For four years, Gary has lived by procedure.

He drives the RV he was supposed to share with his wife, Claire, moving from campground to campground and dump station to dump station. At every stop, he follows the same carefully controlled routine. He monitors the park. Measures the variables. Empties the black tank.

And makes certain the procedure never quite finishes.

Now Gary has arrived at Ridgeline State Park, the place Claire circled twice in their road atlas and marked with a star. As afternoon light moves across the landscape exactly as she once described it, a failing valve traps him at the station longer than his protocols allow.

Minute by minute, the systems Gary has built to contain his past begin to break down. Memories of Claire surface alongside the truth of an environmental contamination scandal, eleven years of falsified reports, and the choice that paid for the vehicle carrying him across the country.

While strangers in the campground quietly begin to recognize what Gary has been doing, he must decide whether to repeat the managed departure that has kept him moving for four years or finally complete the procedure.

Set almost entirely over forty mounting minutes, BLACK TANK is a literary psychological thriller novella about grief, moral injury, complicity, and the unbearable distance between knowing the truth and acting on it.