Horror - Short

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. Neighbours Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

NEIGHBOURS

“See that?” Lin Molinari pointed through the windshield as he pulled in the laneway of their country split-level home. The moonlight hit a hulking shape not twenty feet from the north end of their house. Its peak towered over their roof, rising to two pointed apexes.

Margot Molinari yawned. She’d been blinking but not quite awake since Lin took the right turn off the county asphalt onto their gravel road. She stopped blinking and said, “Did the lot next-door sell?”

Lin stopped the car ten feet short of where he typically parked. “Maybe, but how in the hell…think it’s a house? It looks like a house. The shape, like an old farmhouse or one of those, you know, gothic deals.”

“Is that possible? You can’t build a house in a week, can you? Not even one of those prefabricated kits.”

Lin shook his head and let his foot slide from the brake pedal. “You’d know better than me,” he said. And she would, she designed sprinkler systems, irrigation systems, and eaves trough and spillage systems for government structures, and he was a lawyer.

“Rhetorical,” she said.

From the backseat, “Dad?” a sleepy voice said, and then joining in, a second said, “We home?” The first was Mindi and the second was Cindi, both twelve years old, but not twins. Mindi was eleven months older than Cindi. Mindi was a normal girl: tall, smart, pretty enough, and athletic. Cindi seemed like the leftovers swirled together and a little undercooked.

“Maybe it’s just a frame…but look at the top, there’s those points, like weathervanes.” Lin pushed the shifter to park and killed the engine. He stared up at the building next-door and then shivered. “Freaky.”

—

“Come to bed,” Margot said. She was flat out.

“Yeah. I will, just…it’s got to be a house.” Lin was in boxer shorts and a t-shirt, posted by the bedroom window that had always looked out onto a sprawling hayfield. “It’s not zoned for that though, right?”

This opened Margot’s eyes. “That’s right. You’re right. The water table would need updated before someone can build. Maybe it’s just a barn or something?”

Lin scratched his ear and nodded, said, “Yeah, maybe it’s like a church on a trailer I can’t see. Probably it’ll all be obvious come morning.” Though he didn’t think so. Something was very, very strange about this.

Margot had closed her eyes. “Sleep, okay?”

“Yeah.” Lin fell back beneath the sheets. “I missed my pillow.”

“I’m going to miss the beach.”

One week in Brazil felt like hardly enough, but at the same time, too much vacation, too much being away from home.

“Yeah,” Lin said, his eyes slipping closed as he ground his cheek against a familiar pillow.

—

“Lin. Lin!” Margot was on the back deck. The screen door between the kitchen and the outside was open, letting the stale air flow from the house. It was seven and the sun was barely in the sky, but it was already t-shirt warm. “Look’it!” It was Margot’s turn to point.

Hardly awake, Lin shuffled barefoot from the bathroom and through the kitchen. The front of his boxers had a damp spot of urine. His eyes wore lime green crusties in the corners and on the lashes. He’d never had to be bashful before and wasn’t thinking when he trailed his wife’s words. “Oh,” he said.

“Howdy, neighbors!” a figure shouted, popping from an ancient garden shed at the rear of the yard, not twenty feet from Lin and Margot’s pre-fab, Canadian-Tire special garden shed.

“Uh, hi,” Margot said and waved, she turned to Lin. “Better put some pants on.”

“Oh, right…but…yeah,” Lin mumbled. His eyes darted between the man in the gardening apron by the old shed, the enormous gothic mansion—complete with gargoyles and snarling bat weathervanes (the tarp removed)—and the pee dribble on the front of his shorts.

“Say, I’m a mess now, but we should get to know each other. New neighbors are so exciting,” the man said. He was tall and fit. Had a full head of brown hair, broad shoulders, and strong-looking arms.

“Great idea, maybe after some coffee…or later this week,” Margot said through a phony smile.

