I’ve always been fond of the Twilight Zone episode, “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”. In this particularly compelling short, a blackout causes an Anytown, USA neighborhood to disintegrate into murderous hysteria. At first, the various homeowners congregate in the street to commiserate en masse. Community in action! Warms the heart right up. Alas, during the course of the evening, seemingly random houses recover their power. Thanks to the oddity of the outages (and their darkest fears and insecurities), the occupants slowly sink into a mire of distrust and homicidal prejudice. In the end it’s revealed that the power outages were in fact orchestrated by alien beings intent on letting mankind’s own innate nastiness do their work for them.
Frankly, I can’t argue with the aliens’ logic. If anything, Maple Street’s descent into bloody chaos was too slow by half. In my neighborhood, community is everyone standing on the front porch to watch the police once again sternly remind the area motorhead that he can’t rebuild his engine in the middle of the street. We can’t even manage a block party without every untrimmed lawn, stolen paper, or unscooped poop billowing up to the surface. Rod Serling’s nefarious aliens could save themselves some technological hassle and just dump a few piles of leaves in random yards. Hell, force us to talk to one another and we wouldn’t even make it to the first commercial break before the block turned into Peyton Place on Angel Dust.
My wife and I have lived in this home for nearly 12 years and to be honest, we know only the first names of my immediate neighbors to the left and right. And believe me when I say that I dearly wish that we did not. My eastern neighbors are a retired couple – Carol and Art aka “Nosy and the Rambler”. Carol is, to her credit, a quiet nuisance whose only contribution to my discomfort is peeking from behind the curtain whenever my wife or I come or go, as if she’s taking copious notes of our activities to have ready for the authorities. She seems very eager for a chance to be THAT neighbor on the Channel 4 “on-the-scene” interview.
Art is a different story entirely. To the casual observer, the sneaky nature of my trips from the front door to the car or the mailbox must be as fraught as evading C.I.A. surveillance, or a possible sniper attack. Oh how I would long for such a simple obstacle to overcome. But alas, my fears are much more pedestrian in nature. Can I reach my destination uninterrupted or will I be trapped in a never-ending conversational quagmire concerning the minutiae of Art’s extended family struggles or his ceaseless battle against the green plague of crabgrass? Thanks to my Southern-tempered upbringing, I am conditioned to listen politely and attentively. For every “Is that so?” and “that’s a stumper” that makes its way out of my well-trained mouth, my inner bastard is screaming a litany of epithets that would make even the most hard-boiled gunny sergeant blush. I am cursed to know every inner working and subtle complexity that lies within the Rambler family’s catalogue of dysfunction. From his grandchildren’s experiments with that “damn devil weed” to the intricate puzzle of events that led to his daughter-in-law’s third miscarriage to Art’s foolproof plan for defending his gazebo from the ravages of both time and squirrels, I know it all. A typical exchange goes like this:
Art: “Hi, neighbor! How are ya’ today?”
Me: “Fine, Art, thanks for asking.”
Art: “Have you got a minute?”
Me: “Actually, no I don’t. I’m in a bit of a—”
Art: “I can understand that, sure as I’m standing here!”
Me: “Great, then you’ll understand—”
Art: “I tell ya. That damn grandson of mine got himself in a lick of trouble down at the Gas N’ Sip again…”
And on and on and on he goes. Any attempt to withdraw to, say, actually get to work on time for once results in another “I can understand that”, but I can’t see how he could possibly understand as, to my knowledge, the Rambler has been retired since the mid-Seventies.
Once avoidance proved to be impossible, I decided on retaliation, albeit of an asymmetrical kind. His banal barrages of conversation are countered by what I choose to reveal about my own life on those rare occasions that he remembers that he’s actually talking to a living being and not the deckchairs. I take no small measure of satisfaction in one day telling him that my mall-based psychic consulting business is doing well, and the next explaining why my office is full of sociopathic techno-cultists. To date I have been a writer, a plumber, a toaster-oven technology researcher, a restaurateur, a stylist, and an experimental therapist for Guatemalan doctors suffering from Hodgkin’s disease. I’ve offered up travelogues regarding my fake work-related travels to such exotic locales as Burma, the Falklands, and the fantastical land of Narnia. This version of me gets around. If my subtle mind-fucking seems a childish way of getting even over Art’s disturbing exposés regarding his inner psychological minefield, bear in mind that he’s never once commented on my wild career shifts or fanciful travels. I sincerely doubt he’s paying attention to begin with.
