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Drama At The Neighbors
Dave Jygsaw | | | | | |
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He was drunk again, at 11:30 in the morning. I could tell from the
way that he wove to his car door that more than a few drinks had been tipped
down his throat. I watched him fumble through his pockets for his car keys.
In the process of doing this a few things fell to the grass. They may have
been coins or other shiny things. I was too far away to see from here, of
course.
The keys were retrieved from their hiding place and the car door was
opened. He slid inside, and I heard a faint thud, as if he'd whacked his
knee into the steering column. I heard long strings of curses unwinding from
the interior of the car, so I guess it was his knee. Then the car starts,
much sooner than i would have thought, given the amount of time it took to
get the key in the door. By now he should be accustomed to navigating in a
drunken state. I watch as the car weaves away down the road.
I remembered that the things had fallen from his pocket. and I
remember that I wanted to go and have a look at them. So I meander across the
lawn. Partway there I decide to go and look at some flowers that are growing
by the corner of the porch, because they are pretty, and because I want to
see if they are all the same kind of flower or not. I sit in the grass for a
while and idly poke at a flower. It sways, and I amuse myself for a few
minutes testing the elasticity of different stems. It turns out that the
flowers are two different kinds, only they have similar petals and leaves.
I hear a car approaching and realize that I am sitting in the
flowerbed and probably shouldn't be there. So I move quickly around the
corner of the house to wait things out. My instincts were correct; a car is
now turning into the driveway. It takes me a minute or two to realise that
it's not the same car as earlier. It's not a car at all, but a small van. I
duck back and rest my head on the brick of the house and think. The van's
doors open and i hear footsteps on the drive. One person. No, wait. Maybe
two. They go to the front door. I hear a muffled discussion of some kind, but
i can't understand the words. Then the door opens and whoever they are go
inside.
For some reason, I don't know why, but I want to know what they are
doing. So I try to find a window to peek in. I get lucky and am able to
observe the two men in worker's coveralls walking around the house. They open
up different doors and cabinets and peer in them. I think they are looking
for something, but no way to tell what. I wish I'd heard what they said at
the door. They don't seem to be happy.
Then things get complicated. Another car pulls into the driveway. A
man and woman get out. The woman lives here, I think. I've seen her before
from the window of my house. She looks at the van in the driveway with a good
deal of surprise. Both she and the man who came with her walk around the van
and look at it. She's wearing a dark red business suit. It matches her
lipstick and makes her hair look very blond. The man who came with her is
wearing a brown suit. He looks unconcerned.
The two men inside are very worried. I don't think that the woman was
supposed to come home while they were here. They seem to be looking for a
place to hide. They head towards the back of the house. I move stealthily to
another window, while the woman and Brown Suit walk up the path to the door.
The two men are hiding, one in the bathroom and one under the bed.
They still haven't seen me. I think they are a bit more preoccupied at the
moment. They have barely finished concealing themselves in their respective
locations when the bedroom door opens. The woman and Brown Suit stagger into
the room, struggling to take off each other's clothes. They fall back onto
the bed, giggling and panting. I wonder what the man under the bed thinks of
this.
The bathroom door bursts open, and one of the men in coveralls points
a gun at the two on the bed. He yells something, the woman screams, and Brown
Suit pisses himself. The woman looks at him and begins laughing hysterically.
The other man in coveralls rolls out from under the bed. He tells the woman
to shut up, slapping her across the face.
There is a shriek of tires and a crash from the driveway. One of the
men in coveralls runs out of the bedroom to see what is going on. The other
coverall man peers down the hallway after him. He doesn't see the woman
reaching into the bedside table and taking out a little silver revolver. She
hides it under a pillow. Brown Suit is in the foetal position, sobbing
miserably. The two men in coveralls come back into the room and hide again.
And once more, the bedroom door slams open. The Drunk is home. He has a
bottle of whiskey in one hand, and a shotgun in the other. He yells at the
blond woman, shaking the bottle. Then he sees Brown Suit and roars even
louder, pointing his shotgun at him. Brown Suit cries harder. The bathroom
door opens, and the man in coveralls jumps out. He seems surprised to see the
Drunk with a shotgun. The other man in coveralls rolls out from under the
bed. Drunk swings the shotgun toward him, then back to Brown Suit. The
woman's hand slides under the pillow, toward the hidden silver gun. The man
in coveralls can't decide who to aim at, swinging his gun back and forth. I
can see him sweating heavily.
Fearing the worst, I get away from the window as fast as possible,
heading towards my house again while trying to remain unseen. As I run across
my driveway I hear gunfire. Safely concealed by my window, I watch as a
vehicle drives away from the house, engine roaring. A little while later, the
police arrive with an ambulance. I see them carry several bags away from the
house. As the police pace back and forth across the yard, I remember the
shiny things dropped by the Drunk earlier. I decide to go look for them.
But when I get to where I remember seeing them, there is nothing
valuable there. Just a few hard things that look like glass or ice. They
aren't cold when I touch them, so I guess they aren't ice. A policeman walks
over to me. "Hey! Get away from there." Then he looks at the ground and
whistles. "Whooo-eee!" Kneeling down, he examines the glass stones that had
puzzled me. "Looks like you found some evidence, huh? Really valuable, too.
Good kitty." He rubs my back, and I purr involuntarily. He picks up the glass
and walks back to the house. I decide to have another look at the flowers to
see if they are still as springy as they were that morning.
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