Next-Door Neighbor
Maris lives in an apartment building full of twenty-somethings with modest incomes. She's like that, a full-time cashier at the mom-and-pop grocery down the street. Her boyfriend's a delivery driver for a sub sandwich shop. Together, they make ends meet. At nights, when Rob's at work, she curls up on the couch and watches reality TV with her feet tucked under an afghan. She eats cartons of yogurt with plastic spoons and stacks the containers up on the coffee table. She saves the lids for breast cancer something-or-other.

A big, orange cat adopted them a few years ago. Rob left the window of his Dodge rolled down and found him napping on the seat. That, plus his sadistic personality, led them to call the cat Toonces. While Maris watches evening television and scrapes strawberry-banana yogurt from cartons, Toonces regards the whole thing with narrow-eyed disdain from his makeshift throne, a beat-up recliner stuck in the laid back position.

Tonight, he's extra jumpy. Periodically, his tail thumps like a club and his amber eyes get enormous. Then his ears go up and he meows. While Maris would like to ignore this and get back to watching HGTV, the cat is creeping her out, because he appears to be staring at absolutely nothing. "Toonces, chill out!" she says, cutting her eyes at the unfurnished corner of their living room for the upteenth time.

What is he looking at, anyway? She tells herself it's probably a piece of his fur floating on an air current, or a gnat, or a tuft of cobweb. But his insistence gives her the chills and she turns on a table lamp, gets a broom from the kitchen, and energetically brushes the empty juncture of two walls.

Without fear, Francess looks down and watches the bristles poke through her etheric midsection.

"This is cool..."