A Confrontation in an Alleyway

The frozen rain beat down on Alex’s back as he trudged through the dank alley. His black hair had lost its volume and had taken on the appearance of an overused dishrag, flopping down on his head, long and stringy. He was soaked to the skin, though he was unsure whether it was with sweat, precipitation, or both. His body, usually proudly and defiantly erect, was hunched over, his turquoise eyes piercing through the downpour to the ruins of the once great city that towered around him.

Each direction revealed the same dismal scene. The decaying walls were covered in faded graffiti. Soggy cardboard boxes, sprinkled cigarette butts, and clusters of plastic waste lined the alleyway. The pavement shimmered with shattered glass. There was a single light bulb that flickered eerily, simultaneously lighting everything and nothing. Alex had never stepped foot into this part of town. After all, a filthy maze of underpasses and crumbling concrete was no place for gentlemen of Alex’s standing. Alex had not been surprised when the PI had informed him that he frequented these parts. No, it did not surprise him one bit. He was no better than this dump.

There was an element of surprise that anyone would live in this wasteland, even him; as Alex walked; this invasive thought kept trying to claw its way in. If left to its own devices, this feeling would lead to sympathy, and sympathy would lead to weakness. There would be no weakness. Alex forced the thought out of his brain, concentrating instead on the rhythmic pace he kept. Left foot down, breathe in. Right foot down, breathe out. As he walked, his P320 bounced against his left breast.

It had fascinated him, the gun. Of course, there was the element of novelty; up until a few days prior, Alex had never even held a gun, let alone owned one. But there was more to it than that. The firearm gleamed with innocence and temptation. How could something so small and so seemingly harmless sever the thread of someone’s life? It made no sense. Alex could not fathom how it worked.

Perhaps tonight he would begin to understand.

Shadows began to appear around him, silhouettes turning towards him. Alex slowed his pace to a crawl so his eyes could capture every detail of the shadows’ faces. Most were meaningless; he was only here for him. Nobody stood out, but each letdown reinvigorated him the tiniest bit. He was strangely excited; any doubt that still lingered was quickly fading.

And then he saw him. He looked like all the others. Hauntingly thin, dirty, unkempt, ill-fitting clothes tattered with age and filth—a living cliché of American homelessness. But there was more. As the man turned his sunken eyes in Alex’s direction, the single light illuminated jarring disfigurement on the man’s face, clearly caused by severe burns. The right side was the most affected—the jaw twisted into a scarred scowl, the eyelids limp and drooping, the ear nonexistent.

This had to be him.

Alex’s breathing quickened and his pace slowed, jolting him out of his rhythmic trance. This was it. The moment of justice had arrived, four years in the making. The rest of the world faded out of sight and out of mind, and there was only him. The man was sitting, pressing himself tightly against a cracked pillar, almost as if he wanted to sink into the concrete. Alex slowly approached and positioned himself directly in front of the man, toe to toe. The man looked up until his eyes locked with Alex’s. They were sapphire blue and bore the weight of the world.

“Do you know who I am?” Alex demanded. His voice was cold and harsh, a tone he did not recognize. It both frightened and delighted him.

The homeless man stood slowly, using all the strength in his arms to push himself up. Again, a moment of surprise and concern as Alex glimpsed irritated, peeling skin on both hands; and again, those feelings were suppressed. There was no room for weakness. He had to be strong.

“Excuse me?” the man said. His voice, though firm, was weak and rusty.

“Where’d you get the burns?” Alex asked pointedly. There was no need to repeat the original question; if he did not already know who he was dealing with, he would know soon enough. Alex would make sure of it.

The man squinted through the rain, brushing away the droplets that clung to his eyelashes. He was swaying on the spot, yet his gaze was steady and intent, his eyes scanning the minute details of Alex’s face. Suddenly, his eyes opened wide. His jaw dropped slightly, revealing a mouth infested with stained, rotting teeth. Alex was revolted by the smell of the man’s breath. “Oh, God,” the man whispered. The exclamation was barely audible over the pouring rain. For a moment, the two men just stared at each other.

