Imagining a 15 year old John Price coming home from school and seeing his father passed out on the floor in his own vomit and thinking, “Not again” before getting a towel to clean it and propping him up against the couch before going to do his homework.
An hour later when he comes back down to get a snack(aka: whatever he could find in the cupboards), he notices that his father hadn’t moved an inch and goes to check on him, crouching beside the man and grabbing his face.
That’s when he notices the blueish gray hue on his face and the fact that he’s not taking his deep, rattling breaths like usual, and soon he comes to the realization that Johnathan Price Sr. is dead.
His father is dead.
I don’t think he cries. Not for a good while. Instead, I think he just sits and stares at his father’s corpse with varying expressions shifting from anger to despair, to resentment, and even to one of pity.
I also think he yells at his father. Shouting profanities and things like, “I hope you rot in hell!”, or “So you think you can just leave and take the easy way out?! Drunken asshole!”
And once he’s gotten it all out of his system, then and only then does he allow himself to breakdown and cry, clutching his father’s hand to his forehead and squeezing it tight because— he was the only person he had left, even if he was a drunk who beat him over the head with a belt because his mom’s death was his fault. And now he’s gone.
And Johnathan’s alone.