The metal of the next door is rusted to violet in heavy rivers under the sun-washed and peeling orange paint, the same as any department store's freight exit that lets out to a loading dock. The number Six, in black stencil, is badly obscured by what the weather has done to it. Just how the real Brad is obscured by what the world has done to him, what the girl has done, his father, what society did. But all society really did was get away with the evasion of any responsibility by blaming itself to begin with. And a sick, sad world can't answer for itself, so why should Brad?

music playing in this room

Room Six is a shock of a hundred shades of pink on black, the bastardized depiction of Japanese culture adopted by the wealthiest of the Western world in the 1980s. The black enamel dresser matches the headboard, and the nightstands are inlaid with pearl blooming Hanakotoba. Brad's nature is as cheap and shameless as his decor, but something more genuine wafts from under the dirty clothes that litter the floor; the smell of stale anal sex mixing with the steam of a dirty bath house overseas that every man like Brad would have visited during the war and never told the boys back home about.

when are we?

A drawback of living at the nexus of all realities is never knowing when things happened. The Gray family struggle with this on a regular basis, sometimes only relying on intuition to determine what’s happening between us at any given moment. Watch the struggle below.