115:4

It was Sunday morning and he'd just gotten home from a party that started the night before. His mother yelled after him, wondering if he'd go to church with her today. It was the same question she'd asked him time and time again and as always his answer was the same. No, he didn't bother with church and especially not with the pounding headache he had. He still turned on the radio beside his bed, though, despite the headache he claimed to have. Turning on his radio was more habit than anything.

His mother was always silent when she heard his answer. She knew the only thing her son did religiously was go out. He was the only Hell she had ever raised in her life. As she put on her pearl necklace, she told him she was leaving and he grunted in recognition as he turned down the covers on his bed.

As soon as the door clicked closed and he heard his mother's old beat up blue car groan to life, his eyes sprung back open and he rolled out of his bed. He hadn't bothered taking off his shoes, even. His sheets were dirty. His black hair was scruffy and thick, standing in all directions and it looked like a cheap wig at the right angle.

He sat on the floor of his bedroom, digging back behind a bunch of books on the same end table that his radio was on. Bob Dylan was singing now. Subterranean Homesick Blues. He found himself singing along mindlessly as his mother was probably doing at the same time, except her songs were about a God he didn't seem to have an interest in. Bob Dylan may as well have been his Messiah.

Finally. He found what he was looking for. A half smoked joint that was starting to come unwrapped out of a page from Psalms in the Bible his mother gave him. "Don't worry," he'd told her months ago when she asked if he'd been using it. "It's getting plenty of use." She didn't ask what he'd used it for. She didn't want to know. Ignorance was bliss to her when it came to her son whose pants were torn in all the trendy places and seemed to delight in behavior that nearly gave her a heart attack. It'd all gone wrong when his dad left when he was 13. She'd been trying to do damage control ever since, but she'd failed him miserably. She'd failed herself. She'd failed God.

He didn't care who he failed though. Music was the only thing to depend on and all he needed were the gold and silver records of all those award winning and world changing musicians. He took his boots off as he balanced and burned God's words on his lips. Out with his feet came old rags that he'd stuffed in his boots to make himself seem taller, like more of a man than he was. A man that his father would be proud of.

He got angry at the thought of his father, the son of a bitch had walked out four and half years ago. He didn't need that old bastard. All he needed was his gold and silver records. That's all he needed. His joint would be gone, he would come down from his high and hit his lowest again, that poor sad bitch that was his mother would die of heartbreak from her own son with baby blue eyes like his asshole father, that girl down the street that had more of his heart than he'd care to admit would be ugly after she'd had a few kids by a man that wasn't him in a few years. Everything would fade away, even God, but not his gold and silver records.