He was in town again. Home again. He hadn't been here in months. Not since that day he'd walked in on her fucking the crackhead. He knocked but no one was home. He pulled out his skeleton key (aka an old tattered ID) and rattled the door around a bit, it opened easily. The smell of home hit him immidiately. There was his old recliner. There was the 12 inch TV, a crack pipe sitting atop it. There were wedding and baby pictures strown about. Their wedding pictures. Their baby.

He walked into his son's room. There was his crib, with a couple of toys and a mostly empty bottle laid inside. He picked up a teddy bear, which he had given to his son the day he was born. He pressed it to his face, it smelled like baby powder. A tear rolled down his cheek. I'm such a bad father, all I want is to hold him and make him laugh again, he thought. He brushed his hand along the edge of the blanket, aching with the wish that his son was sleeping there peacefully, instead of off somewhere with that bitch of a mother and her crackhead boyfriend.

Rachael.... he still missed her in a way. He missed her sweet blue eyes looking at him with what he'd thought was love. But it was hard to remember her as beautiful anymore, when he'd seen her face disgustingly distorted as she'd screamed at him. Or the image of her naked on top of that peice of filfth. He picked up the glass bottle and threw it, breaking the glass on a framed wedding picture. Then he took a picture of his son and slipped it into his pocket.

He'd been homeless for the past 5 months, and just bombing around the country. Ever since that horrible day he'd disappeared. He ached to feel like a father again and not some fuckup with a broken home already at age 18. If something didn't change his son would just think of him as some fuckup alcoholic who'd abandoned him before he'd even reached the age of 1. He would never know how much he'd longed to hold him again, to teach him things, to take naps together with the baby laying on his chest. He would hate his father, the man he didn't even know. And he would be raised by a mother with an anger problem, and a crackhead who also happened to be a rapist...

He walked out of the apartment, and down the street as it began to rain. What did he care? He hadn't showered or washed his clothes in weeks. He only ate once every other day. But he didn't care anymore. All he thought about was rescuing his son from that horrible situation, but he knew there was no way he'd be able to take care of him if he tried. There was nothing he could do except walk off and disappear again, this time with a photo to look at when he missed his kid. This father had to break in just to steal a photo of his own son. After all he'd done to try to make it better. Getting a job, settling down, quitting drugs, tolerating her bullshit for 6 long months. One photo, that's all he got out of the whole deal.