Farm of Fantasies - Taming Demi-Beasts in a Magical Afterlife

Bitter Endings…

Ben Nickels shifted his weight, rubbing his shoulder as he leaned against the half-finished wall. The dull ache had been there for weeks now, a reminder that hammering nails into wood wasn’t something his body was designed to do forever.

In fact, forty years had been more than enough.

He wasn’t that old, not really—fifty-six years last month. But his joints took every opportunity to remind him that a lifetime of hard labor at double- and triple-overtime came at a price.

Not just the failed marriage, the children he never had, and the circle of friends that seemed to be aging even faster than him and dropping like flies from cancer, heart attacks, and pickled livers, either…

Every day at Westin Construction seemed to bring Ben fresh reminders of the ways he’d wasted his life, squandering his youth and his health for a paycheck, only to have squander that, too—first on the ever-growing needs of his then-wife: big house, new cars, nice clothes, salon hair and nails, fancy vacations he could never afford to take the time off to accompany her and her girlfriends on… and then on the expensive divorce after she met someone new, someone who “loved her enough to actually spend time with her instead of at work.”

How and why Cheryl thought he paid for her lavish lifestyle all those years if he hadn’t loved her was one of life’s mysteries. Ben had long ago lost interest in trying to solve it, along with the ambition to try again for a second chance at love. He couldn’t afford to have his heart broken again, mentally, emotionally, or financially.

© 2024 Nicholas S Fordley (دفتر الصوت ): 9798347900657

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