Pictures from magazines taped to  walls. Photographs of women in swimsuits, half naked, some biting their bottom lip. Carpets with blood stains on them. Smells of cat piss throughout the house. Twenty felines circling an empty food dish. He sits on a wooden stool, smoking hand rolled cigarettes one after another.

Do you remember when dad drove us up to Cave City to look at diamonds? he asked himself. We all piled into the station wagon and got on the highway to go look at them. Shiny rocks of red, blue, and yellow. None of them were clear, he whispered.  Maybe they weren’t real diamonds.  Just rocks.

Dad said they were rare gems. Said you couldn’t find them nowhere else. Just in Arkansas. The five kids looked on in amazement. Sparkling rocks made them dream of riches. Riches they never touched. 

Nothing is real, the old man said. Just illusions. This, he looked around, this isn’t real. No, it is not. It’s just my perception of what is real, he laughed.

People lie.