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The Story Of Self-Loathing

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Sheppard glanced around the dark and swelteringly hot crater he now called home. He tried so hard to prove his goodness. But once his evil showed its face, he gave up all hope and resorted simply to a long life of miserable self-loathing.
“Hello?” came a frail, high-pitched voice from the darkness, jolting him from his loneliness. It was the first human voice Sheppard had heard since his death.
“Who’s there?” he hopefully called back.
A wafer-thin old woman, with battered and torn clothes that looked like they had been quite nice at one time, emerged from the black. Her brown eyes drooped heavily underneath her brimless hat and beads of sweat trickled down her temples. She had been there for a while.
“Why, you are the first living soul I …show more content…

She waved wildly about with her hands as she went on about her life on earth, obviously entertained by her own storytelling. He thought himself into a daze as visions of Norton flitted through his mind. The poor boy, he thought, I never gave him even a half of a chance at life.
A tear welled up in his left eye as he remembered his little family just as the old woman glanced toward him.
“Oh, I know it is a sad story, is it not?” she asked, believing he had been moved by some nonsensical story she had apparently been telling.
“Er, yes. Very sad indeed,” Sheppard shook his head and replied. He had no idea what she had been speaking of. Yet she kept jabbering on, lulling him back into a series of memories.
Rufus sat huddled behind a pile of garbage and debris in that dark alley, his ribs each countable. The twisted mass of flesh attached to his ankle was curled up under him as he picked at the rotting food he had scavenged from the alley’s trashcans. That feeling of simultaneous sadness and opportunity flooded over Sheppard as he recalled seeing Rufus there.
The boy represented everything his own son was not. Rufus was humble, damaged, and resistant to help. He was Sheppard’s ticket to goodness.
“How did you die?” Sheppard abruptly asked the woman, interrupting her seemingly unending stream of words.
“Why, I was murdered, darling,” she said, almost dreamily. “My family and I were on our way to Florida for a vacation. We were traveling through south Georgia when we

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