Company Countdown
Devon was your typical office drone—exhausted, disheveled, and worn down by the grind. Dark bags hung beneath his eyes, his hair always unkempt, and his clothes perpetually wrinkled. He was a walking mess, the embodiment of burnout. But the soul-crushing workload wasn’t the worst of it. Devon was mocked by his coworkers, dismissed, ignored—as if he didn’t even exist. What was he supposed to do?
“Just stick this out. Jobs are hard to find these days,” his frail mother had whispered from her hospital bed, her voice barely more than a breath. And so, he kept going. Not out of hope, but out of obligation.
Then one day, while waiting at the train stop, Devon received a phone call. His mother—his last living relative—had passed away that evening.
But Devon didn’t cry. He didn’t collapse or scream at the heavens in grief. Instead, his eyes grew darker, colder than ever before. Because now… there was no one left to stop him.
Stop him from what? From quitting his job? Maybe. But then a darker thought crept in.
“Hmmm… why not end it all?”
*Company Countdown*
