When it rains bullets and beer cans on his first day of work, getting stuck in the mud becomes the least of Joseph Drake’s worries during the eventful evening of The First Day.

“The patch of road ahead was giving him cause to reconsider his trajectory. But even as he eased on the brakes, the truck jerked to a stop and our inertia was redirected from forward motion into a sinking feeling. We abandoned the cab to assess our situation. The front tires had clearly sunk several inches. Having become so intimate with the road slop, we quickly realized that we had been skipping like a giant stone across the mud at high speed. It was only when we had slowed down that we lost momentum and succumbed to the mud. When James tried to gun the truck back onto the road, it simply lurched forward into the mud until the spinning wheels began digging deeper and deeper. It was a beautiful attempt but the mud won again.”

Next Chapter: "Bender Springs," by Joseph Drake