At the second day that nobody was at home to answer the bell, I got lucky as I was able to sneak into the building. Well, then I can just as well dunk the letter in his mailbox, the picture of them at her funeral. But it could in no way fit in the slot because it was chock full of unread letters. With this, it started to become suspicious. Never in my days have I seen that mailbox full. Slowly, I ascended the stairs, just to check what was up. I didn’t want to acknowledge my angst. But suspicion plucks a frightful string. At the windows of his apartment, under the closed and ragged drapes, I found the flies. The disturbing thing was that it wasn’t just a handful of them, but a thick black pile filling the ledge from end to end. All dead. The same scene welcomed me at the kitchen window, with the only difference that there, the inner pane had one broken glass tile.
Some grotesque reality had happened here, that was the only thing that was clear. And only after a frenzied hunt through the building was I able to learn what had happened. He died, rotted for weeks. Eventually, the police took him away, just two or three days ago. They had no records of a family, so he got filed away as „without relatives”. He died alone, went to sleep in his armchair
His heart had stopped.
