Symptoms of a bad father

Carlos Albuquerque
2 min readMay 18, 2024

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After Mr. Bronson dies, Sydney is stuck with his demons.

Work Text:

The day was mostly a blurr to Sydney. It was as though his senses were failing him, and he couldn’t trust what he saw.

He returned home late in the evening.

“Where’s your father?” his mother asked.

Sydney didn’t answerred, too stumped for what he might say.

His mother shrugged, and he run to his room and shut the door. Hiccups began building inside him, and the light and shadow began to look the same. As his vision blurred from the ears, something formed in front of him.

“Hello” it asked.

Sydney rose to his feet. He tried making out what it was, but between the tears still blurring his eyes he couldn’t tell much, beyond that it had a silhouette similar to his.

“W-who are you?” Sydney shouted.

“Why, I’m Sympathy” it replied giddily, “I’m so sorry it happened to you. And I think you can be sorry about what happened to your dad.”

‘Sorry? What a load of bullshit’ Sydney thought.

As if his thoughts materalised, another figure joined the fray, pushing the other one. This elicited a smile from Sydney, though his vision wasn’t getting better.

“What are you even talking about, some deabeat who fucked up already?” the new silhouette said, “He blew his shot literally, this discussion is senseless and petty!”

Yet another another figure appeared, holding Syndey’s paw.

“I’m Paternity” it said, “Your father was horrible no doubt, but you had nice moments with him too-”

“No!” Sydney shouted, retracting his paw, “Shut up, all of you!”

With that his vision was clear, like anger clears your mind, but the silhoettes were all gone.

Infuriated, then exhausted, Sydney went to bed.

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