They say you hear bells before you die, but that must be the old and superstitious saying so, as I heard nothing but sheep. Constant bleating in my ears as I lay bloodied on the grass in darkness, helpless, dying like a rat. I can’t even say I put up a good fight.
It’s not hard to picture dad’s face looking down on me now, disappointed and drunk. I’m sure he has a bottle in his hand up there, or down there for that matter. He always told me he would burn, that life has its own way of catching up to you. Everything bad you do, he would say, would end up by your feet, shackled to your ankles for you to drag everywhere you go. A timeless weight.
I never forget the day we shared our first drink together. It was his way of baptising me. Turning me into a real man for the real world.

I had suckered down the shot of whiskey and tried my best to keep it in. The plaster on the bridge of his nose crinkled as he let slip a thin smile from beneath his dirty grey beard. His plaster hid a wound that had never quite healed from the time he jumped through a bar window; it had built up quite a name for himself in this backwards town.
I was the thing that let it down, though. His weak son.
Nervous eyes fell upon us the second...