23) I am The Neighbor

     I am the neighbor. I am the guy who lived next door to him. I remember I would come downstairs, get my shoes on and work in the garage. That's when I would see him. He was ever distant. Perhaps others saw it as rude but to me there was an obvious reason for his aloofness. You could feel the omnipresent weight upon his shoulders so his annoyance and detachment was logical. He rarely said anything to me at all. He would infrequently hit me with an emotionless glance and then ignore I was there at all. I took no offense. Actually I wished to break him out of it. To listen. To talk. To really just understand. But then I figured it became selfish, about me and my desire to retard my curiosity by reasoning him out. It soon became for my benefit to understand so I dropped the notion altogether. I could see it made sense to find him to always remain busy, near frantic. To see him pull up in his fancy car and instantly begin detailing it in his work clothes. Anything to avoid going inside and facing reality. Every expression of his emotions was hurried. It always appeared as though he were up against the clock; his slender shadow holding a cheap stopwatch. He was visibly tired and yet worked tireless. His stress was blindingly apparent. If stress were a light, well his was the sun. He exhaled it. He sweated it out. It flowed down his drive, caressed every inch of the curbs and infected the entire neighborhood. You became intoxicated by his stench and the taste of his loathing. It soon encompassed you. Gasping, you clawed at your throat, scrambled, spasmed and drowned. Newly arisen you became irritable and short. You soon lashed out nonsensically. Fire escaped your squinting eyes and blood leaked from your cracked lips. Without acknowledgement the red stains accumulated upon your shoulders. Ignoring the neighborly stares though, you carried on. Your mind wandered from task undone to task undone and though you would pick up their cries of completion you'd just as quickly set them back down upon the shelf. Forgotten. There the spiders danced their re-weaving and soon all that remained was silk and dust. Soon after you succumbed to the relentless exhaustion and briefly there came realization. You sat upon the front porch and looked out as the children biked pass. They were silent. There were no joyful cries. It was not pleasant. It was forced. They were doing as they had to. "Go outside. Go find something to do. I don't have time for this. Get outta here." You heard it all though you heard nothing at all.

   Yeah, I know him. I am the neighbor. I hate that man. He smoothly slips within my being and I become drugged again and again with his pestilence. He is cancerous and I cannot peel enough of myself off to fully forget him. He only grows back.

     Leave me be. I don't want to discuss anything more about him. I don't care what happens to him. Nobody does.