He ran his scabbed tongue along parched peeling lips. Anger rose as he stared down a young boy standing across the room with a pistol pointed at him. The boy trembled, ash hair feathered wild and slick with sweat as he clenched back the trigger. Nothing but a dull click. The boy cried out, sobbing as he frantically squeezed back the trigger over and over. Enraged the man tromped toward him seizing the boy's throat and ripped the gun away. A slender knife emerged from the man's boot and plunged in his stomach.

A stifled groan escaped the boy's mouth trailed by violent coughing and compulsions. He stuttered and wept straining to speak but the man's massive hand clamped against his mouth. The man stood there watching as blood mixed with drool seeps through his fingers, he shushed the boy as he moaned. His arms thrashed at the towering man's arms frantically scratching to break free. The man gritted his teeth as he firmly twisted the knife sideways and yanked it out of the blood-soaked cavity. He tilted his head as the boy's body slid to the hard ground a blood smear on the wall where he once stood. The boy's wet shining eyes soon clouded to a milky gray.
He knelt beside him to pick up the boy's hand and uttered in a low cold voice, “Goodbye my son.”