Chapter One

This is the First Chapter of "The Man Next Door"

The girl stood in complete shock as she watched the neighbor through her small bedroom window, not totally trusting her own eyes after lack of sleep and exhaustion, plus numerous hours of compulsions. But after blinking a few times it was completely clear to her that she was not mistaken on what she is witnessing. There through that same window her best friend and herself spent long nights looking at the stars through; talking of everything under the sun and giggling as they thought of that attractive kid everyone was after. Talking and getting lost in the wonderful glittery shimmer of white dots amongst a pitch black sky. It is almost completely dark except for the drop of the full moon and its beautiful glow it gave off; giving it the illusion there was an actual ring around it. And now, years later she is gazing out that same window; under the same glistening astronomy, in the same bedroom but far from those same feelings and emotions. She stood there frozen as she couldn't decide what move to make next, whether to find an escape or not. She quickly darted her gaze around but finding absolutely no hope of an exit. A feeling of complete fear and anger sank in her chest as she heard the footsteps getting closer. She suddenly got light headed. The terror capsized so deep in her gut it felt as if she has swallowed a boulder; weighing her down and taking away all possible access to air. As she got totally overwhelmed and hardened with the feeling of dread, her eyes stuck wide open unable to blink in fear of something attacking her in those mere milliseconds that her eyes were closed, and hearing every single sound in the room listening for those dreadful footsteps going from soft to louder and louder. She began to have a panic attack and feeling her entire back and chest get tighter making it difficult to breath as if the air in the room has been replaced with water. She couldn't help but have a feeling of wrath and betrayal overpower the weakness of terror. She took a deep breath and held it; listening, making sure she could hear exactly what was going on. Then without thinking she reaches for the baseball bat she had stored in her closet. As she held it in her hands in a defensive position as she stops again listening for the footsteps. They are definitely closer now; they have to be right outside her door now. She grabs it so tight her knuckles begin to turn white, shifting again her stance in preparation to attack. And staring at that doorknob as it slowly began to turn; she took a deep slow breath, swallowed deeply gripped the bat even tighter. Once spotting who it was on the other side that was now coming towards her, she reacted. Like a popsicle left in the sun all the fear and anxiety she once felt have melted away as she lunged with all her might at the person who was on the other side of the door.

CHAPTER ONE

Three months earlier...

 

Alexandria Dixon was her name; but simply Lexi was the name of the girl that lived in a small neighborhood in East Texas. Like most towns in Texas it was scorching hot more months out of the year than it was cold, but it never seemed to bother Lexi all that much. She had been there all her life, so she has grown accustomed to it. She lived in a fairly average house made of all different shades of stone there was a chain link fence that wrapped around the back yard. There sat a small beautiful flower garden across the front of the wood colored front porch; beautiful blue, pink and yellow flowers. She resided with her mother and father as well as her older brother, Mark. He was 21 years of age standing tall and husky, with a fairly pale shade of skin; while Lexi being three years younger at 18 and slightly shorter than her brother; she had an average body type, with light tan skin and her hair was a medium length coming to right below her shoulders. Her and her brother carried the same dirty blond hair and blue eyes. The house has a very short grassed, green yard and nice white painting on the rims. Her father liked maintaining repairs here and there with the house, he always had a project at hand and her mother enjoyed keeping up with the flower bed so the house always appeared to look well maintained. Her mother enjoyed having the flowers in the front as she would say that flowers made the house look more welcoming for guests.

 

Like most older brothers Mark was very protective of his little sister, always making sure she was in sight and out of harm’s way. In the younger years he would always try grabbing her hand when crossing the street or if he thought she could be in danger of any kind; just like their mother would do when they were toddlers. He would not let go of her hand in public. She didn't mind it all so much when she was younger but as time rolled over she grew out of that and began to jerk away from his grasp if ever he would reach for her hand. Once he got older he began to back off.

.

She lived a pretty normal life, as normal as it could be. She went to a local public school, where most of her life was spent and had those same quiet dinners at home with her family. Then there are those always so eventual occasional movie nights. Boy, those are a hoot. Either her parents spent the entire movie yelling at the screen, as if the characters in the movie can actually respond to them, or crying so loud you can’t hear anything. But Lexi can always count on it ending well with dad’s rumbling snoring in the background and mother having her own little conversation with the people on the screen. It got to where she found more interest in her parents reactions than the actual movie. Depending on what movie they were planning to watch, Lexi would keep in mind her parents reactions to it.