Lin went in and Margot followed him. She had a cup of coffee on the counter but headed for the laptop that had slept since the day they left. The flight information was still up and she closed out of it, began searching a story she’d read a couple years prior, the one that explained the water table and the frustrated farmers trying to sell land to a condo developer.

—

“It’s old,” Mindi said. She’d just gotten out of the tub. Somehow, she’d still carried the beach home in every crevice and between her toes.

“Yeah, must’ve moved it on a flatbed,” Lin said. He held the garden hose. The water was off because as soon as Mindi got out of the tub, Cindi started a shower, began shouting about the heat.

Margot had come around the side of the house with a bucket of plucked dandelions and her cellphone. “Steve just texted me. He says there can’t be two houses here, nothing’s changed.” Steve worked for the county, was the guy you ran into when you needed dreams crushed by zoning stipulations or building permit approval.

“Look at the foundation,” Lin said, pointing, again. The dirty and weathered cement between the grass and the greyed wood siding looked as if it had always been there.

The hose started suddenly and Lin turned his head. Cindi had come out, was already headed to the peach trees she’d saved up her allowance for and had cared for.

“Thanks, hun,” Lin said.

Cindi ignored him, started rushing to the trees. They weren’t old enough to sprout fruit, but they had some promising blossoms and branch growth during these recent warm seasons. “Mom!” she screeched. Her voice was already high and squeaky, but under duress, it sounded as if an injured dog had learned words. “My leaves are all dead!”

—

Cindi refused to come inside, so they’d eaten lunch around the sickly trees. For supper, they made burgers and Cindi ate alone while the rest of the family ate at the picnic table in the backyard.

“Smells good!” A man came around the side of the house. He was shirtless and fit. Lin caught Margot’s eyes widen and a flush of jealousy burned into the collar of his linen polo shirt. “Have to have you over sometime, maybe next week, what do you say?”

“Absolutely,” Margot said, smiling. The pleasantry faded some as the man opened the back door of the home and she caught a strong whiff of fruit. She turned to Lin, who was looking at her with an expression between defeat and anger. “That’s tinted glass,” she whispered. The door closed and she lifted her voice. “That’s a green house. I thought it was solar, but he has a greenhouse built into that thing. How in the hell did they move it with a…I mean, how is it possible? Smell it, that smell. It’s like a damned nursery.”

Mindi scrunched her face. “Like diapers?”

“No, a flower nursery.”

Mindi said, “Oh,” but clearly did not understand.

Lin set the remainder of his burger on his plate. “Tomorrow after work, let’s invite ourselves over. We’ll take some cookies and get a look inside, what do you think?”

Margot nodded with her eyes as she chewed salad.

—

School had been out for two weeks and the babysitter was a girl from town. Her father worked with Margot and she was saving money for the optional twelfth grade trip to London, England, scheduled for the following spring. She was chubby and pimply and wore too much foundation. It made her face look like snow over rocks. She was nice enough, but sad.

“I don’t know, doesn’t seem that weird. It’s just a house,” Lonnie said, the sitter.

“Yeah, but where’d it come from? It wasn’t there last week.” Mindi was on the couch with an iPad Mini in her hands, flipping through makeup tutorials and hairstyles to accent cheekbones—Cindi was again out by the dying trees.

Lonnie shrugged. “It sure is old.”

“Yeah, so how’d it get there?”

“Did you look in the windows? Maybe it’s not even done inside.”

Mindi turned her face from the screen. “No.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. What if…?”

“What if what? What’s the worst that happens? Probably it’s all boxes or maybe it’s not even finished, just made to look like it’s old. Like vintage.”

“Okay.”

“Want to go see?”

“No.”

“Scared?” Lonnie got to her feet and had her hands on her hips.

“No.”

“Then let’s go.”

Mindi turned her face to the tablet and said, nonchalant as she could muster, “Nah.”

Lonnie pouted and then grinned. “I bet Cindi’s not such a chicken.”

