A few weeks ago, I posted about the continuing drama going on with the next door neighbors to the east of me. At the time, the other next door neighbor, the one to the west, just outside my screened-in porch, was relatively benign. Or so I thought. Yes she ran her TV loud, and I could hear it all through the day and night. She's obviously got no other past time. But last week I found out why she might be such a loner as she is.
She's plum CRAZY!
Last week sometime, I go out to enjoy the warm sunset on my porch one late afternoon after a grueling session of turking. (I'll get into the phycological stresses of that in another post, but suffice it to say that's a whole other ball of cra cra wax.) I no sooner get towards my big Adirondack-ish plastic lawn chair when I hear my neighbor Mary's yappy lap dog barking up a storm from inside her trailer. I hear Mary start to hush it. (To no avail of course. Why do these dog owners insist on yelling at their dog to shut up when they damned well know the dog just ignores them?) The dog is barking because I'm out there. I'm not often out there and it thinks it's his territory, apparently, even though my porch is a solid 15 inches away from their property and, as far as I know, the dog's never been over here before. Shit, even Regan and Lisa's dog Henry knows my house isn't his anymore whenever I see it being walked by Lisa. (Which, oddly, is usually behind my house. I think I'm gonna have fun when I need to go back there to weed whack soon when the grass starts to get going for real.)
Soon enough, I hear Mary making her way to her door and I deftly get up from my chair and bend over my closed-up jacuzzi, leaning towards the back end of it, away from her, to avoid having to "chit-chat." Didn't work. She stands in her opened doorway and says, loudly to the dog "What are you barking at? The man next door!?" A beat. I'm still peering behind my jacuzzi looking for nothing. She's still there. I can smell her cigarette smoke wafting from her open door out to the yard between us in the gentle evening breeze.
"Hi Mary!" I greet her and wave but she's hard of hearing so I have to repeat myself louder. "HI MARY!"
"Hey, how you been?" she rasps out normally enough, the doggy in her arms and now finally mute. "Good, how about you?" comes my cheery normal neighborly reply. Should be the end of it. She'd discovered what her dog was going on about and we've already determined over a year ago we weren't gonna be besties...or so I thought...so she should be giving me a "Well, see ya later." and get back to her endless YouTube videos.
"Something wrong with your jacuzzi?"
"No, I was just checking out how to open it up since it's been out of commission for a while." I go on to tell her the tale of me putting a crack in the line by fitting the wrong filter, yada yada, and she has all the answers of what I need to do. Okay. Thanks.
Then she's heading back to her house after walking over right to my screen to help assess the jacuzzi issue and I sigh relieved...another awkward conversation stomped down to the barebones...whew! But no such luck...we've just entered the Twilight Zone...
"So what do you think about this whole situation we're in?" she queries me with a tinge of ominous in her nicotine ravaged voice.
Oh shit, I think, here it comes: "What situation?"
"Who do you think is President?"
"Um, Biden?" I feebly utter as a slight question 'cause I KNOW she's gonna say otherwise.
"NOPE! It's Trump. He's still our President." she exclaims proudly and assuredly, lest I be swayed by the fake news. Fear not good neighbor, I know she's thinking, our savior is still with us and salvation is at hand. No, she didn't actually say that part, just the quotes, but it was all in her mind. I could feel it as sure as if she had telekinesis and was beaming it into my head.
"You'll see, it'll take a month or so but he'll be back in." And with a wave (or was it a weak Nazi salute?) "Biden isn't Biden, you know. And Clinton, Obama, all them, they're gonna be assassinated. Watch, you'll see..."
Then with as much shock and awe as she could muster, she gasps, "DON'T TELL ME YOU GOT THAT VACCINE?!"
When I answered in the affirmative, her look was of such terror and pity, you'd have thought I said I drank poisoned Kool-Aid.
"They're changing peoples DNA! They're changing what God created and there's no going back. I don't know how, but you gotta find a way to get that out of you!"
She was dead fucking serious. Up to now I was kinda amused and I knew she wasn't joking but I also kinda felt that maybe she was just spoutin' this shit to make some conversation to alleviate her loneliness? Not sure really. But now I was sure, she was straight up convinced my soul was now condemned. So what do I do? I fan the fire: I tell her about the nightmares I had after the first dose. The ones I mention here. Ya. I know. And what hath I done?!
The next day she's knocking at my door. I don't answer it since it was early afternoon and I was heavily trying to crank out surveys and figured it was some delivery or something. When I got the chance, I went out there and no one, or package, was there. Later that night, again knocking loudly at my door. It's Mary. She brought her phone and she's showing me some article from some obvious right-wing conspiracy site about the vaccine being, basically, a tool of the devil. Now I was a bit embarrassed that I'd "led her on" but I was still nice, saying I didn't really believe all that. She nodded her head, insisted I needed to do something. I heard "Emile" across the street call out to her asking if she was alright. I only would hope he knows of her delusions and was worried, perhaps, that I might say something rude or dismissive to her to get her to go away. I didn't. I was patient and she eventually went back home, probably still thinking I was now a worried Christian sorry for being deceived by Satan.
I'm sleeping lightly these days. I wake up at the slightest sound. I really think I'll one night soon be startled awake by her and some priest standing over me in my bedroom, splashing holy water all over me, chanting at the top of their lungs "The Power of Christ compels you!"
"NOOOOO!!" I'll scream back, spinning my head 360 degrees, "Bill Gates got me now CUNT!" as I ram my laptop up my ass. "Windows Vista was the first step, now it's this vaccine!"