Ben stood outside, eyeing the house across the street as smoke caught form, drifting from his lips. He was always been suspicious of his neighbour. The man would stand on his drive for up to an hour, staring at Ben’s house, re-positioning his stance. Not doing anything. Every now and then, he liked to place his hands on his hips, one leg resting on the small wall separating his lawn from the pavement. He would look around, as if expecting a passerby any moment. It was a bit unnerving to witness from Ben’s house opposite. Ben had taken to smoking at the side door; he had a good view of the house from there, but now, in the dark beyond the streetlights, he remained unseen.
From his living room, he would hear the man's inane, shouted conversations with neighbours, who had crossed the street, presumably to avoid him. He would make some comment about the weather, something about the traffic on their road, always the same few topics.
When he wasn’t stood possessively on his drive, he was washing his cars. The man had at least three, others came and went. He had a habit of going out and swapping them around, moving one to the street to replace it with another a few times throughout the evening.
He kept those cars immaculate. He would stand out there, washing each car in turn, numerous times a week. Topless, with shorts, no matter what the weather.
Ben took another hard drag, the smoke fuelling his wandering thoughts.
The man across the street repainted the fences at the front of his house every few months. Every time he stepped out of his house, he would walk to the line where his drive met the pavement, and retrieve any errant little stones. He was maintaining a standard no one else on the row bothered with.
He had once spent months re-roofing his garage. Ben saw him up there every morning on his way to work, still there, barely having progressed, when he returned home.
Ben couldn’t help but think, as smoke once more escaped his parted lips, it was like that man was looking for reasons to be out at the front of the house, watching people. Something about the way he sought eye contact with people made Ben uncomfortable.
He would hear cars pulling on and off the drive all evening, the man would go out in one, come back, go out in another. Ben would have suspected him a drug dealer but it just didn’t quite fit. He was so disconcerting, something didn’t feel right.
Although he had tried, Ben had never been able to figure out exactly how many little dogs the man had, at least six. He had seen six at once quite a few times. The man never walked them during the day, only at night. First he would stride to the middle of the road, illuminated by the faded yellow street lights. He would take a long, lingering look around, then return to his house, emerging moments later with four or five yappy little dogs on leads, one in his arms. Tiny little dogs, brown and beige, floppy ears, all pulling in different directions. The man, ignoring the leads in divergence, would walk them to the end of the street and back. That wasn't too strange by itself.
The man would then go back inside, come back out, four or five dogs on leads, one in his arms, and do it again. Usually he would go for a third time before he ceased his nightly activities. At times, it was uncanny, like watching a clip on repeat.
Ben fumbled in his pocket for the lighter to reignite his smouldering stub. He hated the tang of relit, but he drew the harsh smoke back into his lungs, sinking back into his musings.
Ben had asked around family, other neighbours, tried to find out anything he could about the man with the uncanny presence. Someone told him his neighbour had parents on the other side of town, and went over there every Sunday for lunch.
Ben let his thoughts drift back a few months to the first time he followed the man to his parents house. He had noted the house, driven on the nearby Burger King, and passed by on the way home. The man, and his dad, who must have been in his sixties, were both topless, washing their cars.
He took another drag, smooth in the cold night air.
A few times since then, Ben had been woken in the dead of night by revs of an engine on the drive across the street, light flickering across his bedroom ceiling, as the man over the road went about midnight repair work in his garage. Ben felt the twinge of irritation run through him at the thought of it. The music annoyed him more though.
Recently, his neighbour had taken to blasting out seconds of loud music in the small hours. Jerking Ben from his slumber in a daze as the sound instantly cut out. It was as though it either muffling another sound, or knocking a radio by mistake. He didn't do it very often, so it always took Ben by surprise, he would wake, red hot fear burning through him. After the fifth time, Ben had lain awake, wondering what it was the man across the street was really doing in his garage.
He let the smoke drift away from him, a lingering wispy cloud in the darkness, as he tried to make sense of his thoughts.
It doesn’t sound that strange. Ben knew this, as he turned it all over in his head. They all seemed like very human things to do. On their own, now and then...
The more he thought about it, the more Ben felt uneasy. It was like a lifeform had studied the life of a few 'normal' middle aged men from the removed distance of space, and was living out what it had seen day after day, not understanding the significance of anything it did.
It wasn’t enough to stay up thinking about though, it was late, and Ben needed to get to bed. He dropped the smouldering stub to the floor, stamping it out. Pushing the batshit theories he had been brewing up to the back of his mind, he saved them for the next time he had a joint.
He was upstairs and getting undressed when he heard the nightly cacophony of excited yapping dogs tumbling out of the door across the street. Glancing through the blinds and out the window, he saw the eyes of six dogs, tinted alien yellow in the reflective light, staring back at him from across the street.
I had been going to go a lot more heavy on the alien in the 'alien next door' prompt, but what you ended up getting is a story inspired by a neighbour I once had told through more suspicious eyes.
This is my entry to @mctiller 's Twenty Four Hour Short Story Contest - despite the name, you can still enter tomorrow so check out the rules and deadline, and give it a go.
The full prompt this week was 'A man suspects his neighbor is an alien, from outer space.' check out all the entries under #twentyfourhourshortstory
Photo Credit from Maxpixel, which lists details of the camera used by not name of the user that placed this in the public domain.