Mindi said nothing and remained on the couch until she heard the door close. She sat up and went to the bay window that overlooked the front lawn and peeked between the curtains. Lonnie walked to Cindi and Cindi was shaking her head. She had a bucket, a small shovel, the garden hose, and an iPad Mini in the grass next to her. Mindi watched Lonnie. The sitter cast a quick glance back to the house, but continued on, making for the new neighbor’s place.

Mindi broke for the front door and stopped a foot short when her Snapchat beeped. Sheena had sent a video and Mindi reversed until the backs of her knees hit the couch. Down again, enthralled, Lonnie forgotten.

—

Cindi watched Lonnie from the corner of her eye. She had hardly any room to think beyond her trees. They were like her, but then they were growing and she thought maybe, just maybe, if they grew big and strong, gave fruit, that she’d do likewise. As if there was an agreement: if she tended to the trees until they were big and healthy then she’d stop being a runt and she’d become pretty and her skin would take color. Her hair would thicken. Her face would grow into her forehead.

But the trees were dying…and Lonnie was inside that house.

Cindi tried to ignore it until it worked and she was Googling about fixing dying trees, reading single paragraphs from dozens of articles. The sun shifted overhead and at a little after four, a blue Honda Fit pulled into the neighbor’s driveway. Cindi looked up in time to see the front door swing open and Lonnie to come barreling out.

“See ya tomorrow!” she said, waving over her shoulder as she ran to her mother’s car. Lonnie’s smile was enormous. Cindi blinked and her face ping-ponged from the house to the little car reversing its way down the lane. Lonnie waved steadily until they were out of sight.

—

Pillsbury tube cookies steaming on a plate beneath a lid of aluminum foil, Margot led the parade across the property line. The girls were in the middle and Lin walked caboose. Margot was in a mood after hearing that Lonnie ducked out on the girls all day, but she was also curious. What did the girl do over there?

The front of the home featured a short porch. The white paint had gone to flecks. The red door faded and the brass knocker and handles—double doors—were tarnished by dirt and weather. Margot did not wait for her family to surround her, her knuckles found the door, pounding hard enough that the latch slipped. The creak was short but loud. A flowery scent wafted from the gap.

“Hello?” Margot called through. No sounds returned and she tried again. “Hello.” She nudged the door open further and listened. “Shit, not home,” she said, low.

Lin came up from behind and put his hands on her shoulders and was about to tell her he guessed so, but stopped, staring into the hall, eyes locked on a yellow tackle box. His yellow tackle box. As if pulled by invisible tractor beam, he stepped around his family and entered the house.

“Lin!” Margot whisper yelled. “Lin! Get back here!”

He heard her, but continued on, passing a fine antique mirror, a gaudy newel post at the base of a winding staircase, and the opening of a vast living space. The floors wore muted gold and blue carpet. Gold and white wallpaper covered from trim to ceiling. A crystal chandelier hung high above a furniture set, dated well beyond his years alive. He saw none of this, his eyes were hard on the plastic container sat before a dusty grandfather clock.

“Lin!”

He flipped the latches and popped back the lid. Lures and weights and bobbers exactly where he kept them, and on the underside of the lid, a sticker plate featuring his name and address. “What in the hell?” he said and then turned. “He’s got my tackle box!”

Margot took a step through the door and said, “What?”

“My tackle box. I couldn’t find it the weekend before Brazil, remember? Danny asked to borrow it, but then I couldn’t find it?”

“Oh.” Margot took two more steps closer to her husband. She drank in the scene with paranoid intrigue. “Do you hear him?”

“What?”

“Is he home?”

“This is mine! I don’t care!” He bent and clipped the lid closed and turned with the box held by the handle. “I’m taking it.”

“You can’t.”

The girls followed in, drinking in the surroundings much like their mother had.

“What?”

“He’ll know we came in when he wasn’t home.” Margot set the cookie plate on the shelf beneath the mirror to put her hands on her husband’s shoulders.

