After a long, drawn out absence, Lemy Loud was back.

Tall and gaunt with sunken cheeks and sallow skin, his shaggy hair the color of old ash, Lemy was barely fifty-five but looked seventy. His brown jumpsuit hung from his emaciated body and wrinkles creased his worn and tired face. His eyes, once piercing blue, were faded and his nails were yellowed from decades of nicotine. Six months ago, his doctor diagnosed him with cirrhosis of the liver and gave him a slim margin of survival. You probably won't make it, Lemy, he said seriously.

Lemy had always thought that when the time came, he would go happily into death. What did he have to live for anyway? A one bedroom apartment in the boiler room of a run down building in the hood? A paycheck that barely supported him? A family that he occasionally spoke to but had never, and could never, bond with? He wasn't particularly suicidal but he wouldn't cling to life when his time came.

Only...when he got the news, all that changed. He didn't want to die.

So he quit drinking and smoking and drugging and let himself dry out. He got a miracle liver transplant from a car crash victim and though he was still sickly, he was no longer in danger of dying. Now sporting a full beard and looking suspiciously like Tommy Chong, Lemy was finally able to return to his job as a janitor at the mall. It was an alright gig. The security guards even looked the other way while he raided the change from the fountain in the lobby. You laugh, but it brought in an extra 2 to 3 hundred a month. Before, it all went to booze and H. Now it would be pure profit. He might even be able to buy something nice for himself next month. A cheap laptop, maybe.

On the day he went back to work, he called his daughter Meagan in New York City. She was in her late twenties and worked at the Museum of Natural History. Talking to her was like a ray of sunshine but it also reminded him of all the things he had missed out on. After leaving Royal Woods when she was seven, he saw her only once, when he went back to sign paperwork allowing Dad to adopt her, her brother Lucas, and their sister Luya. That turned into a nightmare for everyone and Lemy did his best to drink the memory away. He missed out on so much of their lives and he hated himself for it. Sometimes he even cried. Luya, who wasn't actually his daughter, refused to talk to him, and Lucas, now in his mid-twenties, occasionally messaged him on Facebook, but only after Lemy messaged him first, and only after six or eight weeks had elapsed. Lemy didn't blame the boy. To him, Lemy was just another person, not a father at all.

Who's fault was that?

Lemy's.

When he was younger, Lemy had a hard time accepting responsibility for his own actions. He blamed everyone in the world but himself, and that's why he became a useless POS. His fault. All his fault.

But those self-,loathing thoughts were a million miles away as he wheeled his trash barrel down the first floor promenade that Saturday evening. Shops lined both sides of the open walkway and packs of kids and teenagers roamed aimlessly around trying hard to impress each other. Lemy smiled to himself because he remembered being that age. The social pressure was intense. Don't ever let anyone tell you kids don't have it hard because they do, maybe even harder than adults in certain ways.

Lemy stopped at the foodcourt and emptied the trash. There was so much of it that he had to grab the gondola - a big cart - and use that instead of hia barrel. He wheeled it down a service hallway and out a side door. The day was hot and bright and the parking lot was a sea of metal glinting in the sun. Lemy wheeled the cart over to a fleet of dumpsters and started to empty it. A muffled cough stopped him. Whispers voices followed and Lemy furrowed his brow. He went around the dumpster and started. A group of teenage boys sat with their backs against the concrete enclosure, bottles of liquor and vape pens in their hands. Lemy sniffed the air and his nose wrinkled. It wasn't pot or nicotine they were smoking, it was something else.

Something more powerful.

The boys saw him and froze in fear. Lemy couldn't say what exactly it was, but they reminded him so much of him as a kid that it shocked him. "What the hell are you doing?" he demanded.

One of the boys spoke for the rest. "We're just...hanging out. We'll leave right now."

"You think this is all fun and games, huh?" Lemy asked and nodded to one of the bottles. "You think doing this shit is cool?"

"Chill, man," another boy said.

"Yeah, with your crusty old ass," a black boy added.

Lemy narrowed his eyes. "You know how I got old and crusty?" he asked. "By drinking this shit." He kicked one of the bottles over and the liquid inside splashed out. "I started out like you kids. I used to sit around drinking and smoking thinking I was the shit. Then I got hooked. I blew all my money on it. If I didn't have it, I'd start shaking and crying and I didn't have it a lot because I was always broke and homeless. My liver started shutting down, my skin got wrinkly, and my dick shriveled up. I haven't had sex in fifeen years because the alcohol killed it. I'm hung like someone's little sister and women laugh at me."

The boys gaped at him in horror.

"You know how old I am? I'm forty-five."

One of the boys gasped. "Dude, you're younger than my Dad. And you look like my grandpa."

"Yeah? Keep drinking that shit and you'll wind up looking just like me. Hope you boys enjoy losing your dick and having ten surgeries on your failing liver." He lifted his shirt and showed them the scar on his side.

"Jesus, man," one of the boys said, "did it hurt?"

"A little," Lemy said, "but pissing and shitting into a bag for two years hurt even worse."

The boys looked at their drugs and alcohol...then threw them away. "Fuck that," one said.

"Yeah, I don't wanna be anything like him," the black boy said.

They got up and walked away. "That guy's pitiful," one said.

"He works as a janitor too," another replied. "What a loser. I'd rather drink apple juice for the rest of my life."

Lemy crossed his arms and smiled smugly. Yeah, he stretched the truth a little (his sex drive was shot but when he did get hard, he got as hard as he ever did) and outright lied (forty-five, lol, he wished), but sometimes, white lies are okay. He'd rather scaremonger than see a bunch of kids turn into a pathetic sack of shit like him.

Emptying the gondola, Lemy went back to work.