Number Three: Edward

Edward’s father opened the gas station in 1969, the year after Edward was born and two years before his mother disappeared only to reappear later as a minor star on Latin American television. When his father was institutionalized in 1986 for an incurable melancholy that never seemed to blossom into depression Edward himself took over operation of the gas station. Soon afterwards he moved into the house his father had built in the weeds behind the Fuel For You Too Food Mart.
Over the next several months Edward immersed himself in the process of becoming his father. He began to despair. He stopped shaving and showering according to any regular schedule. He skipped meals. He pumped gas.
Sometimes he smoked cigarettes while he pumped the gas. The customers sat sweating in their seats but no one said anything because Edward looked like the kind to simply extinguish the butt in your face, or else calmly ash into the nozzle. Still, the customers kept coming because Edward hadn’t adjusted the prices since 1986.
But 1986 was twenty years ago. Or more. Or less. Now hemorrhaging money, Edward wastes away. Smoking his cigarettes, pumping his gas into the cars of strangers who never even knew his father, never knew the gas station in its glory days, if a gas station can have glory days. Edward allows his glory days to fade away as well.
On Sundays he visits his father. They attend mass in the chapel in the psychiatric hospital and they sit silently in front of a window, gazing through the glass or at it. Edward looks at his father who frowns at his son. Edward catches his reflection in the mirror and thinks for a moment that his father sure looks like hell before realizing it's his own reflection.