The reality of it struck Lin then. He had to be in the right to call out the man. “Dammit,” he said and set the box where it had been. It was then that he looked around the incredible space. The man was a slob. Newspapers covered every surface. Coffee cups and dessert plates littered the floor. The rug needed vacuumed and everything needed dusted. “Look at this place.”

“I know. Let’s go.” Margot took him by the arm and pulled him back to the door. “Mindi, put that down.” Mindi held a fine silver mirror and the moment before she set it back where it had been, she looked at her mother with such hurt she seemed eons older than she was.

“That place was weird,” Cindi said, first out.

“Yeah…damned thief,” Lin said. “I’d like t—”

A banging sounded and they stopped. Two thumps, then three, and then fourfivesixseven down the stairs. They raced out the door and Margot closed it behind her. The kids were off the porch and Lin was right behind them. Margot considered knocking but changed her mind and followed her family back across the property line.

—

The moon poured through the window. The green digits on the clock read 12:13. Margot sat bolt upright.

“What?” Lin said, no more than halfway awake.

“The cookies.”

“What.”

Margot’s wide eyes reflected the blue of the moon like mirrors. “I forgot the cookies next-door, inside.”

Lin registered this and let it simmer for about twenty seconds before he began laughing. “At least I can confront him about my tackle box. No pussyfooting.” He continued laughing as Margot straightened out, her eyes still open.

—

“Lin.” Margot was in the doorway. Lin remained in bed. “Lin.”

“Yeah.” He side-eyed the clock. He should be up anyway; he had a busy day at the office, playing post-vacation catch-up. He lifted his head. “Yeah, what?”

“The cookies.”

“What about them?”

“The plate’s on the counter, and the tinfoil…he ate the cookies and…” she trailed. Her words were gasping and frightened.

“Wait.” Lin kicked out from beneath the covers and popped upright. “You sure it’s the same plate?”

“He left a sliver. Like he bit a three-quarter moon out of a cookie and left a sliver.”

“Maybe the girls got up and saw it on the deck and brought it…he wouldn’t just come in our house.”

“We went into his house!” Margot hissed.

“Fuck. Okay. Yeah. Okay. I’ll talk to him before work. I just gotta, I just,” Lin said, spinning as if he forgot how to start the day.

Twenty minutes later, dressed and shaved, he held a mug of coffee and knocked on the neighbor’s door. Nobody answered and he pounded harder before trying the handle. Locked.

“What happened?” Margot was dressed, the girls were still in bed, as was their prerogative during summer break.

“Nothing. He didn’t answer, but he’d locked the door.”

“This is all wrong. What’s that house doing there anyway?”

Lin finished his mug. He’d almost forgotten the place suddenly showed up, forgotten that the water table wasn’t stable enough for two dwellings, forgotten all but that he’d entered a home uninvited and had a man enter his home in retaliation.

Margot was gone when Lonnie’s mother dropped her off at the road. She was late and Lin had to burn out of there to ever hope to be on time. “I expect you to be with the girls all day, Lonnie. You spent your only major screw up yesterday, know that,” he said through the lowered passenger’s window of his car.

He was long gone by the time Lonnie stepped onto the neighbor’s porch and had the door opened to her.

—

“Shit has officially hit the fan,” Georgina Rosen said once Lin reached the reception desk. She did not work reception. Leslie Harlow worked reception.

“What now?” Lin was a junior associate at Rosen, Wallace, and Lindqvist.

“Two things. Peter Harker is in lock up and his wife is dead. Peter looked like Carrie or Texas Chainsaw or whatever.”

“He killed her?” Lin gasped.

Peter Harker billed about ten thousand hours a year between his holdings. He was a billionaire and that was good, but not much help when red-handed meant bloody-handed.

 “Looks like it. Second thing is Henrik. Leslie recorded him assaulting her… She told me about it a month ago and I did a stupid thing.”

Lin groaned.

“I told her if she was going to extort someone to try someone easier and if she wanted to keep her job, she’d shut up.” Lin closed his eyes to this. “I don’t even know why. It’s what he does! Nothing serious, hell, there was a time not long ago every man did that kind of thing.” Georgina barked a humorless laugh.

