Red walked the dark, empty streets in a daze. His life was over. The pain of losing everything he held dear gripped his heart like a vice. And he had just lost everything, no matter how he tried to twist it around in his mind he could not reconcile how things had gotten this far gone.

“I’ll never see my kids again.” He lamented to the deserted street. The sound of his footfalls echoing against the concrete buildings as he trod aimlessly. 

Tears blurred his vision then, as he thought about his eldest son. He had lost contact for years with little joey and his ex girlfriend after he had decided to go to college. Only recently reuniting after many years of court proceedings and broken promises.

“And now I’m going to lose my girls. This can’t be real.” He spoke the words softly through his sobbing. 

Then raising his face to the night sky he screamed “Why God! What did I do? All I’ve ever wanted was to be a good father! To give my little monkeys the things and the support that my father never could! And now you take them away from me!” 

Without realizing it Red had walked deep into the city. A small part of him hoped that someone would see him and put an end to his pain. But there was no one else. The street lamps lit the desolate alleyways with their dim glow but did little to brighten the path that Red was now walking. His aimless wandering slowly turned into a defeated trudge towards the bridge that spanned the river separating the city core from the suburbs.

“They will all be better off without me.” His hoarse voice was barely audible, Red rounded the corner past the last office building on the edge of the cities core. Ahead of him sprawled the massive bridge that would put him out of his misery.

As Reds mind brought forward pictures of his children smiling faces he began to sob again. His son, born while he was a thousand miles away and growing up only knowing that his father couldn’t afford the trip to see him. His eldest daughter, smaller than his forearm as he rocked her to sleep while she stared mesmerized by the fluorescent lights on the ceiling of their tiny apartment. And his youngest daughter, the clever gleam in her eyes, so proud of every skill she mastered and couldn’t wait to show her daddy.

Every image rocked him harder than the last. Why couldn’t he provide everything they wanted? He worked so hard, but it never seemed like it was enough. And now Blue was leaving, the only woman he had ever truly loved was taking his children and ripping apart his heart in the process. The only person that had understood him and accepted his flaws. Or so he had thought.

“I love you babies.” He whispered through gritted teeth as he grabbed a pole and hoisted himself up onto the railing of the bridge. His blurry vision barely able to make out the raging river below him. He could hear the rushing water. It was a roar in his ears, washing away his reveries. It would wash him away as well, cleanse the sin of his existence.

As he stood there steeling himself to greet the cold embrace of death in the frigid waters a thought surfaced in the back of his mind. 

‘Why would you say that?” The voice in his head scolded him. 

“I’m so lost” Red screamed into the still night air. “What am I going to do?” The tears flowed from his eyes and he sank to a squat, perching on the railing and leaning defeated against the pole clutched in his hand. Visions of his children still flashing chaotically through his mind.

The bitter voice in his head chided him. “Do better. But you can’t do anything if you’re dead.”

The tears rolling down his cheeks slowed and Red stood on the railing again. Gripping the pole with white knuckles he stared for a while longingly at the raging river beneath him. It would be so much easier to fall, to be washed away. 

The voice in his head was right. If he jumped things wouldn’t get better, in fact they would only get worse for his little ones, he knew that in his soul.

Finally after his eyes had dried and he could think clearly again, he stepped back and off of the railing.