From the exterior, you could almost describe it as quaint. Certainly, the cheery blue with white trim gives the impression that it’s taken care of, for anyone who has time to touch-up paint so often must believe it’s worth something. Certainly, they must care. No steps squeak on the porch, (which has four steps exactly; no one notices but it was meant to have three), and the door is well-oiled, gracefully sliding open without scuffing the polished mahogany floor. Some pause, noticing the strange contrast between the bright paint and dark floor, but most move on. It’s scrubbed nicely, and many just take it as a preference of the keeper. With every step, miniscule oddities swell into obvious kinks in what was originally perceived to be flawless. Look into the kitchen which stands just to the right. It’s cluttered, with paint cans and brushes, and newspaper scattered on the floor. Buttercup yellow is smeared haphazardly, and although the color is pretty, the awful application is far more eye-catching. Picture frames litter a counter, a box of six-by-four photos dropped beside it. Some of the photos are dusty, in black-and-white of gangly teens, some of crotchety wrinkled men hiding behind glasses. A few are blurry, of toddlers muddling about outside, on carpeted floor, in the snow. Flakes settle on their eyelashes, eyes red from a misused flash. Most of the photos have a corner bent, or a tear. Other than the disarray on the floor, all is empty. The fridge breathes warm air, and the cupboards, though finished and stained, still have tape outlining their edges. The living room is clean and presentable, with mint walls and cerulean couches. Paintings, some prints and some painted with an unsteady brush after a nine-to-five, balance the pastel colors. More than half are crooked. A looming bookcase, too heavy to move alone, commands attention from a far corner. Every shelf is crowded, books shoved in with a desperate hand. As a reward of such effort, none had to be given away. Titles ranging from “Thumbelina” to “Edgar Allen Poe: The Complete Works” sit together. They’re all kept in case an occasion arises when some neighbor’s daughter visits, for when that family member complains they’ve got nothing to read, and do you have any suggestions? Nobody ever comes over, but it’s sensible to be prepared. Through the living room (a hall extends off but it’s mainly to store boxes in) there’s a bedroom. If ever there was chaos, this room is it. Just as with the kitchen, paint is strewn everywhere. Streaks of dried lilac embrace a few feet, but it’s a long process to paint lilac over crimson to a point where none of those bloody stains show through. Thank god it’s being repainted. Gaze at the grossly peeling and chipping corners! Pitiful; who waits such a while to freshen up walls. The painting extravaganza is only on one side; crumpled clothes and creased sheets and ripping blankets control the other. An office cowers far at the back, past the bedroom by at least fifty feet. Walls are decidedly white in this room, not a tasteful off-white, stark white, blinding white. Papers became floor; no one dares to find a bit of wood peeping through. Most papers are scrunched in fury, shredded in agony. And there’s plenty of agony in this room. Marks on a desk document how many thousands of times it’s been beaten with a fist, and corpses of pencils crunch beneath your feet. Their tips are all worn to a stub, smashed, or the graphite’s cracked and shattered. None are usable. A portion of the wall is fractured from a foot going through it, and a few rusty spots stand out. Those walls raked the flesh that demolished it, for revenge is justified in this house. The splintered gash never healed, and it shrieks from pain. The sides go in and out, breathing through lungs of plaster. It’s dying. The walls scream. Even its keeper ran, knowing the yawning void would never be plugged, and grisly tears from razors on hearts would never cease to fall. That the walls would never cease to squeeze, release, and squeeze tighter. No amount of foolishness could band-aid this flood of misery. No reserve of strength could raise its fallen soldiers, whose uniforms were butchered, barked giants, and whose eyes were stabbed out with knives fashioned of stuttered words. Those sockets stare at the different colors, the furnished and unfurnished. The projects started and forgotten, and the ones not forgotten, but abandoned. And failures. Those circled the air with a misty presence of breath hugged by cold. This house loathes its keeper, for they created this jumbled mess of a multiple personality disorder, armed with brushes and pigments and hopes for crumbling fantasies.
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United States • 18 years old