He has pockets for loose change under his eyes. His one eye is taken aback from the moments he lost, while the other is searching for arachnids under the pillow. His hair is like kitchen foil, it’s shiny on one side but once you get it in a mess it can never go back to its original shape. From a distance his face looks strong, like the Taj Mahal, but if you look closer and analyse each feature, you’d see the battle wound on his forehead from the many wars he took part in and his flaking tree bark lips pressed together. His illuminated face is slowly being overtaken by the colour of death. His nose is the declining slope of a coat hanger and his skin is like a brown paper bag that has gradually degenerated to a crumpled mess. He used to wake up with a lamp shaped woman with breasts that felt of marshmallows and a French horn voice that accompanied his cello stringed remarks he’d make about the state of politics. But the men in cobalt shirts and synthesised sirens on loop took her away. Frank Sinatra used to clean his dishes when the cockatoos would call. Now Nina Simone sings break-up songs while the dishes pile up like a leaning bookshelf in the sink.  Damp soft paper reminds the whisky on his desk of the lamp shaped woman; her absent light somehow still glows against the wine cellar door.

 “Cellar door!” “Cellar door!” and the ghost took him, the coins spilled out from their pockets and beetroot drips can be heard as they pool around the brown paper bag now drenched on the floor. The gun slipped from his hand denting the Puritan pine wood floors painting a darker colour; a colour of death.