The air tasted of sawdust, damp earth, and satisfaction.
For two years, that had been my personal brand of cologne. Two years of sweat, splinters, and the quiet hum of a job well done.
Forty-seven years I had spent on this planet, and for forty-five of them, I'd been a ghost, a transient presence in other people's lives and other people's houses.
I had drifted through foster homes like a piece of junk mail, then through construction jobs, building other people's dreams while mine gathered dust in a corner of my mind I rarely visited.
But not anymore.
This house had been my therapy, my obsession, my one true relationship.
I had talked to myself while building it, entire conversations about joint compound and load-bearing walls.
My last girlfriend, Sarah, had left me because I had spent more time discussing the merits of different wood stains than I had discussing our future.
She'd been right to leave. I was a lousy boyfriend. But I was a hell of a builder.
I stood on the porch of my house. MY house. I bought the land with a small inheritance from a great-aunt I'd never met; probably the only relative who hadn't misplaced my social security number.
The money was just enough for a few acres of an undesirable woodland nobody else wanted.
And for two years, from the moment the sun clawed its way over the horizon to the moment it gave up and plunged the world into darkness, I had worked.
I poured the foundation, framed the walls, and laid every single shingle on the roof. I had run the wiring, plumbed the pipes, and sanded the hardwood floors until they shone like a mirror.
I knew every knot in the wood, every imperfection in the drywall that only I could see. This house wasn't just a structure; it was a biography written in timber and nails. It was the only thing I had ever built that was truly mine.
My magnum opus. My sanctuary. My fortress of solitude, built to keep the rest of the miserable, disappointing world at bay.
I held the hammer in my hand, its worn wooden handle a familiar extension of my own arm.
It was the first tool I ever bought, a 20-ounce Estwing, perfectly balanced. It had outlasted three girlfriends, four pickup trucks, and my entire faith in humanity. In my other hand, I held the final piece: a single, three-inch galvanized nail.
This was it.
The final touch.
The ceremonial last act.
I had imagined this moment a thousand times over the past two years. In my fantasies, it was always accompanied by a sense of profound peace, maybe a single tear of joy running down my cheek.
In reality, I just felt tired.
Bone-deep, soul-crushing tired. But it was a good tired. The kind of tired that comes from honest work, from creating something with your own two hands.
I had built this house the old-fashioned way.
No prefab panels, no contractor crews, no shortcuts.
Every board had been measured twice and cut once. Every nail had been driven by this hammer.
It was inefficient, it was probably insane, but it was mine. In a world where everything was mass-produced, disposable, and meaningless, this house was a monument to the idea that things could still matter.
That I could still matter.
In front of me, hanging from two brass hooks I'd installed just this morning, was a hand-carved sign of solid oak. I'd spent a month on it, carving the letters with a chisel and a patience I didn't know I possessed. It read: "Mercer House - Est. 2025."
I took a deep breath, the cool morning air filling my lungs. This was more than just a nail. This was a declaration. It was the period at the end of a long, shitty sentence. It was the moment I could finally stop running, stop drifting, and just… be.
I placed the tip of the nail against the pre-drilled hole in the sign. I raised the hammer, a slow, deliberate arc, savoring the weight of the moment.
The sun was just peeking over the trees, casting long shadows across the lawn I'd so carefully seeded. It was perfect. A perfect, quiet, solitary moment of triumph.
That's when the goose hit me.
I had heard it, a distant, angry honking that I'd dismissed as just another part of the morning chorus. I was wrong.
This was not a goose engaged in casual conversation. This was a goose with a death wish, a feathered torpedo flying at approximately forty miles per hour, and my face was its target.
It struck me with the force of a thrown brick. The world exploded in a flurry of feathers, beak, and a sound that was less of a honk and more of a wet, fleshy thump. My head snapped back.
The hammer flew from my grasp, sailing over my shoulder in a beautiful, glittering arc. The nail, miraculously, stayed clutched in my other hand.
Priorities, I guess.
My feet, which had been firmly planted on the solid oak porch I had built, were suddenly no longer on the porch. I stumbled backward, my arms windmilling uselessly.
My brain was still trying to process the goose attack. Was it a Canada goose? A snow goose? Do they even have snow geese in this part of the country?
The important questions, you know.
My heel caught on something solid, unmoving, and utterly infuriating. My toolbox.
That goddamn toolbox. I had bought it five years ago, a moment of financial irresponsibility that I justified by telling myself it was an investment in my future.
It was a beautiful piece of equipment, all red enamel and chrome, with more drawers and compartments than I knew what to do with.
It was also heavy, immovable, and currently positioned exactly where it could do the most damage.
My beautiful, red, Craftsman 52-inch rolling tool cabinet, which I had specifically told myself to put away last night. But I had been tired, and I thought, "What's the harm in leaving it out for one more night?"
The harm, it turned out, was this.