For all my many complaints regarding Nosy and The Rambler, I’d take an entire block of them if it would grant me even a second of respite from our new neighbor to the west. The previous occupant was, by all accounts, quiet and unassuming. I’ve overheard enough of my wife’s podcasts to know that those “quiet and unassuming” types usually end up the subject of a breathless “on-the-scene” report, but as we were never subjected to heavy rotting smells or constant screams of terror and pain (or even dumped lawn cuttings), he was a-okay in my book.
This cannot and will not ever be said of our street’s newest resident. I don’t know what series of catastrophic life choices led her down the road to the very strange mental place she now inhabits and, to be honest, I’m positive that my ignorance is most certainly bliss. My experiences with Art the Rambler have taught me that some presents are best left wrapped. My chief complaint isn’t that she is almost certainly insane. Look, life on Earth is hard. It’s her dogs. Her stupid little rat-trap dogs. Her two little fur demons upon whom – be it due to her insanity or infernal pact – she has transferred every overly indulgent maternal instinct her troubled mind can muster.
I don’t mind dogs. There are other dogs in the neighborhood. Hers are different. There are already *tales* regarding this woman and her dogs. I’m not the only person on the street who refers to her as “the Dog Lady”, even if I’m probably the only one who puts a “goddamn” in the title. Thanks to one of the neighbors who, for some unfathomable reason, visits her regularly, I know her home is a wealth of shredded wood furniture and masterfully stained carpets. As such, I can only assume that her two Shelties, having succeeded in dominating the design decisions in the house, have now set out to conquer the yard and, by extension, the whole damn block.
I understand that dogs bark to announce territorial rights to other animals. They’re dogs. It’s baked into their entire premise. But one would hope that territorial claims would be limited to, say, other dogs. One would be wrong. These blathering mutts bark at everything. Birds. Cars. Anyone unfortunate enough to walk anywhere within their field of vision. I’ve seen them bark at the wind. No leaf, falling twig, or mote of dust can be so insignificant as to escape their yipping claim of property. On the off chance the day is still and free of passersby – of any species – they are not sated. They will stand nose-to-nose and exclaim their triumph of domination to each other until something else attracts their ire.
I don’t know how the rest of the block stands it. Working in an office for 8 hours a day provides some relief for the wife and me, but like clockwork every evening is punctuated by their trips outside at a rate that would make a network advertising exec weep tears of joy. The Dog Lady seems to believe that her precious child surrogates’ claim to the land need be defended multiple times an hour lest unruly leaves gain a foothold and stage a topographical coup.
Weekends are another matter entirely. The Dog Lady seems to have decided that our working in the yard is prime time to leave her babies unattended outside for the whole goddamn day. Why she had to move in right before we decided to rebuild the patio, I can only guess. My wife blames my misanthropic karma. Outwardly I protest, but privately I concede she may have a point.
After three consecutive weekend concerts of the Sheltie Bark-a-Thon, I decided that enough was enough. One late afternoon when Dog Lady returned from wherever insane dog-thralls go on a Sunday, I approached her in an attempt to reach some kind of peace accord. After what I assumed to be a polite amount of chitchat, I confronted the not-really-metaphorical wolves at the door.
“Ma’am, something has to be done about your dogs,” I started out.
“Whatever do you mean?” she asked, completely oblivious, “have my babies been causing a problem?”
“Your ‘babies’. Yes. This incessant barking is a nuisance. Not only do they bark whenever we are outside, they bark when ANYTHING is outside. We can barely hear ourselves think.”
“But they never get out of the yard” she offered as if sound obeyed country property boundaries, “and if they did, they would never get into your trash.”
