Days end. Eight hours of insults, half a life of escaping, I head to the casino where I reside. Grime sliding from hallway walls, muffles the reverberations of maggot memories. My welcome mat.

Who will be there this time? Soft and smooth, with my heart held in velvet hands, or am I stepping in to a den of madness, where vise like teeth trap wicked words, that wait to gnash at the last remnants of my soul?

Turning the knob to nothing means nothing. Vile can sit as silent as an autumn moon. I enter because I live here. I Love here. I die here, yet I can avoid it no more than I can a sneeze.

Emboldened from hours behind a glass, braced, I turn my key and am struck. Odors of unknown origin, confront what’s left of my senses after years of intake. Fixating blurry sockets to what, I can’t tell. Sights not seen play out before me. A shadow of a leg, oily and slanted, draped at odd angle. Arms crossed in repose. Lips, plum and pursed, suggesting. Inviting. Caught
between Pall Mall marred fingers, a note.

Kids are at your Mom’s, phones off the hook and dinner is on the sofa.