 

            When she is not busy with the family or stuffing knowledge into her brain at school, she enjoyed quiet evenings in her room with a movie, a nice book or socializing at a local coffee shop with some friends. When she was alone, would drown herself with the wonderful symphonies of heavy metal or vicarious violins mixed with cellos with a thudding of the piano. Her room had blank white walls with pictures and posters plastering each side of the room and one rather medium sized window facing the street, covered with blinds. In the far end sat a twin sized bed with a dresser and a desk off to the opposite side. On the desk she kept several books for school as well as her laptop, along with books she likes to read. She enjoyed the smell of burning incense with its small trickle of smoke rising above it in a tribal sense of fashion either that or she also had a couple candles positioned here and there. She wasn’t much of a neat freak so her floor was covered in clothes, but she was highly organized in a very unorganized sort of way. There on the dresser stood a small T.V. which she enjoyed playing her movies on those lazy nights alone in her room. She has a massive stereo which is rarely switched off, causing her brother at times to pound on her door annoyed at the carried sound. If she could have it blaring any type of music at all hours of the day and night then it would be.

 

It was a shady Tuesday afternoon, Lexi just got away from school and hobbled in her room shutting the door behind her, dropping her things on the floor and collapsing on her bed. As she lay to face up staring at the ceiling, watching the slow rotation of the fan for no more than a second, she let her eyes shut for a minute and her mind go wild. She took a deep breath as she let it fill up with all kinds’ events from the afternoon and things that happened throughout the day. Resting her arms on top of her head and her body stretched all out, she took a couple more deep breaths as if to rid her body of the stress from the day, she thought of that one annoying teacher who talked funny and made everyone laugh during the lecture. Then those annoying kids who kept talking and causing a ruckus in chemistry class, they were being immature and mixing chemicals together that shouldn’t be mixed. Lexi had a guilty thought of wishing it would blow up in their faces, causing their hair to catch fire and start burning, which made her chuckle to herself out loud.

 

She pulled herself up and took a quick gander around the room, and then she relocated to the window, where she sat glancing at the sky and the gentle sway of the trees blowing in the wind. She loved gazing out the window; and sometimes she found it extremely difficult to remove her eyes from such a beautiful blue sky; she saw a couple birds flying by and the clouds looked so fluffy filling up half the empyrean and making it look as though white cotton candy had been dropped onto a blue backdrop. She was caught in a gaze and then quickly brought back when noticing movement across the street. Someone was moving in the house next door, she shifted her focused to what was going on, observing every detail. It looked to her like a single man seeming to be in his mid thirties, no kids, no family. He had fairly average weight maybe a little over; Caucasian, short to medium blond hair. He and a couple of movers were unloading a large moving truck of furniture and boxes. She watched as the man carried in a heavy box and the two movers behind him carrying in a medium sized brown, leather couch, one on each end. She detected how the man kept glancing at her house on his way back to the truck to get more boxes, which was obviously suspicious in anyone’s opinion. But she shrugged it off as him just observing the neighborhood. But she noticed him shooting a couple more glances to no other house but her way, which made her feel very antsy. She squinted her eyes in awareness and let a confused look overtake her face, Could he see me? She wondered as she suddenly got nervous for a second. She stopped and looked back into her room and then back out the window, there is no way that man was able to see her, it was too far for anyone to see; anyone with normal vision anyway.

 

Quickly dismissing that insane thought that crept into her mind, she jumped up and changed her clothes to something more comfortable and ran downstairs. After almost succeeding the avoidance of her parents, she shortly after found herself standing next to her brother getting a talk from the parents. They were both standing side by side and their mother was informing them about the new neighbor. Their mother encouraging her children to be of help, they ended up walking over to the neighbors to help this stranger move in. Her mom was always that type of person, kind hearted and thoughtful. Which is a very admirable trait, but sometimes it just goes too far. So there we were helping this strange man move into this house. Having an uneasy feeling of fear in her gut when he glanced at her, he was too nice… too friendly and just observantly a little unstable. She feels very skeptical about him.

“You seem like such a kind little girl Lexi,” He said in a soft yet creepy voice as he smiled. He introduced himself to Mark but Lexi purposely chose not to hear the name. She couldn’t understand why she felt so weird about him, but the second she made eye contact, she felt it. And she didn’t like what she felt.

“Ehh ok thanks” She got out through a stammering voice her eyes unable to hide the cynical look.