“So…what’s she want?”

Georgina puffed her cheeks momentarily and then blew a long breath. “Did you know she’s rich?”

“What?”

“Rich and doesn’t need a settlement. Fucking hashtag Me Too. She’s gonna drag us, but that’s not the main concern for you. We need to get what we can on every cop who has worked the Harker investigation so far. We need to dig into Harker’s wife. The only hope is confusion and we need it yesterday. The markets have been open for ten minutes and he’s tanking…which means we’re tanking.”

Lin rubbed his temples, began nodding.

“It’s trenches today, Molinari. By the way, you see Henrik do anything untoward concerning Leslie?”

Lin stopped nodding and opened his eyes. He let out a small humorless laugh of his own. Lindqvist was generationally wealthy, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, and understood every ounce of entitlement afforded to men like him. Lin tilted his head. “Is the company going to survive severance from Henrik?”

“That bad?” Georgina said. She was fifty-one and the youngest of the partners. She’d survived the days of hands on knees beneath boardroom tables and expected the women coming up to do the same.

“They’ll come out of the woodwork and they’ll have mountains of corroboration…I’m not sinking with him. They ask me and…shit. This has been coming. You had to’ve seen that?”

“You sound like Wallace.” Georgina rose from the desk with the box of Leslie Harlow’s belongings and then some. “You’re on the Harker team. Tran’s heading it. Don’t say anything about Lindqvist, not even to your wife, not so much as a peep. It’s all over the papers as it is and…well, you know how this goes.”

Lin lifted his travel mug to his lips and drank deeply. He’d be lucky to get out of there by sundown.

—

“I might have something to help.”

Cindi looked over her shoulder, squinting into the sun and the shadow looming over her. It was the neighbor.

“Did you come in our house?” she asked.

“Did you come in my house?” he asked.

“Maybe.” Her eyes adjusted enough to see his face clearly. He was smiling at her. His teeth were perfect and his lips were the soft yellowy pink of boiled peaches.

“You didn’t see my greenhouse.”

“Greenhouse?”

“Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and…peaches. Have you ever seen a dwarf peach tree?” Cindi had never even heard of a dwarf peach tree…a little peach tree. Her mouth opened and her eyes grew large, and as if reading her mind, the neighbor said, “A tree made more beautiful for its differences and its size. Come see.”

Cindi got to her feet and took the neighbor’s hand.

—

The doorbell rang and Mindi scrunched her forehead. She was in her bedroom, trying on her swimsuits to show her friends on Snapchat. The consensus was that she had baby suits. She’d be thirteen in just a few weeks. Thirteen. A teenager.

The doorbell rang again and she huffed. She grabbed her scarlet red bathrobe and tied the rope. She wore shorts and a frilly bikini top, but they were old, not becoming at all. She reached the door and peeked through the diamond-shaped window onto an empty step.

“Hmm,” she hummed and then opened the door. She looked around the empty yard. Not even Cindi was out there, neither was Lonnie. “What the heck?” She looked to the neighbor’s place and a flicker of light shined into her eye. She downturned her face, toward her feet and a fine silver hairbrush. She bent and picked it up. An antique with floral designs inlaid. The teeth of the brush were pale as bone.

It was just like the mirror she saw at the neighbor’s. She again turned her face to the enormous home and the flicker nailed her eye anew. She blinked and walked. Silver, like the brush, she could see that, but not what it was.

Then she could. A powder brush. She leaned down, pressing the hairbrush into the chest of her robe so it didn’t fall open. The powder brush matched, was part of a set. She looked at the house and knew exactly where the final piece was. God, it was beautiful and her friends would be so jealous, they’d be green apple jelly.

She looked around and then broke barefoot up to the porch. She decided not to knock. She’d get in, swipe the mirror, and get out.

The door opened at her touch and closed behind her once she stepped through.

