there was a puddle of blood on the floor and each time i took a step, the rubber soles of my boots yielded a nasty 'squelch-squish' and more of the dark syrupy blood flooded from the old shag carpet. the wall behind me was painted with brains, gray matter all nice and wrinkly - hanging like worms from the wallpaper as they inched closer and closer to the moulding, gravity their master.

there was a man without a face beneath my feet and i nudged his would-be nose with the toe of my boot. he would have groaned, i think. his would-be eyes stared up at me, cherry and full of liquid.

there was also a shotgun.

i am a cable man, not a crime scene investigator, but my guess is, this was suicide.

leaning over the man without a face, i couldn't help but to give him one. it made the crumbled heap of blood and gore more personable, i guess; i could identify with a human, but not with a corpse.

his name, that much i knew, where he lived - a charming house with english ivy growing up the windows and mold growing in the cracks of the rustic, pre-aged bricks. the lawn was well kept and in the far corner of the front lawn an old bench had set, painted heavenly white and draped in a jungle of roses, some overgrown bush that had been transplanted from somewhere or another (wild roses like that don't grow in this part of town). walking into the living room, the interior of the home had been just as quiet; a guitar was perched in the corner, hidden behind an over-stuffed couch, the scent of the furniture store still clinging tight to its crushed velvet fabric. the whole house seemed gutted of life, a howling wind racing through the predictable, 90-degree angle twists in the short stint of hallway, breathing fresh air into the stale plastic bubble of the house. if i hadn't had been called to the house by that sweet little voice of some faceless woman ("the key'll be under the doormat. my husband's been missing - but the tv's been broken longer than he's been gone."), then i would have thought the house vacant, save for the ghostly furniture.

it takes a good woman to keep a house so clean - a good one or an absent one. the kitchen counter was wiped clean of any smudges, but there were no wet towels in the sink, and the washing machine in the laundry room was eerily quiet. the refrigerator had been emptied, too. no one was living here, and that was unsettling in itself.

the guitar, though, upon further examination, showed recent signs of life. the fretboard had been worn by the presence of hungry fingers, and the dark metal-wash of the strings had been plucked away to reveal the rusty, gritted iron - stripped of decorative coloring. there were whiskers of ancient, broken strings curling from the guitar's neck, and it produced a funny, off-tune sound when i strummed curiously, my fingers remembering the old chords i'd learned and stored away one summer when i was thirteen and ultimately curious (but mostly bored).

i imagine the guitar must have meant something to the man without a face. his signature had been etched into the back of the drum. it was a neat old aucostic; i could see why it would be placed in the living room, a sort of fancy, but modest, trophy.

the man without a face continued to stare up at me, his blown-off mouth hanging agape and his jaw completely unhinged. it was unsettling, compelling, and he urged me with his baby-blues, or peridot-greens, maybe even dark doe brown, eyes to figure out his puzzling past.

i nudged his palm with my foot. his lightly curled fingers brushed against the steel toed boot, like a baby trying to grasp something pressed into its hand. he couldn't muster enough strength to grab at my foot, drag me down to his level so we could talk as equals - eye to eye.

his fingernails were shaved close to the skin on one hand, grown longer on the other. the guitar was his; i had known that. callouses cropped on his hands, and there were ink stains in the crooks of his fingers. my eyes looked around the attic, the ceiling dribbling electrical wiring (oh look, there's the one i'm supposed to be looking for), and i quickly found the small desk, settled happily next to a window streaming butterscotch sunshine. it sprinkled light onto a stark white page, emblazoned with dark black letters that run towards the end of the piece of paper.

i figured this was the man's final song.

i didn't read it; that was too personal.

the man without a face, he wore a button-up plaid shirt, and underneath it was a white wife-beater stained with his blood, like old perspiration stains, except instead of dingy piss yellow, they were an unforgiving shade of red. his mush eyes and mush face looked up to me with a smirk and he shared with me the memories of concerts and screaming fans - young girls flashing their perky, pear-shaped breasts while rocking their hips back and forth in tantalizing movements to the beat of the drums. strobe lights flickered in his face and he sang mournfully into the microphone, his throat bobbing with the monotone words that streamed effortlessly from his robust chest, the plaid button down shirt ripped open and flapping as he strummed away familiar riffs that he'd coined up in his attic - his home away from home.

beneath the bird's nest of his attic where he'd written all his songs, a busy wife cleaned and then left unnoticed, uncaring. they married for the hell of it, but hell ain't worth the trouble, they both figured.

i am not a psychologist, i am not a crime scene investigator.

the man without a face would have liked to have been a rock star with the fancy fan clubs and the plaid button up shirts that would have seemed fashionable. rocker chic, the tabloids would have called it. truth be told, though, he wrote songs in his spare time when he wasn't repairing some minor electrical problem in some stranger's home (not house, like his, but home), and he had only learned guitar in his parents' garage as a bored 13 year old one summer when the sun rained heat and the pavement scorched your feet, even if you were wearing socks.

he was too domesticated to be a rockstar and his voice wasn't deep and scratchy enough and angst had never been his thing.

he fell in love one winter with a pretty blond who loved to sing and go skating, the cold coloring her cheeks a pleasant pink and the wind causing her silverfish hair to stream in ribbons behind her. she always dressed in pale blue, frost blue, and hummed when she worked. the first time he made love to her, his fingernails digging into her hips where fading stretchmarks lay like grooves for his fingers (and his fingers only) she had screamed as he pushed her closer and closer to orgasm, and then lay panting beneath him as he showered her in sweet, hummingbird kisses.

they got married four months later for the hell of it, because the tabloids glorified such behavior, and it turned out hell wasn't worth the trouble.

his pretty blond wife slept around with the handsome brunette prince charming next door, and he fell asleep with bottles of Jack Daniel clenched tight by his calloused fingers, who had found comfort once again on his old six-string from that summer before seventh grade.

the man without a face didn't even live in his own house. no one did.

he looked up at me with his mush, gore eyes - crimson and still oozing blood like burgundy tears - and his loose jaw, and smiled, and nodded and he held his happy shotgun close to him like a child tucks his teddy bear beneath his chin, comfortable and content and at home.

and looking at the man without a face, really looking at him, i smiled too and sunk to my knees. the material of my pants soaked up all his blood and then i sprawled besides him, took the shotgun, and slept with his ghostly corpse. my jaw rotted off and then my eyes exploded and burned with gun powder, my throat tasted of bullets and a dry explosion and i missed my wife, missed the woman she was before we were married, and i regretted never making the rotting dreams of concerts and crowded stages a reality.

my would-be pulpy, red eyes stared up at nothing, my unhinged jaw agape and my mouth blown off, twisted into a rough and tumble smile.

hell ain't worth the trouble, anyways.

eh, couldn't think of an appropriate way to end this. inspired by kurt cobain's untimely death.

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