“I was ten years old,” she said, her head resting on my shoulder. “And the flames covered the damn sky. Though our neighbor was actually lucky. Lucky I didn’t burn his house. I mean, motherfucker had it coming. You don’t run over a girl’s puppy and expect to get out scratch free, you know?”
“I too had a neighbor who ran over my puppy with his tractor,” I said. “I think I was also around ten.”
“And what did you do about it?” she asked
“Nothing,” I said
“What? But how?”
“Like I said, I was just some insignificant kid from the countryside. All I could do was cry.”
“My God,” she said, “that’s so fucking lame. Where’s that neighbor of yours today?”
“I’ve no idea. Perhaps he’s dead. He was pretty old when it all happened.”
“If that’s the case then you have the duty to go piss on his grave. At least.”
“Um… I wouldn’t know where that is. And besides, I learned to forgive.”
“That’s what the weak say. What kind of man are you?”
he takes his old wrinkled notebook and the black pen
and finds a spot from which he can observe the people and write down what he imagines to be their inner conversations
It passes the time
and it takes away attention from his own inner conversations
It’s like a prescription drug he has to take for the rest of his life and the twenty-nine bookshelves filled with notebooks he has at home stand as proof of that
But this will be the last one, he promises himself as he closes the notebook and walks up to the bridge
three weeks and the shards were still there still scattered on the tiles of the kitchen floor
that was a thick glass meant for classy strong drinks like whiskey
Yeah, now that he thought about it it was whiskey she ordered. But he filled the glass with milk and said, “You know what the doctor said, mother. No more alcohol for you. Here, try this instead.”
And he would strongly prefer not to remember what followed after
The shards were still on the kitchen floor
and the gash still on the side of his neck. Stitched now but painful nonetheless
At 22:00 she would come out looking for him Would call out his name and eventually find him by the sandbox or the slide and would dust him off a bit and take him home and feed him
As she’d put him to bed she’d kiss his face, sometimes his mouth and he’d ask, “Why did you do that?”
and she’d reply, “I don’t know. But did you like it?”
And he’d either nod or say yes, knowing that it’ll make her smile and then she’d cuddle with him until he’d fall asleep and whisper in his ear that she always wanted to have a little boy just like him and that he was making her unbelievably happy just by existing in the same room with her
She was the best neighbor he could have dreamed of
She gave him all the attention his mother gave to her bottles and her guy friends
When you see someone for long enough you get used to them and then you start noticing patterns in their behavior
he was their teacher in creative writing
weird guy in his late thirties going bald bespectacled pedo mustache scrawny body always wearing dark suits, a bit oversized
He sat at his desk and watched the students and the students watched him
Why does he always do that? they eventually asked. Why does he always tap his foot when talking to some girl but never when he talks to boys?
He would appoint a female student to present her homework or some project or something and stand her up and while she spoke he would stare at her and tap his foot and the tapping would begin light and would grow in intensity
strange guy
tap-tap-tap ta-rap-tap-tap went his foot as the girls talked
"I heard he's divorced," said one of the students.
"Yep," said another. "He is. Has a kid as well."
"Damn."
"I heard he's also got a brother in prison for rape or some shit."
and a few weeks later they were talking about books related to prison life and someone said, "You know how prisoners jack off in full view of guards and the female prison nurses without getting caught?"
nobody asked how but he went to say it anyway and he said "They wrap a string around their penis and tie the other end to the big toe of one foot. All beneath the pants. Nothing shown. And when the female is close they stare and move that foot and the string does the job..."
In the morning she jerked him off and had him cum in the cups of her bra and then he watched as she put it on and went about the rest of her day like that
She worked as an elementary school teacher
believed in the horoscope
and witchcraft
and aliens
and demons
and told the students in her class that her dead husband reincarnated into her dog and every morning she took his seed to hold in her bosom for good luck
It definitely worked because she got a raise in the next few weeks
or being laughed at for spending her days alone in her small cottage facing the dark corner of the room and talking to her dead daughter
encouraging her to eat up and grow up and complimenting her on the good looks she’d gained
“Oh, I bet the boys are all dropping dead in your wake, hehe. Look at those legs. So slim and long and deadly. You’re a beauty among beauties, my dear. Here, have another one. Eat up to grow up. You’re gonna have hundreds of strong, beautiful children, hehe.”
The neighbors and the world could keep calling her crazy, she knew she was just very happy
She grabbed another grasshopper from a jar and ripped its hind legs and placed it on the spider’s web
“Here’s another one, dear. Eat up and grow up, hehe.”
There was a time when he’d fear nothing more than the bluntness of the empty bottle
his torment his nightmare, his hell
The bottle would be all right as long as it stayed full It was like Lucifer before the fall
Oh, but once it emptied then it would change completely Then he’d see father’s grip reverse on its neck and turn it into a blunt weapon that delivered its fair share of bruises and scabs on the scalp
It never broke like in the movies but it surely hit harder than wood
But in the end after all those years of standing in its greenish shadow he found himself thanking the bottle
It’s simple What you don’t pick up you don’t end up holding
He never touched a beer in his life
and certainly didn’t use the bottle as a blunt weapon against anybody
Daydreaming as a profession 