As a senior member of the neighborhood crime watch I believe it’s my duty to identify strangers, report rowdy youngsters, and reveal the criminals living amongst us. I am the conscious of North Street.
I watch people more than my husband watches TV. Let me tell you, he watches a lot of tv. It’s all he does, save for sleeping and eating. When he buys a flat screen, I treat myself to new binoculars. Of course my husband isn’t aware of this, the only way I’d he able to force him to acknowledge my existence would be to show up in that box he’s always glued to. Of course, I have my own hobbies.
I can see eight houses from my own, and I can see inside of six of them. All summer I looked in on children terrorizing their mothers, husbands cheating and kids smoking marijuana. But now that it’s September school is in session and parents are back at work, so I rarely see anything but animals inside before six.
One day last week the young man across the street was home for some reason. I usually don’t find anything of interest going on inside his house; he doesn’t spend a great deal of time there. Because it was so unusual, I decided to peek in on his activities.
From my kitchen window I can see into his dining room. For a while I couldn’t see anything of interest, some birds perched on his windowsill and I watched them for a while. Suddenly, I heard a thunk in the distance and the birds scattered.
I started watching what my neighbor was doing inside. He seemed to have just hit his knee on the edge of his table and was cursing to himself. Soon he returned to his original activity. He appeared to be relaxed, though somewhat perplexed, and fixing the hair of a woman seated on the floor. I couldn’t tell what she could possibly be doing because a potted plant obscured my view, but I suspected it was naughty. I find it particularly frustrating when people perform bedroom business where I can see it.
The UPS truck went by slowly and parked outside his house, I watched as Woody climbed the steps to his front door and rang the bell. Upon hearing the noise the man removed his hands from the woman’s hair and her head fell down lifelessly. I climbed on my counter to get a better look. It was then that I saw the lifeless face and hollow eyes staring coldly back at me. Could I have caught a murderer?!
This neighbor was always pretty strange. I’d seen him carrying home huge bags of women’s clothing on multiple occasions. It’s not normal for a man to buy that much of the opposite gender’s clothing. As far as I could remember, he didn’t have a girlfriend.
I notice the UPS man leaving and my neighbor skips happily inside to open his package on the floor. He rips open the packaging and removes a long object wrapped in bubble wrap. It must be the knife he’s going to use on his next victim! He he doesn’t remove the rest of the packaging, but holds the object out beside him and smiles as he walks into the other room.
He then walks into his kitchen, which has only a small window above the sink that I can see inside, although it’s partially blocked by a variety of miniature cactuses. I believe I saw him insert the object he’d just received in the mail into a black garment, probably a preparation for his next killing. He holds the garment up in front of him and smiles again, then walks into a different room.
He enters again, carefully holding a head in front of him. She shares the blank stare and battered appearance of the brunette lying on the floor. He sets the new head down and picks up the brunette’s head. He strokes her long curly locks. A pervert with a hair fetish, I conclude.
He takes off his hat and I’m shocked to see him pull the hair off the brunette and pull it over his bald head. As he adjusts the faux scalp on his own and the hair cascades over his shoulders I realize what the “heads” actually are. He travels out of my frame of view and returns in the black garment he was adjusting previously. The object he received in the mail was apparently some kind of male bra, and he’d been inserting in into his dress. Its short, exposing a great deal of his chiseled thighs.
He then opens a low cabinet and retrieves a large bag. He seats himself at the table where he’d previously been stroking the hair that was now settled perfectly on his head. He holds the bag upside down above the table and out pours an assortment of brightly colored tubes and bottles. He then proceeds to sort through them and apply those selected to his face. I watch the transformation in awe, his completed appearance looks nothing like the small skinhead I thought was living at 256 North. After returning the bottles to the bag, he reaches down and pulls on his heels, then flounces out to his car and leaves for some excitingly mysterious event, and I put away my binoculars and begin to prepare dinner for my husband.
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