Behind Closed Doors

The house is perfect.

Everyone who comes can see that.

Nothing is out of place, and everything fits perfectly where it is supposed to be.

As you walk up to my house, the fence is newly painted, the grass is manicured, and the flowers are a perfect accompaniment to this exquisite dwelling.

Look through any window and all you will see is perfection; you wish that your place were a tenth as perfect as mine.

Until you open the front door...

The first thing that you didn't expect was that the hall and stair carpets are worn, with even some holes. That is not too bad, but then you notice that under the stairs is a decrepit dog basket, and you are not sure if it is still in use or just falling apart. It is a mess, but you could not see that from the outside.

The front room looks nice, though, nice big flat screen TVbut when you get up close, you see there is a mass of wires, and a smell that feels like they might burst into flames. The flat screen looks very tidy and smart, but it is a front for an absolute mess of wiring. You cannot see what the wires are for, apart from the television. Looking closer, you see a DVD player and a TV box, but you are sure that there are a lot more wires than there should be for three electrical units.

You look at the bookcases that looked very impressive through the window, but now you see they are just cheap, fading wallpaper, and some of that is peeling from the walls in parts.

This perfect front room bears no close inspection; it feels lived in but certainly not cared for.

A door from the front room takes you to a small dining room with a Formica table and plastic chairs, all of which a more than a bit wobbly, and have not been cleaned for a long time. This room has no window, so it cannot be seen from the outside, but it is certainly in much worse repair than the front room.

Another door, at right angles to the one you entered by, leads to the kitchen, and the smell in here is sickening, either bad drains or rotten food. The kitchen has a window to the back, which was once a garden but is now more like a jungle.

Running the taps to hopefully wash away what is causing the smell just results in the sink filling with dark, infected water, and there were things in the water, wriggling worms. The taps were stopped before the sink overflowed.

The kitchen was filthy, and then you see cockroaches and other bugs crawling out from under the cupboards. There is a fridge and cupboards, but you don't dare open those doors, who knows what might be lurking behind them.

Back into the hall, and the house has three storeys, but given the state of the ground floor, nothing more needs to be seen.

Time to leave this cradle of total filth.

Back to the front gate.

The hose still looks beautiful and perfect, but now you know what its secrets are, and none of them are good.

If you take a photograph, that is all that you need.

No doubt someone else will be seduced by its beauty and take half an hour to be horrified by its secrets.

How long will it still be able to keep its looks, given what is happening inside and at the back?

This house looks better from far away.

Far, far, far away.