The House

The house stood alone on a country road outside of town. Its bright red steel roof was visible from miles away and if you were to look at it from the south side you could see the jumbo size poster of a disfigured teeny-bop pop star stuck to the roof from the highway.

Behind the house was an abandoned shed standing crooked as if it would fall with the next push of a prairie wind. Inside it was an old rusted ’54 Chevy pickup all together forgotten. Sticking out of the tall neglected grass were couches, hockey sticks and half-burnt bookshelves.

The garage was filled with the stench of a pool sized garbage pile rotting beside the door and beside it firewood littered everywhere on the cracked floor. Two sparrows had flown in and out as they fed their nest perched up in the rafters.

When entering the house you would have to read the black graffiti message sprayed on the door, “Hey there” and a post-it note stuck on the window saying, “You are the party.”

The foyer floor was a layer of dirt, dust, and dozens of random shoes kicking around. Looking through the foyer and into the dining room dividing wall was a fruit basket lodged into the wall, holding an overused ashtray.

Upon entering the dining room you could smell the history of debauchery in the form of hundreds of beer cans, whiskey bottles riddled with mould and ash, cupboards filled with old bread and bowls of half-eaten macaroni and cheese, with the lingering scent of marijuana smoke living in the couches. Christmas lights and sticky notes with subliminal party messages cluttered the walls.

The “dining room” table top was a collage of melted crayons, party signatures, and faces burnt in the wood with Bic lighters. Walking through the chaos was like stepping on a piece of gum as the floor was permeated with beer; subjected to the fate of being sticky. The dividing wall was half covered with boxes of empties,

To the right was the kitchen fridge, masked with waxed on t-shirt logos and angry faces. The counters held mostly beer cans and looked abused and hostile as there was no room to rest an arm.

If you were to waltz through the first phase you were sure to pass out in the second as your eyes would meet with a broken mirror staring back at you asking if you wanted a shot of whiskey. The living room was the resting place of the junkies that lived there. Four or five ashtrays full of garbage, cigarettes and anything else small enough to fit in an ash tray would fill the trays. Drugs and booze covered the coffee table. Two TV’s sat in the corner where teeny-bop pop star used to hang. Behind the coffee table were two couches stacked on top of each other as if to accommodate those who wanted to sit in a higher place. The chandelier looked down upon the garbage ridden floor, usually holding up a hat, Christmas lights, and more random objects.

Beyond the dividing wall was a place of musical treachery. All instruments lay there to rest. A fire place beaten to it's naked state with a hammer and axe was situated in the wall. Above the Christmas stockings read a white spray on Christmas wish, "Happy Fvkcin' Xmas."

The basement was truly hell. Hundred's of broken bottles carpeted the floor. The air down there was a mouthful of choking fire extinguisher dust and dry-wall debris. The walls were beautified with drunken p-art-y work or hacked to pieces with the household hatchet. It was a crime scene.

The bedroom's could look better or worse. You couldn't know until the morning.

The house was a place of art in the form of debauchery. This is where I lived for close to a year with my dearest brother's of rock 'n' roll hellfire, and I miss it a little.