There is a house in the middle of a field settled in front of rolling hills placed just outside of a town that doesn’t matter.
The house has a patio that extends around the first floor with pillars, not unlike the ones you’d find on the White House, that rise up to the second floor framing fifteen windows. You can see the house from the main road. A road that only welcomes five drivers a day, but for six or seven miles there is nothing but patted down field. A shed to the left side of this house has two parked cars in front of it: a metallic blue BMW X5, and a red ‘67 Mustang with black convertible top. We come in through the left hand side of the house, to a strawberry-blond haired woman, lying on her stomach, blood coming out the back of her head.
This grisly scene spills out into a mess in the doorframe, leading to the kitchen where remnants of a salad were left out. Stairs go up after the left side entrance. Climbing the stairs, immediately after the main floor, are two doors one on the right and left side. The left side room is too small for a full bath, but managed to squeeze in a toilet and a sink. The room across from it is a closet. The balcony off the stairs has a landing with two uncomfortable wood chairs matching a coffee table littered with magazines.
The couple called this the Sun Room, because of the windows around all sides. They had been thinking about knocking out the windows and making this a second patio, but they hadn’t been living here long enough to really do anything about it.
Off the Sun Room, there is another smaller hallway with a door at the end. This door opens up to a huge bedroom with white carpet, a bronze bed frame with sheets that match the carpet. The room is void of pictures except a lone picture on an end table, naturally, of the aforementioned couple.
The bathroom door is parallel to the back of the bed and when we enter the walls are red with pictures of pine trees framed in birch wood.
A graying curly-haired man sits on the seat of the enclosed shower, his head in his hands. A gold chain hangs from his neck. Swinging around now—catching the man’s eyes—shower-stream pushes his hair straight down his eyes. There are traces of wrinkles under his eyelids but not because he’s old, but because he feels he has nothing more to care about.
His name is Marten, and is completely, a loss for words.
We hold on his face until he wipes the water and hair back.
Concentrate. What just happened? He looks up at the showerhead, begging it for an answer, the water only pushing his hair back behind his forehead.