—

“I’ll meet you out there,” Margot said and ended the call. She often had to leave the office to visit a site and if she didn’t have any appointments scheduled, she didn’t need to tell anyone.

She signed out of her computer and hurried through the busy office to the parking lot and her car. Steve Major was going to meet her at her neighbor’s place to lay down some law.

Before she hit the highway, a Tesla nailed a Nissan and successfully shut down traffic for six minutes. Frustrated, Margot shouted at the interior of her windshield. By the time a cop arrived and started playing traffic light, she was running late.

She sped, tapping her finger on the papers she’d printed and stapled to take to the neighbor. It was simple, he was there illegally and he had to go. Her phone buzzed and she picked it up to read Lin’s message: Going to be late. Crazy here.

A groan left her throat, she kind of hoped he’d be available if she needed to call in backup. Steve was diligent and forceful, but the neighbor was bigger, fitter…more handsome. She shook her head. Where had that come from? And what did it matter?

Steve’s car was in the neighbor’s driveway and the sight of it brought a grin to her lips. She parked in front of her family home and hurried over the property line. She stomped up the porch steps and lifted her hand to rap on the door, but it opened a moment before that was necessary.

“Oh, what are you doing here?” she asked Mindi as she entered.

—

The longer he spent at work, the more it seemed the world was coming to an end. His boss was guilty and suddenly there were nine women lined up with similar but different tales. Three of them were former receptionists. Wallace and Rosen looked ready to blow. Lin tried to focus on the Harker case and digging up dirt on the police running the investigation. A couple others were busy cooking up new culprits for the story. Nobody was trying to investigate Harker’s innocence. He was guilty.

At lunchtime they ate delivery pizza and at supper they ate delivery Chinese. Lin was halfway through a container of Tums when Wallace and Rosen left. A group sigh wheezed from the crowd—this despite the fact a good sum of them were going to be laid off, if the firm didn’t simply dissolve—and the associates and senior attorneys began heading away. Lin made sure not to go first, but he sure as hell wasn’t going last.

The clock on the dash of his car read: 9:49 and he sent a text to Margot, telling her he’d be home soon. She replied with, at neighbors, come over.

He groaned and ran a finger behind his tie to loosen it. All he wanted were his girls and his bed, that familiar, wonderful pillow beneath his head. At least he’d get this bullshit over with the neighbor. If Margot got Steve in there, the wheels would be in motion and things could go back to normal, and if nothing else, he needed—needed!—his home life to keep steady and predictable.

He parked next to his wife’s car. He considered his options, the call of his bed was on him, pulling and clawing, demanding his rest…but no. He crossed the lawn, his mouth wide in a yawn. He stepped up the porch and knocked on the door. He heard racing footfalls and then the door opened.

“Hello,” Cindi said, smiling wide, wearing the neighbor’s gardening apron.

“You’re here too, huh.” He hadn’t really considered the girls, thought they’d be in bed or watching TV. At home. “Where’s your mother?”

“In here.” Cindi turned and led Lin. She took a left turn a couple steps short of reaching the stolen tackle box.

Lin followed and the sight before him stopped him like hitting a wall. Mindi was in a pink gown, her hair high: tight curls, bleached blonde. She sat on a stool, a silver hairbrush in hand. A few feet away, the neighbor stood behind an easel and canvas. He swung a brush at the surface three more time before he saw Lin.

“Finally. Finally, we meet. Come sit, sit.” The neighbor waved at the antique couch.

Lin shuffled close, finding himself too tired to argue, and flopped onto the couch.

“You look thirsty. Beer? Wine? Gin and tonic?”

Lin put his elbows on his knees. “Beer. Oh, and yeah, nice to meet you.” His eyes were red and his cheeks were pale. Sitting there, looking at his girls, both playing dress up, somehow made him doubly tired. He leaned back to get a look at the painting the neighbor had started. It was incredible, soft but foreboding, like something from the Romantic Period. “That’s pretty good.”

“Did he say beer?” a voice called. A door swung and Margot popped her head through. “Did he say beer?”

