Ernie was here. Louis heard him tapping lightly on the screen door. He had come to help Louis move out the house he shared with his fiance, the house he had called a home for the past six years.

Everything changed after the accident.

Louis and Veronica were madly in love. They were the sort of couple people either adored, envied or puked in your mouth at the mere sight of them. You could always find those two with a hand in each others back pocket, lovingly feeding each other tufts of bright blue cotton candy at the state fair, and even occasionally indulging in gold snifters brimming with each other’s thick red blood.

Everything changed after the accident.

It was a horrific scene that day on the freeway; it looked like a real life demolition derby had swept through, leaving a trail of smoking, twisted steel carnage in its wake. Louis was lucky to walk away from it. And when Veronica came to visit him in the hospital, he expected she would be just as thankful as he was. Except that, when she got a look at his teeth, all askance as a result of his face slamming into the dashboard, she backed away in horror.

Everything changed after the accident.

And now Louis was moving out of the love nest, seeing no reason to continue living in a house that whispered bittersweet memories of his love with every corner he turned. No, Veronica didn’t want to be with him anymore, stating that his mouth, all catawumpus and zigzagged from the trauma, was too much for her to bear. “You snag my lips when you kiss me now,” she cried, racing out of the house with nothing more than an overnight bag.

Six months, and she never came back.

“Louis, what box do you want me to pack your pornos in?” Ernie wondered. But Louis, with no explanation, slipped by him  with a somnambulant gait and walked out the front door.

Louis’ body was found a month later by the railroad tracks. Most of his flesh had been picked away at by hungry crows.

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Help me to not be so sad. Wah.