With a gentle click of a button your new, shining car locks itself. The orange lights flickering twice means that the transport device had successfully locked itself. With that you nod, carefully adjusting the fedora that sat proudly on your head. Today was another fruitful day at work, and you were in high spirits. Today was a very special day, indeed. A last glance at your new beauty and you were ready to go inside. Opening the door you cheerfully chant to your son. He's in his room, like he always is lately.
"John, I'm home!" Your voice echoes through the house. No answer. The boy must be sleeping then. With a small smile and a shrug you make your way into the kitchen, grabbing the newspaper from the counter and placing it on the kitchen table. You change the coffee filter for a new, fresh one and within a minute or so the machine is busy brewing you a nice pot of coffee. Satisfied with the loud gurgling noises of the coffee maker you sit down at the table, folding open your daily newspaper to the first page. That coffee maker wasn't one of the newest designs on the market, but it did its job perfectly fine. Not counting a few minor difficulties with the thing once in a while, that is. You could live with those.
A familiar beep makes you aware that your delicious coffee is waiting for you on the counter, and you put the newspaper down again. Nothing all too much happened in the world today, except for some crimes you frown upon. How cruel some people walking around on this Earth could be sometimes still amazes you greatly. Standing up from your seat you make your way over to the counter. You get a mug from the cupboard and fill it with coffee, adding some milk and sugar because you feel like it. Normally you would pass on these, you preferred your coffee black. But lately you seem to be craving sugar a lot, hence your slight weight gain over de past few weeks. Making a mental note to pay a visit to the gym more often you start sipping from the mug, sitting down to finish the last part of the article you were reading. You frown at one of the articles that catches your view. "Young boy murdered." Doesn't sound too appealing to you. "Kid ran over by a truck." For some reason you suddenly feel like a whole brick wall got smashed down your throat, and anger fills your eyes as you rip the articles out without mercy. You didn't need this crap in your paper. Not today. Today was your son's birthday, and your boss told you you could go home early. He's been sending you home a lot lately. You were not sure why, but as long as you don't get fired you don't mind having some free time. Talking about birthdays, it's about time you started on John's birthday cake! You know he's not too fond of cake, but you will make this the most delicious cake you ever made! And this time it will be from scratch too, so hopefully he'll appreciate the thought and eat at least a little bit.
That said you get up once again, putting the empty mug into the sink and throwing the ripped-out articles with the trash. Now you are pretty much stuck. You never made a cake from scratch before. Suddenly you remember you wrote a recipe down once, well John did. He gave it to you a couple of months ago. You look around, finding the recipe on the fridge along with some old drawings of your son. You were so proud of him. He would surely go far one day, and you would be even prouder of him. You remove the magnets that were keeping the paper up and place it on the counter. It's not all that hard. All you need are some eggs, flowers, butter, sugar, some salt and some baking equipment. You got all of these ready at hand, and you fetch them from the fridge and the cupboards. Carefully measuring out the needed weight and quantity of each ingredient you hum a happy tune. Now that you sorted everything out it wasn't that hard to make this at all. You mix accordingly to the recipe, and knead the dough roughly. Shaping it into the desired shape it's ready to go in the oven. Waiting for the oven to finish heating up enough you decide to pay your son a visit. You walk upstairs, and when you are standing in front of his room you knock three times. Still no answer. Oh well, he has been acting strange lately, almost like he was avoiding you. Without waiting for an answer you descend the stairs, putting the dough into the oven. Now all you can do is wait.
About an hour later you are busy icing the cake with blue frosting. Your son seems to like blue a lot, as he always types in the particular colour, so you took that into account. Finishing the cake up with tons and tons of whipping cream and fresh strawberries you check the delicacy a final time. Oh, right. You needed to add candles! It's no birthday cake without candles after all. Thirteen candles. It is your sons thirteenth birthday after all. You light the candles and drape the cake with proud looks. You still can't believe you made an actual cake from scratch without using any help from any Betty Crocker products. John surely would be very proud of you. But not as proud as you would be of him, of course! You feel like the luckiest man on earth, with this son you love so dearly. Lifting the cake you make sure it won't be able to slip out of your hands, and you make your way upstairs again. Standing in front of your son's room for the second time that day, you try to converse with him once again.
"John? John, I need you to open the door for me. I have a big surprise, and my hands are currently occupied with said present." You sigh as he doesn't answer, and you place the cake on the floor. You swallow, placing your hand on the handle of the door.
"I'm coming in now, son." Your hand is still resting on the handle. You seem immobilized all of the sudden, but then you shake it off and move the handle down slowly. Pushing the door open carefully you enter your son's room and sit down on the bed.
You name is James Egbert, and due to a series of unfortunate events your son passed away a few weeks ago due to your lack of carefulness. You hadn't seen him walk up the driveway behind you when you drove backwards. You grab the photo of your son with his friends from his desk, and kneel to the floor.
Hugging it close to your chest you start sobbing like you never sobbed before.
Your name is James Egbert, and you were the reason for the death of your own son.