Eyeballs by Michael Siemsen
A short story
Darren Enderson liked and disliked suburbia. He grew up in a suburb of San Francisco called “The Peninsula”. When Jill came along, and soon after, the notion of kids, the time came to find a house. Late twenties money and less-than-wealthy parents meant The Peninsula was out of the equation, and so they ended up looking for property in what Darren referred to as the “sub-suburbs”. They bought a nice, inexpensive house, though a couple hours from the city in morning traffic.
Darren’s biggest beef with the new neighborhood was the density. Having not three, but five neighbors really got to him. Where he had grown up, they had old growth trees and bushy hedges for privacy. Though he thought them ugly as a kid, he longed for that old, spider-infested row of cypresses. Especially after the first time he saw Vic Friedman staring.
Vic was a nod neighbor. He lived alone in the house directly next door. Besides the initial, awkward “we’re your new neighbors” chat, they had never spoken. One time, Vic knocked on their door to personally hand them a piece of misdelivered mail. Jill had handed Darren the bill as if passing him a damp rag used to clean a toilet. Her reaction stemmed from Darren catching Vic, dubbed “Eyeballs” by Jill, staring out one of a few second floor windows on several occasions. Darren had eventually opted out of using the backyard on nice days when he and Jill would have otherwise spent an afternoon reading in the doublewide hammock.
“Why don’t you just say something to him?” Jill would say, knowing that her husband’s non-confrontational personality would never really do such a thing.
“And what…make things even more weird?” was the best he had been able to muster on the spot.
A full year passed since the first time Darren had spotted that bearded face and bald head in a window. Darren and Jill had soon stopped opening the curtains and blinds on that side of the house.
It was early October when the nascent ingredients of a plan began to writhe around in Darren’s head. They had spent exactly one day in their backyard the whole summer long! All because of a nosey jerk with nothing more interesting to look at. Darren grew excited as he schemed. It would be the perfect passive-aggressive attack, he thought, and if done correctly, would leave him completely unscathed. Vic, on the other hand, would be humiliated and those ugly brown curtains of his would remain closed thereafter.
He called the plan “Operation Rear Window”. He wouldn’t tell Jill a lick of it or she would end up making him feel like a moron and eventually talk him out of it. No, he was on his own with this connivery.
“So, when you headed out to Charlotte next?” He asked her as they washed dishes.
“I think in a few weeks, actually. Why?”
Standard response. He could think of nothing better: “No reason. Just curious.”
“Uh huh.”
November 9th arrived. Jill was on the other side of the country, but her car was still in the driveway. Despite her protests that she could leave the Saab in long term parking, he drove her to the terminal, leaving early to be sure Vic wouldn’t yet be home from work (“We really gotta go, honey…you know how those security lines can get”). He rushed home and started getting his supplies in order. Black lawn bags, a jug of bleach, the old runner rug from the apartment, the shovel.
After a tortuous few hours of waiting, Darren began. It started with the dropping of a cheap vase into a cardboard box. He had placed a concrete stepping stone in the bottom so it would shatter nice and loud. Step One was a success; the thing disintegrated beautifully. Next came the commotion consisting of throwing himself into walls, opening and slamming noisy kitchen drawers, and finally falling completely silent. He waited a beat before shutting off all the lights in the house. If Vic hadn’t heard the racket, he surely would notice the early blackout of his favorite spying target.
Darren proceeded to dump the entire gallon of bleach over the runner rug and then rolled it into a long cylinder, wrapping it in several layers of plastic leaf bag. The bleach would be his explanation to the cops: “The smell was seeping in from the garage and I know the garbage cans say no dangerous chemicals…”
The digging was far more arduous than he had expected. He had run the sprinklers several times a day for the past week so the dirt and clay would be soft, but the work was long and grueling. What kept him going was the half a bald head above, peeking through the side of ugly brown curtains. When the grave was finally deep enough, he dragged the “body” outside, dumped it in, and covered it up with the awaiting dirt mound. The extra dirt he spread across the planter area, topping it with tanbark. Inside, he slumped on the couch and awaited the sirens and loud knocks on the door. But neither came.
He couldn’t sleep, eventually passing out from exhaustion. Leaving for work, he noticed that Vic was already gone. Another night passed, and he began to feel ashamed and embarrassed. He imagined the admonishing lecture he would get from Jill when he had to explain the yard, and she would be right about all of it.
He went to work the next day, dreading the fact that he had to pick up Jill from the airport at 10:05pm. What had Vic thought? Did he see through the stupid plan the second the crashing sounds began? Or was it the fact that Jill wasn’t shaped like a rolled-up rug, even when wrapped in trash bags?
He arrived home from work at a quarter to six. The doorbell rang at 6:15. It was Vic.
“We need to talk,” he said.
Uh oh… “Uh…sure…what’s up?”
Vic nodded with a subtle smirk behind his beard, “I think inside is best.”
In the living room, Vic made himself comfortable on the nice couch while Darren stood with impatient raised eyebrows and a flat smile.
“So, what’s up?”
Vic grunted and then played with the cuffs of his shirt as he spoke: “You’ve done a bad thing, Darren. I saw it.”
Darren crossed his arms and hoped Vic was about to tell him the cops were on the way. Anything else and he had no plan.
“Uh huh?” Was all he could reply.
“Uh huh is right, Darren. A very bad thing. And she’ll be smelling back there, too, pretty soon. You didn’t bury her deep enough.” He smiled with teeth.
Oh God.
“I made a lot of mistakes with my first wife, just like you. Never caught, but not for anything I did smart. Second wife I knew not to bury her on my property. After her, well…I ain’t been married since, but I’ve still dug a few holes.”
Darren could think of no better way to play it cool than to nod constantly and maintain eye contact. He knew his face had flushed full red, but Vic would surely interpret the reaction as a sign of guilt and fear, as opposed to just fear.
“So, Darren, here’s how I’m going to help you…we’ve got another hour before full dark. When it’s dark enough and no one’s in their yards, we’re gonna go out there and dig her up, understand? We’ll load her into her car, drive her to a deep, wide part of the river, take her out of those bags, put her in the driver’s seat, and push that Saab on in, understand? It should go down a good twenty feet. Ain’t no one gonna find it unless a fisherman hooks a license plate, you know what I’m saying?”
Darren’s heart was beating inside his ears. He just wanted to leave. Get in the Jeep, pick up Jill at the airport, and never come home. Change their names, move to Alaska. Vic would catch him the second they pulled out the plastic-covered rug. Then what? The man had already admitted to multiple murders, thinking Darren a kindred spirit. A car door slammed outside and Darren jumped a little. As he continued nodding to Vic, not hearing anymore of the words he could see were being spoken, he decided he only had one choice. Get the hell out of the house, run like a madman, and call the cops. But then the sound of keys rattled on the other side of the door, and Jill’s smiling face walked in.
“Hey you!” She said as she hefted her rolling suitcase up the stoop. “Surprise! Early flight means taxi and…” her head snapped to the figure standing up from the couch to her right. “What are you…what is he doing here?”
Darren looked at Vic and saw the cold eyes rolling between Jill and him and back to Jill.
~ END ~
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