I Think They Have Connections

I think my next door neighbors might kill people for a living.

On New Year's Eve I went upstairs to see if we'd be able to watch the fireworks across the valley from the playroom. It was quite a few minutes before midnight and I saw the neighbor lady creep, eerily, from her house. She was carrying a large tub. She walked, secretively, down the sidewalk and disappeared on the other side of my house, blocked by the roof of my garage. Several minutes later she reappeared, entered her house and exited again to repeat the same process. Both times she was creeping slowly and looking around with suspicion. It gave me pause.

This afternoon I walked outside to throw something into my trash can. Another person, presumably her husband, was hunched over something in the corner of his yard, near his own garbage can. He kind of looked like he was relieving his bladder in his front yard but, obviously, it's more feasible for me to jump to the conclusion that he was chopping up body parts than to accept that he might have been taking a whiz near his gate. It doesn't help that in all my happy smiling whenever I see members of their family I have gotten nothing in return but blank stares. Blank stares that suggest, "You're my next victim. Stop smiling at me."

I came back in feeling slightly creepy that my neighbor was, most likely, either disposing of a dead body or peeing very close to my own yard. I went about my chores, cleaning up some things in the kitchen. Then I decided to take the newspaper to the recycle bin. I walked outside and the same neighbor was staring into my yard, leaning against his garage. That's all he was doing. He was leaning against his garage, in short sleeves, in sixteen degree weather that feels like six. When I approached my recycler his eyes shot downward so as to avoid my probable smile in his general direction.

Perhaps he was waiting for more tiny body parts to chop into little bits and pieces and throw into the trash. Or maybe he was just waiting to see if he was really finished peeing in the front yard. In any case it was odd and I felt, somehow and inexplicably, violated. If I wind up missing interrogate the neighbors, they might be in the mafia. Or something.