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"You'll tell her I said goodbye, okay?"

"Yes."

"And if they ask for me?"

"I'll tell them we never spoke."

"Okay. Thanks, mom. Take care of yourself."

"I will. Don't come back."

Beep.

James clutched the phone to his ear, just listening to the dial tone for a passing moment, before tossing it to the river. It bobbed for a moment, before disappearing beneath the waves.

He knew he couldn't stick around the city with a warrant out for his arrest. If he was going to get caught, it would be in the act of burying his crime: murder.

The memory of it was burned into his mind.

Broke, miserable and drunk again, he stumbled home that night in much the same way he did every night. The rain poured down all the way, soaking him to the bone as his feet carried him back to the shoddy, downtown apartment, a familiar sedan parked outside. He knew the one, and he knew who drove it.

He called out with the door swung wide open, aggression and frustration in his voice that he clenched down upon with his fists. There was no reply. He stomped through.

Belongings were strewn out, littering the floor. There was a jacket hanging in the kitchen. The bedroom door was cracked open.

There before him, a sight he could not have prepared for. It burrowed deep inside of him.

His wife was laying with another man, a lupine with a dirty tattoo and a crooked ear.

James's dad.

What happened next was blurry, like a mosaic of violence and shifting colors. The two of them were bare. His father had made for the door, but he was stopped short. His wife screamed and begged. Those fists flew, coming down upon his father in a blind rage. He clutched at the bastard's neck.

"You could never be the man she needs." he yelled.

"What the hell do you know?"

"I know I raised a deadbeat failure."

The fat lupine taunted and jeered even as he choked for air, submitting to the vice his son had enforced, both palms pressing down with intoxicated fury. He wasn't listening anymore. Years of pent up aggression were expressed in that moment, of beatings and belittlement. The last straw had been pulled. Even as his wife hammered down upon his form with desperation and fear, he held tightly until it was over. He was there long enough that everything went quiet, and all he could hear was the faint crying of a child in the other room.

His father was dead. His wife had fled the apartment. A wave of relief washed over him.

Then, he ran.

Still half-drunk, still burning on that hot-blooded adrenaline, he hopped buses, wandered for hours and eventually wound up somewhere familiar. The town had seemed to watch him through the night, paranoid as he was. He arrived the next morning at that rusted fence. His childhood home. The overgrown walkway was neglected, the house in a state of disrepair. The driveway was empty.

There, his mother awaited, sickly and bedridden, widowed and alone just as her husband had left her every night.

James knew she would listen, their shared neglect giving them some twisted form of common ground over the years. He sobbed and profusely apologized, believing himself to be just as monstrous as his father, but she just listened like she always did. Her words were calm and gentle. In the end, she sent him away with his history tucked neatly into a folder and a roll of twenties. "Don't ever come back." she told him, over and over. "I love you, but don't ever come back."

He cut ties with everyone he knew, changed his name and dyed his hair. There wasn't a shred of paper left to find, he'd burned it all away, every document and file inside that folder. His old face was plastered across the news, on television, everywhere he went, but it didn't matter. In a couple days time, he'd be someone else, somewhere else, living some other life.

His flight was booked for Vegas, somewhere he doubted anyone would come looking. He'd never been there, and nothing tied him to the location, which suited him just fine. He had no plans and nowhere to stay, but he'd get by.

Now, sitting outside that lonely airport overlooking the river, he watched the boats sail past. There was something beautifully frightening about having no earthly connections, no responsibility. The whole experience had left James brutally sober, in a literal and metaphorical sense. He was seeing all of the opportunities he'd left to sink beneath him surfacing again, as if in some sick turn of consequence, he'd been given another chance to write his story.

For once in his life, he felt as though he could change. He was sitting at the airport, with the ability to go anywhere and do anything and he was sure nothing would stop him. Even in his old life, he was a nobody. Nobody cared what he was doing there. The terminal was near empty, the occasional traveler filtering in or out. He wondered if they would judge him in the same way if they knew what he was capable of, or if they would even care. James didn't care.

He clutched his ticket in one hand, his other gripping the bag over his shoulder. He was a four hour flight away from vanishing for good. He just wanted to be in the air, high above everything that was going on in the world, looking down on it all.

The announcement rang out, calling for the attendants of that midnight crossover.

Approaching the passport check, James quietly handed his identification over. The face in the photo was a lupine, but not him. Some stranger.

The hostess gave him a steady look. She didn't know it, but she was the first person to meet James, his new identity.

"Enjoy your flight, sir."

"Thanks."

And he stepped aboard, taking a seat by the window. From his pocket, he pulled a photo.

It was of his daughter, the only memory he wished to hold on to.

"I love you, but I can't ever come back. I'm sorry."

Then he tucked it away, and the plane began to ascend.