Christopher Terry angrily stepped into another dimension in life, when he stepped across the threshold of this run down old shack on the edge of town that had long since been forgotten by not only the city politicians, but the rest of well to do population. The only time you heard mention of it at all was when the law enforcement were called to another foul odor, and they would begin searching the area for it's usual sorrowful source.

The late evening sky was clear, and the breeze was cool in late October, which was good, for the stench of this place was pungent and distasteful to the nostrils. The stars were beginning to become visible, and on the horizon was still the remnants of what was left of the sunset. Orange and pink swirls of nature transformed the skies into a masterpiece. One he had viewed many times with an open mind and a peaceful heart, but this was not one of those times. Nothing in his life was at peace, nothing was art, but everything within him was an erupting volcano spewing hot lava and forming mountains of devil spawned waste.

He wanted nothing more than to turn back the hands of time, back to when Jennifer was a babe. His little girl that he had so proudly Fathered, held in his arms and rocked to sleep, taught how to play baseball, and watched with a glee filled eye as her Mother dressed her in pink frilly dresses and shiny leather shoes.

That would not happen, instead, he would now choose the coffin that she would lay in for her eternal rest, the dress that she would be presented in, for her loved ones final farewell address to her, and dam it he was angry, ferociously hostile toward life.

He had not a clue what he was searching for, nor his real reason for coming here, but it was something he felt he was forced to do. The full moon was shining through the openings where window panes once were, but now only vacant spaces. The graffiti on the walls screamed at him, yelling obscenities demanding to know why he was intruding on it's domain. No doubt it had been left by one that was equally as vile as it was. Hundreds of empty alcohol containers strewn about, old chairs and mattresses in the corners. Nothing clean, nothing. Christopher Terry was asking himself, "Why?" "What was my child, my daughter of only 22 years of age, doing in a place such as this?" "What could she have been thinking?"

Sadly enough, he knew. Seven years prior, his wife, her Mother, was tragically killed in an auto accident by a drunken driver. Sharon was on her way home from the grocery store when she was ran off the road into a ravine. Killed instantly, according to the medical examiner's report. Since that day, he not only lost his wife, but his daughter as well.

Her childhood smiles faded, friends that she had always known began to dwindle one at a time, her grades deteriorated, along with her sense of self-worth. She felt alone, and now she had died, alone. Here, in this time warp of nowhere. Here within these walls where only drug addicts and societal misfits gathered, but gathered to do what? Certainly, it contained parts of Jennifer's life that he was needing to become more familiar with.

The sound of movement startled him, it dawned on him for the first time that he was not alone. In the darkened corner was a man, that looked as though he might be in his late twenties, early thirties, nodded his head slightly while looking at him with a questionable glare. He had the same appearance as his dwelling, unkempt, unclean, not worthy of human inhabitance. His clothes were covered in filth and his personal odor wasn't any better, as a matter of fact he added a bit more vileness to the already bitter smell that was lingering in the air.

Conservatively, Christopher spoke to the newly discovered vagrant, with a quick, "How ya' doin'?" The young man didn't much more than groan, as Chris moved passed him walking into next room. It was just like the other, except there were several used syringes and other strange looking objects that he was sure fit somewhere in the world of drug abuse, but then as bad as he hated to admit it, so did Jennifer.

Through the barriers of dust swarming through, his gruff voice, spoke with conviction. "I tried, man, I really tried to talk her into getting help, into cleaning up, but she just wouldn't listen." His words caught Chris off guard, leaving him confused. "You're Jen's Father, Right?" he asked?
"You, You knew my Jennifer?"

"Yeah man, I knew her. She and I talked many times, right here in this room. I was here the first time she ever came here. She was a nice girl, a pretty girl."

He pulled and pushed himself up from the corner, now standing, still leaning some against the wall, as though it was supplying strength for his balance. Finally gaining his step to stand alone, he moved from the depth of the corner, now filling the entirety of the doorway. He was much larger than he had first appeared slumped down on the floor. He was wearing an old army jacket and a pair of jeans that was probably once blue in color but now faded into a dull gray. Shaggy bearded and an old baseball cap, tennis shoes with holes in various places, it made one wonder how long he had been wearing this same attire. His face was rough, making it hard to really guess his age, but he was probably not nearly as old as he looked. Weather beaten and rugged was Chris's first thoughts, of this man that was now claiming to have spoken to his Jen more recently than he had.

As Jen's Father he was looking for answers. Answers to questions that he had not even proposed yet. Answers, that may never be found.

"Hound, as in Hound Dog."

"Uhmm, what?" Chris asked.

"Hound, that's what they call me around here." he stated, very matter of factly. "They gave me that name for two reasons I believe, one because I always look so shaggy and the other because I'm always the first to smell the difference in the air when one overdoses. It seems they think I can smell death before it happens." "And sometimes I do."

"Is that what happened with my daughter? Did you smell her death?"

"Well, actually I did. I spent several hours with her earlier that afternoon, and I had thought that I had talked her out of riggin' that day, but then later on that evening she came back, but man she was already messed up, and she done her best to avoid me, as though she didn't want me to see it on her face. It was in her eyes, that look that one gets when they are thinking about something they know they can't change. Regrets of saying things they can't take back. She had pretty eyes too, and a warm smile. And uh...a good heart, yeah, she had a beautiful heart."

Then a deafening silence fell across the room, as Hound turned his back and began to stare out the window. He pointed to a grassy area just a short way from the building.

