Father

Father

The light in the alley was sickly yellow. The man he saw there had a killers smile, giving off the appearance of being in delightful agony, unable to cope with the world that imprisoned him. Johnny stepped forward cautiously. He heard the man speaking obscenities under his breath, a voice tempered by smoke and whisky, head turning this way and that as though conversing with circling spirits, a bit of spittle emitting from his cursing lips each time he spoke. The hair grew sparse around his dark-spotted scalp, looking like brown, diseased, weeds springing up wildly in a barren wasteland. His arms were wrapped around himself, hands clinging tightly to his thin, bony shoulders, like they were the iron bars of a cell. “Father,” Johnny whispered.