Payneful Remedy

My feet scrape across the thick ash that lies along the sidewalk. Black clouds filled with malice and snow, run above me, like a festering boil afflicted by a stinging rage. It's dark outside, but the streets wake up from its sleep after every oil chugging metal machine glides by. Junkies wrap around the street lights like stiff tentacles, forming puppet figures conceived from corrupted children's stories. I look ahead, unfazed by the putrefaction that speaks in tongues around me. My stark, leather coat firmly perks on my back, like a newly born ingrown hair.

His house is ahead and I think he's expecting me.

I approach the door of the complex. The world around me glints a pearly red.

It's the moon.

It bleeds through the sky, turning the world into a slick cesspool of brutal iridescence.

I open the apartment door and step into the putred underbelly.

After elbowing the elevator button, I walk into the wilted corners of hell.

I begin to ascend.

The door dings as it opens, closing behind me with a slam.

I turn down the hall, taking in every bog of stench. I make it to his door, preparing to knock, but the door just creaks open.

I slowly step inside and see him sitting down, tightly clinching a newspaper, facing the door. The room is as dark as it is outside. The street lights pierce the window, dimly leaving rays of light over half my face.

"So you came," he says behind the paper.

"So I guess you really were expecting me," I say as I gently close the door behind me.

I walk toward him. Slowly pacing on his side.

"What can i do for you today?"

I eye him through the paper, like my retinas splash it with beams hotter than the sun.

"You know why I'm here."

I put my hand in my jacket.

"Son, you know, joining those people was one of the worst decisions you made."

"You lost the right to call me that," I say while lighting a cigarette, still eyeing his paper.

I think about how he failed me as a kid. How he neglected me. Beat me. I think about the time he made me sit down in a chair while he dashed around the house, killing rats with poison. The way he meticulously sprayed this one. It twitched and jumped about. It was almost like he gave more care to killing it, then he did being a father.

I envied that rat.

"Well, considering you decided to borrow from the mob and not pay us back was your worst decision."

He finally drops the paper. No tears. No smugness.

"I just need a few more days."

"Those days were given already, your time is up."

I get in his face.

"They call me because I don't sell sand for glasses, I burn them."

He puts his head down, burying his shame, like a dead-end marriage and an empty wallet staring out the scope of an empty Whiskey bottle.

"Last chance," I say while pulling out my favorite arm.

"I don't have it, son. I failed you again and I'm sorry."

I could hear the pain in his voice, but I stopped feeling that 100 pill bottles ago.

I slowly aim my gun at his head.

"They say that on your last day on earth, the person you've became will meet the person you could have become. But for you, it'll only be me."