"There. There is where I found her, " his hand trembling and his voice just as shaky. "She was leaned up against the trunk of that large tree. At first I thought she was just passed out. She looked so peaceful, then I realized she looked too peaceful. Ya, know what I mean, Man? Just too peaceful."

Chris let Hound talk for hours, ramble from one story about Jen to another. Trying his best to soak up bits and pieces of the parts of his daughter's life that otherwise he'd never have known. Somehow, he felt a sense of angry gratitude for all the information that he was receiving, but why anger? He didn't know, he brushed it off as being typically bruised by the whole situation. After all, she was his daughter, and he was sitting here in a crack house, conversing with the likes of a man that he had hoped that his child would have forever stayed clear of, but it was clear that hound knew things about this part of her life, that he did not. When Hound started to repeat stories, Chris immediately knew that it was probably time for him to make his exit. Chris stood up, and began to ponder on how he was going to make his break, when Hound said, "That's about it, that's about all I can tell you."

As Chris shuffled slowly toward the door, it came to him that he had questions for this man that he had not yet asked.

"Tell me Hound, why is it that if you offer advice to the others about needing to clean up their lives, and straightening out, why are you still here? Why are you not cleaning up your life? Why aren't you, practicing what you preach, so to speak?"

Hound didn't reply at first but then with tears in his eyes he admitted that Chris was not the first to inquire about his living conditions and his life's convictions.

"I didn't always live like this. Regrets have placed me here. Just like all the others. They come here with mountains of regrets. I have mine as well, and I scope it's boulders every moment of every day. I have for the last six or seven years. Sometimes I feel as though I'm going to reach the top finally, but then I find myself back at the bottom looking up again. I've grown tired of the constant climb."

"So, what happened back then that you regret so awfully," Chris asked?

"It all happened so fast, and I would do anything if I could only...only go back to that day." Hound paused but then started up again without anymore probing on Chris's part.

"Some of the guys that I worked with was stopping for a beer or two at their favorite watering hole, and I stopped just for the sake of fitting in. After a few games of pool and more than the intended one or two brews, I decided that it was time to head for home. I had no idea the impact of my decision to drive would play not only on my life but the lives of many others as well. It would be one that until the next morning on the front page of the newspaper I would not realize. My whole world crashed as I read the bold black letters, Woman Dies After Being Ran Off Roadway by Apparent Drunken Driver. As I began to read, the times, the place, I knew that I would have been in the exact area when they reported all to have taken place. I threw the paper down and ran to inspect my car, and much to my horror there on the fender was the proof that I was that drunk driver, I was the murderer that had taken an innocent life."

By this time Chris had very soberly reached the conclusion that not only would this society reject the man that had given him answers into the death of his daughter, but now he was confessing the murder of his wife as well. He also knew that if he said anything he would again be gone.

"I'd do anything...anything to change that day. To take it back, to pass up that bar that afternoon and go straight home. Just to be able to live without this mountain to climb." Hound said, while sliding down the wall, slumping back into the very same position that Chris had first saw him in.

With a lump the size of a baseball in his throat, Chris asked trying to appear as calm as possible, "Why don't you just go to the authorities and turn yourself in, face the music so your climb won't be so constant?"

With his head now buried in his hands, Hound, almost with disgust in his voice said, " I've tried, I've tried a thousand times to do just that. I've spent hours hanging around the police station trying to talk myself into going inside and doing away with the guilt, but I can never bring myself into facing this so alone. It's not like I hadn't suffered the consequences. Since then both my parents have died without ever knowing my where abouts, without one word of consolation of why their only Son up and disappeared without a trace from their lives. As a matter of fact, it was your Jen that helped me clip the obituary of their deaths from the papers."

This was more than Chris could personally handle. He knew then he had to get out of there without peaking this man's awareness. Before he realized that he had just confessed to murder. Before he could panic and possibly become violent. He didn't know that he would, but at the same time he didn't know that he wouldn't either.

Hound was motionless...not making a sound so Chris broke the silence by telling him thank you for all he had done for his daughter. For taking the time to listen to her, for trying to talk her into coming home, then breaking away and heading for his car.

Once out the door it felt like air was once again available to his lungs. It seemed as though he had been held in a vacuum for hours, existing only on the recycled air that he had within him when he entered that building, which was now equivalent of seven years ago.

He drove straight to the police station. Parked his car, but when he went to get out, he withdrew. He just sat there pondering over the whole revelation that he'd just witnessed. The sound of Hound's voice kept echoing through his mind, how he had tried time after time to put an end to this.

The next thing he knew he was re-parking his car in his own drive. He had not told anything to anyone. He had waited for seven long years to bring a conclusion to his wife's death, and now that he could, he had not. Why?

The sun broke through the window of the den, slicing into his tired bloodshot eyes. This was the day that he would say his goodbye to his Jennifer. To the daughter that he had lost long before her death. He loved her no less today than he did the day that he watched her being born. He loved his wife no less today than he did the first time he had ever laid eyes on her. One arm at a time he put on his jacket, straightened the tie that Jenn had given him for Father's Day last year, and reached for the brass knob on the door.
As he stepped down, there on the sidewalk lay the morning paper, and on the front page was a black and white photo of Hound with the headlines that read: Man Found Dead. He unfolded the paper so that he could read the follow up story. It read that the police had found a written statement in his pocket where he admitted to being the drunken driver that had caused a death seven years earlier, and three obits. One each of his parents and the lady that he had killed.