From the outside, the house looks like any other on its small suburban street. It's only when you get inside that you realize the extent to which its owner was engulfed by madness: there are post-it notes on every exposed inch of wall. Pull one off, shhlup, and another appears. In some places, the notes are layered six deep.
At first, the notes just seem to be utilitarian and prosaic. "Charles will be here tomorrow at noon." "Where is the life we have lost in the living?" "Buy more milk." Who among us hasn't been tempted to write such reminders to ourselves?
But look more closely, and you begin to see real emotion in the notes. "400 dollars to get the cat fixed!" - clearly, money was a concern for this person. "Don't let Mark bully you into accepting that stupid colour scheme" - the conflict is bare for all to see. "You will lose those 10 pounds by Friday - good girl!" - could any piece of writing be more poignant in the delineation of its author's self-delusion?
Some of the notes suggest mystery - what to make of notes with phone numbers without names or other identification? Some clearly contradict one another: over by the sink is a note reminding you to go to the hairdresser at 3pm on friday, but just the other side of the fridge is a note insisting that you make it to the bank by 3:30 on Friday. They are fragmentary ("Aunt Bertha's dentures" - well, what about them?) and hallucinatory ("198.30.179.2 - Avark7"). There are even notes which exhibit moments of existential panic ("Why should I keep buying milk when nobody drinks it?").
The whole jumbled experience of being human is there on 1 1/2 by 2 inch slips of yellow paper with sticky backs.
The notes thin out on the second floor, and some blues and pinks are added to the yellows. The notes on this floor have a somewhat abstract quality that you can't quite put your finger on. "Don't forget to phone the doctor - the number is by the phone downstairs." "Look for the note - I bet it's next to the TV." "Aren't you supposed to be doing something on Friday? Check by the fridge."
And then it hits you: this is the post-modern floor! Sometimes ironic, always self-referential - the second floor is the level of meta-post-it notes!
"The note by your night table should tell you where to find the note about your dentist appointment."
"Leave a note next to the sink to remind you to look for the note with Frank's phone number."
Like the cat chasing its own tail, these notes go round and round, becoming more abstract, less connected to the real world. "Did you make a note of where to find the note telling you how to make that chicken dish you like so much, or is there a note telling you to disregard that note and find the note with the recipe that doesn't use as much garlic?" Why not just season to taste?
Ascending to the attic, the notes are thinner still, barely two deep, and a rainbow of colours. They contain messages like "Breathing is good - try to remember to do it" and "Have you digested last night's dinner yet?" and "Synapses keep a'firing!" Beyond the self-referential is, after all, the level of bare animal survival.
The woman's body lies curled up in the far corner of the attic. She is smartly dressed, as if she's about to go into work at her dead end secretarial job. There is no sign of violence and there will be no apparent cause of death.
"Third one this week," the detective comments.
"It's like they just...forget to live," the uniformed officer says.
"Yeah...that's good - I better make a note of it," the detective responds.
Nobody laughs.