An Urban Gothic tale about the horrors of fatherhood and sonship. Excerpt below. For full text email coreywaite [at] gmail [dot] com.

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Tyler found the money in an old Swiffer Sweeper box beside a dumpster, nearly five thousand dollars in bills so damp and over-handled that the presidents looked angry and warped in the streetlight. He followed his first instinct and leaned down to smell the money. The bills themselves were odorless, but Tyler caught the sweetness of envelope glue behind them, along with the high tang of rotting food from the dumpster. He looked down the alley, and then over his shoulder towards Lombard, but saw nothing but a cab idling outside of a dive bar in the still October evening.

     Tyler thought back, tried to remember why he had picked up the box in the first place. He recalled skating west, toward the bay, rushing so he would get there in time to see the dockworkers unload the giant barges onto the pier. Something about the way the men worked—their hardhats and determined hand gestures—fascinated Tyler for reasons he couldn't explain. He was humming an improvised melody above an austere house beat thumping from his ear buds, dodging the usual herd of drunk frat boys on South street, when he turned into the garbage-strewn alleyway. He passed the dumpster halfway down and pulled up short.

     Looking down at the box again, Tyler realized it must have been the pretty white family under the Swiffer logo that caught his eye. The mother had a scarf tied into her hair and the father was lifting his son up high so the little boy could clean the ceiling fan. Tyler wanted to get a closer look at the little boy. He wanted to see if the boy's face resembled the father's, or if, as he suspected, they were just actors, models who actually had their own families and friends outside of the world of the photo-shoot. But as soon as he picked up the box Tyler felt a weight shifting inside, and before he knew it he was jamming rolls of cash into his hoodie pocket, a gesture that pushed all the blood to his head where he could hear it sloshing around inside.

     Just as Tyler was about to escape the alleyway with the money in hand, he noticed an immaculate door that shone bright red beside the dumpster. It held his attention for a long moment, the round golden knob in particular. He found himself stepping towards it when something that sounded like a car backfiring broke his reverie. He heard two men shouting in the distance, and then the screeching sequence of a car alarm. After that he went straight to Ward.