I stand contented with bloodshot eyes, starring blankly at the great frontier, while my brother lies dead in the thick sand; face, lips and cheeks stained red with the remains of a day that could no longer sustain him.
His wife is on her back, joyously letting the newest employee fulfill his job description, before licking the blue-ink stained envelopes and double checking his math on the yearly tax forms.
His mother sits alone on the lime green couch, hands chapped from white rubber gloves and thick lemony-fresh liquids soaking into her pores.
Her husband impatiently asleep in their unmade bed upstairs, his limbs sprawled out on the communal pillows and sheets; his mistress cautiously balancing her checkbook while the rent glimmers just out of reach this month.
Her landlord is cleaning the double-barrel shotgun passed down to multiple generations of tense morphine addicts as a surefire sign that not much of anything changes.
His two young daughters march back and forth between the kitchen and the living room, banging on pots and pans with wooden spoons and elongated grins stretching from cheek to chin.
Their teacher drunkenly pays the doorman, before investigating the extracurricular activities of his second girlfriend in the last five years.
She's busy buying flowers for her mother's grave when I call and break the news about George.
"He's gone," I say without any preliminary response "And it was beautiful."
"I guess I'll see you in a few days," she replies "Make sure no one can find him."
"Will do." I cough and then turn back to the landscape. It will be dark sooner than later for all of us.