for why that will hurt.

* * *

The office smelled like burnt coffee and cleaner again, a kind of stale normalcy I was grateful for. I’d cleared my inbox, made it through half a bagel, and been pulled into two meetings that could’ve been emails. It was a good day by recent standards.

Then I saw Tim hovering by my cubicle. That alone was odd - Tim doesn’t hover. He swoops in, says his peace, and moves on like a man allergic to stillness.

“Hey, uh… I just want to say that’s some fucked up shit, man,” he said, started, his face was the same one people wear at funerals - sympathy laced with relief it isn’t them.

I looked up from my monitor. “What happened?”

He scratched his neck, eyes darting toward Derek’s office at the end of the hall. The blinds were half-closed, which usually meant Derek was pretending to be busy. “You know, about the…” He hesitated, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Fuck. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything. I’ll just…”

The phone on my desk buzzed. The little red light blinked like a bad omen. Derek’s extension.

Tim exhaled, like the air had been punched out of him. “Ah. Yeah. He probably wants to talk to you himself.”

I picked up the receiver. “Grimm.”

“Hey, Seth. Can you step into my office for a minute?” Derek’s voice had that **** cheerfulness managers use before bad news.

“Sure,” I said, setting the phone down gently.

Tim looked at me, his mouth twitching like he wanted to say something - anything - but thought better of it.

“I gotta go talk to Derek. I’ll hit you up when I get a free minute, ok?”

“Yeah,” Tim replied, looking anywhere but at me.

I nodded, more confused than worried. I’d made it through tougher conversations. Projects collapsing, clients screaming, budgets bleeding out. Whatever this was, it couldn’t be worse than that.

Derek’s office was glass on three sides. I could feel every set of eyes on me as I walked in. He was standing behind his desk, arms crossed, pretending he’d just been reviewing something important.

“Seth,” he said, motioning to the chair across from him. “Close the door.”

The air changed. I sat down. Derek sighed - a long, deliberate exhale. The kind meant to sound regretful. “I’ll get right to it,” he said. “Corporate’s decided to make some… organizational changes. We’re streamlining management layers, and unfortunately, your position’s being impacted.”

“Impacted,” I repeated. “That’s a hell of a word.”

He winced, but not much. “Look, it’s not personal. You’ve been a great asset. But sometimes these things-”

“Right. ‘These things.’ Sure.”

My stomach felt heavy, but my mind was oddly clear. He couldn’t even look me in the eye for long.

“Is this about the project?” I asked. “Because we came in under budget. Ahead of schedule.”

“It’s not about performance,” he said quickly. “It’s just… timing.”

Timing. The word hung there, sour and obvious.

The pieces didn’t quite fit yet, but I could feel the shape of them pressing against the back of my mind, like there was something I was missing.

He slid a folder across the desk - severance paperwork, I guessed. His fingers brushed it toward me like it was contagious. I didn’t open it. I just looked at him, and for the first time, I really looked. The tidy hair, the smug half-smile that tried to pass for sympathy.

“Timing,” I said again. “Yeah. Funny how that works.”

He shifted uncomfortably. “I’m sorry, Seth. Really.”

I nodded once, stood up, and left without another word.

Tim was waiting in the hall, eyes wide, mouth half-open like he’d seen the accident before it happened. “You okay?” he asked.

I wasn’t, but I nodded anyway. “Yeah,” I said. “Timing.”

And then I walked past him, past the hum of printers and murmurs and pitying glances, out toward the elevator - wondering just how far back the joke had been running, and how long I’d been the punchline.

* * *

The cold night air numbed me to the bone. Too bad it wasn’t enough to numb my mind.

My shoes scraped the sidewalk as I trudged home, every step slow, like my body was lagging behind my thoughts.

Today was another settlement meeting with Jennifer, sporting a brand new set of tits. Who shows up to a divorce settlement showing off a brand new set of tits? It should be illegal.

She wanted more money. Of course she did. Probably to pay for those fake tits. They all sat there acting like it was normal, like it made sense. And then she’d told me she’d been fucking Derek. She said it lightly, like she was mentioning the weather. I wasn’t sure which part hurt more — the betrayal or how casual she’d become about delivering it.

Fucking Jennifer. Fucking Derek!. My fucking boss. That douche canoe that’s made my life hell for the past 3 years. That piece of shit that I’ve shed blood, sweat, and tears for to pull off the impossible every goddam day. Timing, my ass, I thought as I kicked a trashcan and nearly fell over when it barely moved. Pain flared through my toes, but it just made me angrier. “Fuuuuck!” I shouted, unable to keep the rage inside any longer.

A couple drinks at some hold in the wall bar later hadn’t done a damn thing except dry out my throat. I’d left the bar just as miserable as I went in.

Now the streets were empty. Streetlights buzzed while closed windows seemed like a wall between me and the rest of the world. My head was full of stupid thoughts, like whether a judge could make her take out those fucking implants she probably got for Derek and hand them over to me like contested property. The image made me snort. Pathetic, really.

I didn’t notice the alley until I was right beside it - a thin crack of darkness between two buildings, smelling like wet cardboard and old oil. I thought I heard a footstep or maybe just something shifting in the dark. I turned my head, expecting to see a cat or maybe nothing at all, but there was nothing. When I turned back to the street, I felt hands grab me from behind. Pain lanced through my skull, like I’d just been stabbed with an icicle. Burning ice spread down my spine as the world tilted and the lights went out.