/yesod

Tag: angry

  • neighborhood watch

    …and when the neighbors show up at our front door, they demand entrance and will not leave. Too small to be a mob, but there are enough of them to force their way in.

    In the entryway, they shout that we are heathens and devil worshippers — they begin opening doors and ransacking the rooms. Books are thrown to the floor, pictures and knick knacks smashed, curtains pulled down.

    The ringleader is a middle aged blonde woman with the sinewy frame of someone burning away the calories with their fierce zealotry.

    She discovers “Lost Girls” on one of our shelves and shrieks her horror at “this filth and pornography” (which, admittedly, it is) corrupting the neighborhood.

    It goes downhill from there. I manage to trick them into not finding my office by use of a clever hinged double door — when it opens, it covers the office entrance completely…

    …I wake up, the sound of angry voices and slamming doors following me to the waking world.

  • the apartment across the way

    We’re living in an apartment complex, a bit run down and seedy. But this is all we can afford.

    In the apartment across the way, a young couple live with their two small children. The woman is slight, dark haired and sickly. Her husband is darker, brows constantly knotted with rage. His mentally-challenged brother lives with them.

    It is a sad family.

    News spreads through the complex from neighbor to neighbor like crows carrying misfortune from field to field.

    I am work when my wife calls to tell me that the sickly woman has passed away, leaving the husband on his own to care for their children and his brother as best he can.

    The whispers don’t quite reach the point of wondering if he was the one who killed her.

    I see him walking, the baby in his arms and the older daughter — just only four years old — and want to offer to help. But I do not. I have a family of my own, after all.