Your Life As A Movie

Do you ever sit around and get stuck in it? Your life that is? I know I do, especially now with all the decisions I have to make, and the road blocks that keep getting thrown up. Seems it's just not that simple to get rid of stuff. I remember a time when you could call someone and they would come and buy the contents of your house, but that just ain't so anymore. You have your antique snobs. You have your yard sale kleptos. And anymore you can't give the stuff away. I guess at this point there is just too much stuff in the world. 2 or 3 people at my yard sale told me they didn't see anything they couldn't live without, I hear that. And in the meantime I'm still living amongst boxes.

You know how you start out on a journey? You decide to go somewhere, you make a plan, map it out and begin the trip. The road unfolds in front of you for miles and then you see a detour, or a pit stop and you are stopped in your tracks. You can't move forward and you can't turn around because you are determined to get where you are going. So you wait and you tackle the first block and then the second, but you can't seem to navigate the next one which feels like a lay over in an unknown place. Everything is the same and everything is different and you begin to wonder what to do, so you wait. You wait for inspiration. You wait for clarity. You ask for directions. You can see what's on the other side, but the wall still remains. Too high to jump. Too wide to navigate around and you're stumped.

Sitting and waiting provides you with time to rewind the movie that is your life. You can look back on all that you've done. You can see what's gotten you here, but the film has already been produced. You can't edit, even though you'd like to. You view the happy, the sad, the boring, the mundane, the significant and it's opposite. What did you create? What did I create? Is it a comedy? Is it a drama? Is it a mystery? Is it an action flick? For me it's been all and then some, but now I want to create an independent film. I can write the script and visualize the story in my mind and then produce it. I will need backers. I will need people to share my vision with. I will need funding sources. I will need a plan for road blocks and weather conditions. I will need tenacity and creativity and imagination, but most of all I will need a kick in the ass to get me started, because I'm feeling kind of stuck. It's all up in the air and if I could manage to get a few things to come together I would be able to start rolling again. For now I will get out paper and pen and write something, because that's how I roll.

The Vampire Across the Street!

I knew it the first time she stopped me in the middle of the road, mid-back-up no less. She asked me, pointing towards my front step at Bon-Bon, if that cat was mine. “Is that cat yours?” She seemed tense. I didn’t answer the question at first, stuck as I was in reverse and confused by the question. So I said, “What?!” I will often answer a question with a question if I don’t know what to say. Then I took a good look at her. One front tooth was broken off at an angle, the other a decayed shade of blue, her right earlobe or what was left, was slit up the middle where I imagined an earring had been ripped out. She wore an imitation diamond stud just east of the slit and I could see patches of red underneath the pancake powder she tried to cover them with. To make matters worse I could practically hear her hair, scarecrow-esk as it was, crackling in the noon time sun. At one time or another her locks had been blonde, brunette and copper, mesmerizing really, exceedingly so if you took into account the half grown out perm. It reminded me of a misplaced halo. From neck to tippy toes though, she was a perfect size 4 an asset she flaunted with outfits any high school senior would be in awe of. But, her clock had ticked many minutes past forty long ago. Even still a steady stream of males buzzed her lot vibrating our quiet street with a deep thumping sound which seemed to originate in the trunk of their cars. I could hear it from what I assumed were blocks away and as it got closer I could feel it reverberating through the floor. When she crept out into the daylight that first time, I was surprised. She was new to the neighborhood, a tenant in suburbia. I’m told vampires can go outside if they slather on enough sunscreen, but still, is there ever enough?

She eventually told me her name which I promptly forgot and questioned me at length about my cat, who it seems, is the female version of hers. He has been off catting, as my mother would say, and now she couldn’t find him. A lot of cats had gone missing since she moved in and I couldn’t help but wonder quietly if she had been eating them, using her seeming concern for her own pet as a cover to distract us all. She said, and couldn’t stress more how much he looked like mine and could I keep an eye out for him. I would hear him before I saw him. His collar had a jingle bell. She told me his name, but I forgot that too. I got a creepy feeling and then blew it off because, who cares!

But I learned never to speak with creatures of the night as they soon come knocking asking to be granted entry into your home. They use excuses like can you help me fix such and such or I want to save this kitten. Once she actually stole my neighbors kitten and said she found it a better home after it disappeared. I never let her cross the threshold, but she soon noticed I was married and would wait until dusk when my husband arrived and run across the street to molest him, I mean greet him. She spoke in whispers, gesturing until her hand brushed his arm. She cackles and her gaze falls to the pavement. A full frontal assault with that grill is too much for any man to deal with even in muted light.

My good friend is her landlord and resides in the same building, nothing more than wood and plaster separates their bedrooms. She curses the day she let the vampire move in. She keeps questioning why. She says, “I thought she would be okay because she has a little boy, but every night, night after night I hear her having sex and she is loud, I mean loud. She does it when her son is there too and he is only 8. She is so loud I have moved my bedroom across the house and have had to pound on the walls to get her to shut up! And that music! I just don’t know what to do!”

“So, you’re saying she’s loud, I chimed in. I then took a moment to re-think my initial assessment of her, “does she howl?”, I asked in my coy way.

“Yeah you could call it howling!”, she snipped back, disgusted.

Then I thought maybe she was a werewolf, but she didn’t have the requisite hairy-ness, so I blew the idea off entirely.

My friend doesn’t know what to do and frankly, neither do I. Since I won’t grant her access to my place and since my husband moved out I rarely see her. If I do see her on the odd occasion out in the light, I stay indoors until the coast is clear, but still she is sucking my neighbor dry.

How does a person get rid of a vampire across the street?