A bolt of lightning jolted through the sky and broke each man’s gaze. The homeless man, clearly frightened, turned to run, but Alex grabbed him by his jacket and held him firmly. This was the part of the plan that Alex had most agonized about. His health and fitness had not been a priority since the fire, and he was in no shape to fight another grown man. Alex was gambling that the man’s injuries and undernourishment from years of homelessness would give him a disadvantage. (Of course, there did not have to be a physical confrontation. He could just let the gun do its job from the beginning. But that was cowardly. That was weakness. There would be no weakness. Only strength. The gun would play its role in due time.)

The gamble paid off. The struggle was brief. Alex slammed the man’s back into the pillar and pinned him there. The man’s feet dangled several inches off the ground. “Do you know what you did?” Alex hissed. Tears of rage began to flow, quickly becoming indistinguishable from the tracts of raindrops running down his flushed cheeks. The man averted eye contact and trembled in Alex’s firm grip but remained silent.

“I asked you a question. Do you know what you did?” Alex repeated fiercely, shaking the man violently. The man’s head bounced against the concrete pillar, making a savory cracking sound that echoed through the alley. It sent shivers down Alex's sign.

“You didn’t help me. You could’ve, but you didn’t,” the man mumbled, focusing intently on the ground.

Alex was taken aback. He had lived this moment hundreds of times in his head, had imagined countless scenarios and interactions, but that statement was not in any of them. Alex had expected the man to point out that he had been found not guilty of arson and murder in court, and was armed with several well-rehearsed retorts about how it was only due to a technicality stemming from a police error. But this…was this an insinuation that Alex was to blame for the horrible events that caused the deaths of his wife and daughter? Alex was not prepared for that. “What?” was all he was able to muster.

The man looked up at Alex. “I came to you for help,” he asserted in an accusatory tone. There was no longer any insinuation.

A memory stirred in Alex’s mind, and despite himself, he removed himself from the present to focus on the past. There was an application in front of him, barely legible, full of red flags. There was a man sitting in front him, a walk-in appointment, waiting anxiously. His face was blurred, unmemorable, just an average face in a sea of faces. Alex’s boss was in the background, shaking his head disapprovingly. Alex was explaining to the man that they would not accept his application and they could not help him in any way. The man was frantically groveling, saying that he was out of options, that nobody else would take him, that this was his last chance. Other people came in to defuse the situation, and the man’s desperation turned to anger. He turned to Alex and said, over and over, “I came to you for help.” As the man was escorted out by security, his eyes locked with Alex’s. Alex remembered those eyes.

They were sapphire blue and bore the weight of the world.

Alex knew he had recognized the name the PI had given him, but he had never been able to place it; after awhile, even Alex himself dismissed it as paranoia. He had scourged his work files for this man on countless nights, and the name never appeared. But of course, the man would not have had a file, as his application went straight in the trash; nor would he have appeared on any schedule since he was a walk-in. The only record of this man prior to the fire was in Alex's mind, stashed away as an average workplace moment.

“I didn’t help you because I couldn’t help you,” Alex found himself explaining. It was not the sentence he expected to come out of this mouth. His voice seemed distant and unfamiliar.

This was not how tonight was supposed to go. He should not have to be on the defensive. Defensiveness was weakness. There was no room for weakness. Yet Alex was not going to let this man go to his grave thinking that he could justify burning two people to death because Alex turned him away. The man needed to understand that that was not an excuse. Alex was going to make him understand.

“You had no previous job experience, no references, several misdemeanor convictions, and an open felony indictment. Even if I had utilized all my resources there was nothing I could do. You dug the hole too deep for yourself. That’s on you. Not on me.”

“I came to you for help,” the man repeated, as if the matter was settled. Alex felt his heart rising into his throat. It was becoming hard to breathe.

“So you killed my family because…because I couldn’t help you?” Alex inquired, his voice vibrating with fury. He received no answer in return, just the sight pathetic being trembling in his grasp.

