The body of a young boy, head smashed in, lied on the other side of the street.

Owen blinked, and the body vanished. Yet the sound of confused chaos and sirens in the distance continued to ring in his ears, as it had for the past two and a half years. Owen didn't expect it to stop any time soon.

Owen sighed and pedaled his bicycle faster as snow began to flutter down. It wasn't the most impressive method of transportation, especially when it was the fastest way he could get from here to there, but it was all he had. The car he once owned - one of those sleek, fancy red ones, was years gone. It sold for plenty enough on eBay, and yet Alissa would've said that it was a good forty-thousand dollars wasted. 

True, it probably was. Most of it went to debts, whether gambling, mortgage, or something else. A tiny fraction of it was used for daily needs, and the money he had left was put to buying the bicycle.

Pathetic, Owen mused. I can't blame Alissa for leaving. We weren't so close in the first place, and she was bound to leave sooner or later. But it was me who drove her away, one thing at a time, like dominoes...

Owen couldn't say that he was the ideal image of a human being. In fact, he was probably on the other side of that scale. The worst part, though, was that Owen had always wondered how he ended up there, and the truth was that there wasn't any good reason. Ben's death, as jarring as it had been to him, was no less a scapegoat than a legitimate excuse for his drinking issues. It wasn't that Owen had never been a drinker before his son's death, but ever since the Accident, Alissa's warning's about Owen's drinking rose from kind gestures to ever-growing disgust.

Until she left. Perhaps in another world, Owen would've gotten over his son's death - free from the memory of the car that should not have been there and should not have killed his son - yet the past was unchangeable now. It was maddening to Owen, the way it was. The past was unchangeable, yet it would cling onto him forever, like a leech, never letting go. 

Owen gritted his teeth and momentarily pedaled even faster than before, his apartment now coming into view, illuminated by the moon that shone overhead. The apartment. It was as if everything on Stalwyn Avenue mocked Owen, from the street where the car killed Ben, to the apartment that reminded him what he had lost.

He had not had the apartment for long - at least, the past one or so years seemed to go by surprisingly fast for him - but it was nothing compared to the house he and Alissa had owned before. It's like comparing the Mona Lisa to something Jessica would draw, Owen thought, remembering his six-year-old daughter's artwork. Only, it's more like I've bought the Mona Lisa and then ended up trading it with what Jessica made.

Looking back, Owen wondered that if he had only been an alcoholic, it wouldn't be as bad as it was now. After all, Alissa would find a way to get him through his state of semi-depression. But once Owen was fired from his job and began gambling, it was the last straw for Alissa. No more words of comfort, no more attempts to stop him. She just... left one day.

People would still ask Owen why he started gambling in the first place, and Owen would have no choice but to admit that he wasn't sure either. It was the truth. Did he do it because of his pride, not wanting to disappoint people - most of all, Alissa - any more? Or was it just desperation? It couldn't be completely because of money, after all. Alissa also worked and provided money for the family, at least while she was still there, and things wouldn't have been that bad.

Not as bad as it is now. A wave of fury began to crash over Owen. Look at me now! Broken, left with only a few pennies, living on - no, dying by - my own drinking and gambling tendencies. Look at me! What do I have left? What money that still remains in my coffers can barely keep me living in the apartment! My wife... Alissa... well, she didn't even look back when she slammed the door! There's only me, alone... and Jessica.

Owen frowned and halted in front of the apartment, locking the bike to one of the nearby sidewalk poles. It wasn't so much that he was frowning because of Jessica than because of the smell of the apartment. Even from the outside, one could easily attribute the smell as one akin to rotting fish and sewage. There was nothing much to present from the outside - or the inside, Owen thought as he walked in - unless one took interest in seeing crumbling stone walls next to a weed-infested lawn. The place belonged much more in a horror story, where the characters stepped into the long-abandoned mansion.

But as Owen began to climb the stairs to his apartment, a strange feeling of hope surged over him. Owen had wondered what it was for quite a while now, and at last, concluded that it could only be Jessica. She was the last thing that remained to him, and like a beggar clinging on to his last scrap of food, Jessica that was the last thing that kept Owen tied to his sanity. Jessica. All others were gone, and though Owen had lost everything, Jessica still remained there, a reason for Owen to keep going on.

At least, that was before today.