 

She carried a couple of the light boxes in as Mark and the man got some of the heavier ones. Still feeling a very uneasy feeling as entering his house she couldn’t help but glance all around and observe as much as she could. She had seen this house across from hers many times but has never been inside. She acknowledged nothing unusual, besides the fact that most of everything was still in boxes. It looked like a normal single mans house. There was a regular looking living room with couches, a there lied a medium sized rug on the floor and a couple of personal things places on the mantel. There was a kitchen and table and chairs already positioned in the dining room. She walked over the fireplace and saw a large amount of awards and pictures of people she assumed was his family. Taking another step to get a closer look she bumped into a box and discovered something under a lot of stuff under the box. There was some very feminine looking clothing and a pair of shoes that were obviously not his, they were smaller and not men’s. That’s strange to see a single man with woman’s belongings; I thought he was alone. Lexi shrugged it off, but she couldn’t help still feeling slightly shocked for a minute, not know which emotion was best to portray at this moment, being overwhelmed with many at this time. She had never come in contact with such an event. She didn’t even notice the man was standing right behind her.

 

“I won those in a bowling league” He says to her startling her out of her skin being totally unaware of his presence right there. Being overtaken by confusion and wondering what he could be talking about she only looked blankly at him for a second, then came to the conclusion he was actually referring to the trophies on the mantle. She got the feeling he knew exactly what she was looking at but pretended he didn’t.

 

She finally snapped out of it after standing there looking stupid for several minutes. She looked as if she has no idea what this man was saying. Not knowing why but him saying those words to her freaked her out. “Uh… ok I have to go back home now” was all she seemed to stutter out through the giant frog she swallowed causing her voice to get lost in her throat.

 

Feeling incredibly stupid, she jolted back home, leaving her brother standing in confusion to help the man by himself. She ran straight through the door slamming it behind her, a little louder and harder than she had attended as she sprinted up the steps two at a time. She got up to the security of her room and watched from her window. The window she first spotted him in. She watched as Mark made such an impression on the man; talking as if they were buddies. They carried more boxes and took some bags of trash to the end of the driveway. She couldn’t hear what they were saying but by reading their body language she could tell they were making good conversation. As she sat there in the little ledge of the window she could see them laughing and engaging in deep conversation.

 

Lexi didn’t like this; she didn’t like it one bit. She knew something about this man, something unexplainable even to herself, she couldn’t describe it. But the fact that her own brother was being nice to him makes her angry for some reason. She was baffled with the fact that Mark was so oblivious this man’s pure calamity, or was it just her who could see it? A couple hours later when her brother came home she couldn’t seem to hide her frustration with him; she couldn’t hide the fact that she was upset and scared. She met him at the door, flushed in the face and agitated. She tried explaining what she felt and what she saw after being in that house. But mark brushed it off as if she was crazy; as most people do. He didn’t want to believe there was anything dark about this man, neither did Lexi. Mark got along with him and took his actions as face value. He was short with Lexi as he just walked to his room refusing to even make eye contact with his sister. Who to him was clearly delusional. They both angrily resorted to the security of their rooms, shutting the door behind them. That is when Lexi decided that no one else could relate to her or understand what she going through.

 

A few weeks had passed with nothing unusual from the house next door; just the regular coming and going of work and occasional getting the mail and taking out the trash. She noticed he got a dog which he played with in the yard several times a day, watching the uncommon digging holes and finding something random in the yard to start eating. He drove an old blue 1998 Honda civic, pretty normal car. He would read on his porch every morning with a cup of coffee, going inside to refill it three times before he was done reading. Then he left to go to work around 7:30, her leaving for school not too long after. He was obviously a business man with his briefcase and khaki pants and a button up shirt with a tie. He worked every day except for Saturday and Sunday. She didn’t like that it soon became a chore to watch him, to observe his actions every day. But why, that is the question Lexi kept asking herself but never looking for the answer. But he knew she had to keep her observation open for if she were to remove her eyes for even one minute as she might miss something; something very important and dangerous. Weeks passed with her still staring out that window, her parents got very worried and began to wonder if she suffered from depression. They tried talking to her, tried assigning a counselor; but nothing is going to keep Lexi from feeling the sorrow she does when thinking of this man.

 

She finally decided to peel herself away from her computer long enough to get some fresh air, she thought she would maybe take a walk outside in the sunshine away from the darkness of her gloomy room. She jetted down the stairs only to her horror to find the man standing in her living room talking to her parents. A look of disgust and pure shock swept over her face as she met his eyes. Her parents forced her to be nice, the man knew that Lexi didn’t like him but didn’t know why she had so much annihilation built up for him. He was being so nice to her and her family, but Lexi wasn’t going to believe it for even one second.

Author's Note

I have't sent this to my editor yet, I wanted to get some people's opinions first. So give me feedback.

Reviews

[MoriartyMesa]

I felt this had a nice moment by heart beat read to it. I am nervous to keep reading but I can not turn away, nice.

[A. Amos]

Interesting and capturing tale, you have ability to grip your readers and make lost in your story. Thanks for sharing