“Yes, he did.”

Lin let his mouth fall open and his expression ball toward the center of his face. What in the hell was she doing? Before he could ask, she was gone. Instead, he asked, “Did Steve Major come by?”

The neighbor gave up painting and sat in a wingback chair of fine orange velvet upholstery. “Yes, very troubling. He says there can be only one home in this section. Like tell us now, huh?”

Lin tilted his head. “It’s not as if you cleared anything, you just showed up.” Lin found his temper flaring as he looked at his girls, and then here came his wife with a can of Heineken. “You steal my tackle box. You break into our home in the middle of the night. You have my family sitting around your living room.”

The beer can cracked and Lin turned to Margot. She stood bolt straight, the beer in her hand. Lin took the beer and slugged half of it back before training his eyes on the neighbor.

The neighbor leaned in, squinted one eye, and then fell back in his chair, laughing. “You’re a funny man, Sir.”

“Funny? Who’s joking?” Lin was fuming.

Margot tittered then and sat on the couch, but not close to him. Lin looked at her. “What are you doing here anyway, playing house? Did you become bosom buddies? Figure out the paperwork, pal up?”

“Excuse me?” Margot said.

“I got an idea, we all go home and meet this fucking weirdo in court.” Lin pointed a tired finger at the neighbor, but kept his eyes on Margot.

Margot laughed nervously, she said, “Lin?” but was looking past Lin, to the neighbor.

“Sir, this isn’t funny anymore. Maybe you should finish that beer on the road.” The neighbor stood and put his arm around Mindi. Cindi stood and hurried over to his side. “It was nice finally meeting you, but maybe we should continue when you’re in a better mood…plus, we should probably get to bed.”

Lin batted his head back and forth. He stopped after six volleys on Margot and reached for her hand. She popped to her feet and skirted the coffee table to avoid Lin’s reach.

“Okay, Sir, you need—”

Lin stood and grabbed onto the neighbor’s collar. “That’s enough. I’ve had a hell of a day and I’m taking my fucking family to our fucking—”

The neighbor reared back and threw an experienced fist into Lin’s eye. He tumbled, striking his head on the wooden arm of the couch. His jaws slammed together with a heavy wet clink. His eyes rolled as his body rolled.

“Damn,” the neighbor said. “Get his legs, hun.”

Margot did.

—

Lin rolled in sleep, feeling the far side for the mattress. It was empty. He was too tired and sore to call out for his wife.

—

He awoke hot with a headache. His left eye was swollen and the back of his head had a goose egg like a golf ball. His lips smacked and he looked around the yard. The memory struck him like a bullet, followed closely by a second shot. He was in his car…but more importantly, the mansion was gone.

Some kind of waking nightmare, but it was over and done with. He exhaled a heavy breath. It didn’t matter why he’d slept in his car. It didn’t matter that he was sore. It didn’t matter that things at the office were a mess. His eyelids slipped closed and sighed with honest relief. His home life would go back to how—

A double knock landed on his window. Margot. He reached for the button and found that it was a hand crank. It wasn’t even his car. He didn’t lower the window.

“This is private property! You can’t just sleep here!” Margot shouted through the window. “There’s places in town and at RV parks, but this is private property!”

He rolled the window down. “Margot?” he said.

“Do I know you?” she said.

The night before resurfaced and he swallowed panic. He tried the door handle, it didn’t work. He turned to seek another option, saw the car he sat in was a mess of clothes, bedding, and plastic bags.

“I called the cops.”

Lin looked up and the neighbor stood in his doorway.

“You better move on,” Margot said.

“But this is my house! You’re my wife!”

“Sir?” Margot said and stepped away, quickly.

Lin watched until her shoulder hit into the neighbor’s armpit. He gave her a squeeze and kissed the part in her hair. She whispered something and turned to head inside.

The neighbor lifted his left hand and waved with a finger waggle. The digits looked like nasty, Amazonian worms for a heartbeat before Lin started the car.

XX