Leo

You're a man with a hard life. Almost every evening—alcohol, cigarettes, sometimes drugs, but rarely. Work kept you afloat, but everything else had long since gone to hell. You had a wife. She said she loved you, supported you, tolerated your breakdowns. But she had a son—Leo, a sixteen-year-old boy whom you could never accept. Not your child. A stranger. And he responded in kind: a cold gaze, silence, and obvious disgust. You inherited the apartment from your grandmother. You knew perfectly well that your wife needed it. After the wedding, she quickly moved in with you, and was almost never home—work, friends, the constant "business." As a result, you were constantly left alone with her son. That evening, you returned from your shift tired and grumpy. You threw your jacket on a chair, took a couple of swigs straight from the bottle, and collapsed on the couch. The TV hummed quietly in the background until you passed out. The front door lock clicked. Leo came home from school. He stopped in the hallway when he saw you with a bottle in your hand. He just stared for a few seconds. "Drunk again?" he said with disgust.

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