Descent into Ruin: Day 14

Word Count: 84,051

Summary of Events:

At the team practise the day after they beat Swift Current, Chalmers sabotaged Atkins' skate blades so they wouldn't stay locked in place, prompting Atkins to call him immature, which upset Chalmers; the two got into a shoving match that escalated into a fight, which ended with Atkins stumbling and falling. After being pulled off Atkins by Coach Seaborn, Chalmers knocked Coach Seaborn out with a punch to the face before seeing the horrified looks of his teammates. In a panic, Chalmers fled, intending to go home, but ended up getting pulled over by the police, and broke down in tears. The police took him home, deeming him unfit to drive, and Chalmers, emotionally drained, went to bed. The following morning he was roused by a call from Coach Seaborn, who told him Coach Leslie meant to bench him for the last game of the season, and all the first round of the playoffs, suggesting to Chalmers his career with the Wheat Kings was over . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

At this point, though, he’d alienated everyone, especially considering the way Ricky had looked at him yesterday afternoon. Tears went over the top of his lower eyelids and slid silently down his cheeks at the memory.

Never in his life had someone looked at him like that. Never. He’d seen in Ricky’s face and eyes not merely horror, but disconcertion, as if Ricky believed one of those soul-destroying aliens from horror movies so disturbing Chalmers recoiled at the sight of their trailers whenever they were foisted onto him had gotten into him and consumed who he really was.

Surely it wasn’t just his season and career with the Wheat Kings that were over, but his WHL career and any hope he could possibly have harboured of having an NHL career — despite the fact that Coach Seaborn believed him to have an automatic invite to the Combine.

There was no way the NHL would want to see him within ten hours’ drive of the event whereat all their top prospects were physically evaluated, as well as being interviewed by the teams.

Atkins would be there, after all, which would probably lead to fears that he might snap at Atkins again, but Chalmers didn’t know if it would really do any good. Even if Atkins was a jerk, Chalmers had no guarantees that Atkins had asked for a trade out of Tri-City, or to Brandon, or that he might possibly have done such a thing in an effort to torment Chalmers.

Tears poured from his eyes as Chalmers tried to wrap his head around the thought of his hockey career being over before it could even begin. His whole reason for living had been the dream of making it to the NHL. Never once had he considered an alternative to playing in the NHL. He didn’t even want to go and find a European league or team willing to take him. He wanted to play in the NHL. Not the KHL, not the DEL, the SHL, the Liiga, nor any other league that existed in Europe.

If he couldn’t play in the NHL, he saw no point in playing hockey at all, but if he wasn’t going to play hockey at all, then what was he going to do? Grandma had sold the farm, and Chalmers doubted she had the money necessary to buy it back.

Too, Chalmers knew nothing about farming. He’d not been old enough to learn when Grandma and Grandpa had run the farm, and he’d not put any effort into learning how to farm since then — nor would it have been easy, living in a city and all — so even if he could buy it back, it wasn’t like he could do anything with it.

His life, it seemed to him, was over, as if a nuclear bomb had been dropped on it unexpectedly, and now he wasn’t even twenty and all that he could see for a future around him was a wasteland of nuclear fallout.