Alex lost control. The pent-up grief and hatred that had accumulated over the painful years finally found its outlet. Alex’s fist slammed against the remnants of the man’s nose, and he crumpled to the ground. Crimson blood rushed out of his nostrils and onto the pavement, dimming the glittering of the shards of broken glass that littered the street. Alex punched again and again and again, aiming for anything in his path. Face, chest, groin, neck—it did not matter as long as it caused him pain. The man grunted and grimaced with each blow but did not scream; had Alex been saner, he might have found it odd, but he was too blinded by hatred and lost in the moment to care. Blood poured from the lacerations inflicted by Alex’s wedding ring, leaving small puddles on the pavement. Soon Alex’s hands were covered in warm, red syrup, heating his chilled skin. He relished the sensation. The gun bounced against Alex’s breast as a constant reminder, but Alex ignored it; the man had to suffer first.

“NO!” The man gathered what little strength he had left and pushed Alex back with such a sudden burst of energy that Alex retreated more out of surprise than anything. “You don’t understand,” the man sobbed roughly, wrapping himself in the comforting blanket of his bleeding arms. “It was an accident.”

“An accident?” Alex yelled incredulously. “You accidentally burned my house down?”

“Well, no…” the man admitted, and Alex moved to strike again. Instinctively, the man covered his head and stammered, “But they weren’t supposed to die…you were.”

Alex’s fist stopped mere inches from the man’s battered face. Alex was ashamed of the hesitation; after all, there was no time for weakness. But at the same time, he was curious what the man had to say, especially since the night would end the same way, regardless.

The man noticed Alex’s pause and seized his opportunity. “I didn’t know you had a family. When I entered the bedroom, I only saw one person under the sheets. I didn’t get close enough to see who it was. I assumed it was you. After I started the fire, I got lost and somehow found my way into your daughter’s room. I tried to stop the fire, but it was too late--I only made it worse. I had to go to save my own life. I got hurt, too.” The man gestured to the burns eating away at his face.

Alex stood in stunned silence, the words of his family’s killer echoing in his head. Each time he had envisioned the fire, it was the same scene—his wife and daughter screaming for help through the flames while this evil man laughed maniacally from a safe distance. But now he envisioned a new scenario—this arsonist desperately trying to undo his own work, fighting the fire as the flames bit at his skin until it was unendurable. The firefighters had mentioned that there was evidence of attempts to extinguish the blaze from inside the house; could the man’s account be true? And if so, was it just to end this man’s life?

But the decision had already been made. It had been made for four years. There was no room from weakness.

“You should’ve died in that fire. You should’ve died with them,” Alex gulped. He removed the pistol from his breast pocket and aimed it at man’s forehead with violently trembling hands. The man flinched but did not flee or turn his back.

“Please,” he begged, “I must live.”

Alex released the gun’s safety. “Why should I let the man who murdered my family live?” he spat, but before the man could answer, a weak voice cut through the darkness.

“Daddy?”

Alex and the man both peered around the pillar in the direction of the voice. Two young children, filthy and gaunt, emerged from the shadows and embraced the man, ignoring Alex completely. The man hugged them back, one in each arm, his hands wrapped protectively around their heads. His blood attempted to stain their straw-colored hair but was quickly washed away in the torrential downpour. Even in the dim, uneven lighting, Alex could tell that the children were the spitting image of the man who found himself at the dangerous end of Alex’s weapon.

This man—this monster, this killer—was a father. Just as Alex had once been.

Alex turned away. He felt the gun brush against his thigh and realized that his arm had gone limp. The alleyway was spinning, he was hyperventilating in shuddering, gasping segments. His body shook violently and he became suddenly aware of just how cold he really was.

There was no room for weakness. He would be strong.

Alex took a deep breath through his nose, inhaling the stench of the rain-soaked garbage surrounding him. The decision was made. He took a small step forward, away from the man and his children, away from the alleyway and the desolate city, away from his past.

There was no room for weakness. Alex would be strong.

He would be strong enough to forgive.