“If they would shut up while they did it, I wouldn’t mind if they knocked over my trash and mauled every single child on the block. It’s not what they don’t do that bothers me. Lady, they bark too damn much! You need to either get them to stop, or keep them inside.”
“Well, I could never do that!” she stammered.
“And why, pray tell, could you never do that?” I asked.
“They’re both very special dogs.” Dog Lady stated with a kind of “how could you not know this” tone.
“Do they possess amazing and fantastic powers? What do you mean, ‘special’?”
“They’ve both been very traumatized,” she said in a hushed tone, as if not wanting to embarrass her canine overlords with the reveal of their most personal secrets. I couldn’t believe how quickly this conversation was deteriorating into a sublime horror.
“Neither one of my poor babies ever got over being neutered,” she explained, “and what with the new house and all, they’re very fragile.”
“Oh, you mean that kind of ‘special’,” I sighed. “Lady, just figure out a way to silence your dumb dogs.”
“Oh no, my babies are very smart!” she exclaimed, obviously offended at the slight to her almost children.
“That’s right,” I offered, “they’re so smart that they stand two inches apart from each other’s noses and bark for 30 minutes straight. Fine. As long as you can find some way to keep them quiet when they’re outside, they can be as smart as they want. I’ll tell everyone that they’re doctors of astronomy.”
“Oh, I’ll have none of that! I don’t cotton to that devil magic; predictions and the like!”
Realizing that there was no way for further discussion to end in anything but madness, I made my way back to the relative safety of my house, and amazingly enough, that night there was no barking. For one brief blissful night, there was the silence I had so dearly missed. And of course, on the very next night, the barking Hell resumed.
Despite weeks of entreaties, there was no respite from the sonic tyranny of that damned Dog Lady and her terrible twin Shelties. I’d had enough. It was time to poison the dogs in the night, but the wife (being a kinder soul than I) argued that the best (and legal) course would be to call Animal Control. Lodge enough complaints and Dog Lady could lose custody of her demon charges – after which, I presume, we would be crowned King and Queen of the neighborhood by a grateful and well-rested community. I was not convinced poison wouldn’t result in similar accolades, but we dutifully submitted a complaint. Animal Control showed up the very next morning to have what must have been an absolutely bonkers chat with the Dog Lady. But wouldn’t you know it? The very same evening, Dog Lady knocked on our door to offer an apology and explain that she’d only be letting the dogs out in the daytime from now on. I pressed my luck and opined that obedience training shouldn’t be out of the question and, as one might imagine, that was not received well. Those dogs are special, don’t you know?
Things have generally improved since then, with only a single additional call to Animal Control – when her precious hell-babies decided that a 30-second lawn encroachment by quickly-dissuaded Girl Scouts warranted a good hour and a half of yapping. Now my only worry comes from what cannot be a medically safe dosage of the Dog Lady’s Evil Eye. For someone who doesn’t take to that devil magic, she has reached a truly impressive level of malevolent ability. But I can live with that.
With all that, I’m sure it’s no surprise that, despite the normally irresistible siren call of “wanna beer?”, I have avoided contact with the motor-head across the street. Beer or no, nothing turns me off quite like a 6:30 a.m. street lesson in engine mechanics from a man whose only other idea of neighborly consideration is making sure everyone on the street can hear his Bluetooth speaker. I’m sure he’s very proud of his Great White playlist, but I just don’t care to hear it first thing Sunday morning. It’s entirely possible that he’s actually a nice guy, but once bitten, twice shy as Great White would like to remind us. Loudly. On top of that, he’s begun instructing the surly teens of the area in his mysterious automotive alchemy. It would be bad enough dealing with him one on one; I don’t need him turning the area youth against me at the same time. Some presents are indeed best left wrapped.
A few houses down, there’s a sign featuring a heavily airbrushed couple in matching jackets promising that your future forever home will soon be on the market. Somewhere in the cosmos, I can hear the sound of dice shaking in their cup. Who knows what kind of neighbors the coming months will bring? What brand of Cleavers or Waltons will land on our block? Hell, I’d settle for just quiet and unassuming. After all, the monsters have already arrived.