Kill Your Neighbor by Prunty Andersen

Author:Prunty, Andersen [Prunty, Andersen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-10-20T04:00:00+00:00

I held that promise until one evening over the winter when I took the trashcans down to the curb. Chinaski was, of course, out there with her dogs. They started yapping and lurching as soon as they noticed me. I tried to tune it out. Told myself she probably wouldn’t say anything to me. Probably just wanted to be left alone. And I couldn’t just lay into her out of the blue, even though there were about a million things I wanted to say to her, not that any of them would have done any good.

I heard her mumble something and glanced in her direction, thinking she was probably talking to the dogs, even though what she was saying was probably about me.

She was looking directly at me.

“Sorry?” I said.

There was still a part of me that wanted to think all of our suppositions about her were completely in our own heads. Maybe she wasn’t an antagonistic, malicious, combative hillbully. Part of me wanted to think she’d possibly uttered something neighborly:

“Gonna be gettin cold soon.” Or “How you likin the new place?”

What she said, apparently, from what I could hear through the swirl of barking dogs, was: “You think you could make any more noise?”

Once again, she’d taken me completely off-guard.

“I was, uh, just bringing the trash down.” But I should have just walked away. She wanted to rant and vent. She wanted nothing resembling a rational discussion.

“Every night!” she squawked. “Every night yer up all night. Sleepin all day. Yer a motherfuckin alcoholic!”

At this point, I was again stumped. Emma and I did stay up late on the weekends watching movies and, sometimes, we had a few drinks, but it wasn’t like we were having a party in there or anything. And it wasn’t like it was any of Chinaski’s business if we were. It was only just the two of us. And, unlike our neighbor, we actually woke up and left the house by nine to go to work. True, we didn’t typically get out of bed before noon on the weekends but that was because we were fucking adults and didn’t have to.

I knew there was no arguing with her so I began walking back to the house.

Then I thought, what the fuck? She’s already riled up.

So I doubled back.

“What’s your problem with us?” I shouted over the dogs.

“I done told you. You’s a fuckin alcoholic drunky. In there all night carryin on with yer drinkin and witchcraft!”

The witchcraft was a new one and threatened to again derail me.

“Hey,” I said, “I think we’re decent neighbors. If we do something that bothers you, let us know.”

“S’what I’m doin, motherfucker!”

Now she was walking toward me, the dogs leaping against their leashes, barking furiously, and she was muttering, “Get him. Get him,” to the dogs even though she never let go of the leashes.

I dismissively waved my hands at her, figuratively throwing the whole situation into the trash, before going back inside to relay the whole scenario to Emma.

“So,” Emma said, “let’s see.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.