Our Neighbourhood

Our Neighbourhood is quiet and sombre (and the scurrying of rats and the flapping and scuffling of quiet, purple not-quite-bats and...other things...is hardly enough to make it underserving of the adjective).

Our Neighbourhood has been quiet since you got here and you can't imagine it's because of you (after all, why would it be?) but you'd be a bold faced liar if you said it hadn't crossed your mind once or twice (vanity is an unbecoming trait, by the way).

The place really has always been quiet, though, hasn't it? (Though it really is no longer yours, reader, and you very much must start to gulp that down!) It was quiet when you first set foot on the picture-perfect, sweetly cobbled streets. Back when you were scouring the suburbs for the perfect place to settle down! So idyllic! So peaceful! You chose the perfect place to burrow in! To infect! And in fact, being somewhere so quiet and sleepy has always been almost a prerequisite for your...extra curricular activities, shall we say!

Of course those sweet cobbles are a little different now, aren't they? The whole street is, in fact! Heck, the whole Neighbourhood! You see, it's Our Neighbourhood, now. A new kind of quiet that is somehow louder and closer than it should be. A quiet with teeth. There's a new truth to the place, and you can sense it, can't you? It's twisted and purple and it's crunchy in the same way that broken glass is. A truth you still aren't swallowing. A truth that's lodged in your throat like milk thistles and clawing its way back up your tongue in big, bloody gashes. A truth I'm finally starting to see swimming at the back of your cold, watering eyes and downturned mouth. A truth you're trying so hard not to look at....

(you can't bury this one, partner! It's not like-)

And what is this new truth?

I knew you'd ask. I lured you into it, of course. I'm a writer. It's my job. And I will tell you. Really I will. But not yet (what sort of writer would I be if I just came right out and said it, after all? A straightforward one? Perhaps. But writing isn't just for the reader, you know. In fact, I'd argue that most of the time it isn't for the reader at all. And if not for the reader, then whom?

You guessed it.

And if you didn't, go back and think on it. I won't give you that answer either. And for the very same reason, in fact!)

Still, there are perks to a quiet neighbourhood. Even one steeped in day-round, week-round, year-round darkness, like mine. Like yours, now, too. Even one where most of the inhabitants have been strung up and left to rot with their entrails dangling out of their slit bellies like birthday streamers. Even one where your house can be decorated with entrails from your very own stomach and it still won't kill you! (Extreme DIY, right?! Don't say we're not sustainable 'round these parts! Heck, you ought to see what it looks like at Christmas! Have you ever seen a Christmas tree made entirely from limbs and decorated with draped intestines and eyeballs for baubles? Reduce, reuse, recycle! That's our motto! No, you haven't seen it yet...but you will! Are you getting it yet? Are the marbles dropping? Are they clattering to the floor and smashing into a million tiny, wickedly sharp pieces and slicing things open yet? Have they sliced open your tender flesh and begun to suck up what leaks out of you yet? Well, there's no rush, is there?)

If weekdays meant a damn thing here you can still bet not a single person would be dragging themselves, bleary eyed and sleep deprived out of bed at 6am and staggering into their car after a vat of coffee and smear of jelly-cold moisturiser across their crusted face. You can bet their cars (rotted and skeletal things) wouldn't work anyway! And even if they did...where would they go?! Every road (cracked and uneven and bulging with something wrong. something pulsating. something that glows...) leads right back here!

I can see it in your face now, things are starting to click, aren't they? I can see a lot of things around here (and I don't even need my eyes to do it! Remember that now!) For instance, I saw you this morning (or at least, you assumed it was morning. That's usually the time you wake up from your bed...isn't it?) start awake and jerk yourself out of slumber. I watched you creep to the window, confused and meek and so unlike your usual self! I watched you see Our Neighbourhood, for the first time. Imagining what it must be like to take it all in with your fresh and such deeply inexperienced eyes. I watched you crash around your bedroom and beat your furniture, so determined for it all to be a dream! So determined for the consequences of your life’s work not to have caught up with you! I watched you cower in terror as your rage awoke and...stirred up...my pets on the streets outside. I watched you creep down the stairs, heart pounding and eyes darting around your house (that isn't your house!) in that careful, appraising way you're usually so good at (how else would you get them to come home with you? How else would you make sure they keep so quiet down there, in the dark? How else would you keep getting away with it again and again and-)

In fact, I was still watching you as you found this very note on your very own coffee table (not yours, of course. not anymore...). Still watching as you smoothed it out with a cool, shaking hand and read my words. As the terror and dark purple, dawning dread began to ignite somewhere deep and primal inside of you.

Have you figured it out yet? Have the marbles dropped? Have they smashed and cut you all up? Where are you? Do you know? Tell me, dear reader, for I do so love a story.

What did you do, to earn your place in hell?