Concerning a Certain Birth

 Kevin had survived an abortion. This was not his choosing.
  He had often been told that, respectively, God had some divine, ineffable purpose for his life, or his own inner consciousness had even in nascence asserted itself in Herculean manner. One was so much abysmal, relative hope in the face of evidence, and for that matter, God no longer held credibility either.
  Even now he looked as if he’d carried that mantle of death for seventeen years; consumptive, pale, eyes like a sunken grave, scarred more ways than one and prone to inexhaustible nightmares.
  He had developed a way to counter them, like he had the physical side to pain. It involved a tumbler of absinthe, a cube of sugar and a dollop of pills, all coruscated by a simple Blue Tip match.
  His father violently threw things like this out when he caught him, like he treated everything. Said he was going to hell. He was wrong though. This was hell.