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Eugenia Borkowski

I think my next door neighbor keeps a woman locked in his shed. Sometimes my husband and I will say things like, "Oh look, our neighbor is bringing soup to the woman he keeps locked in the shed." We're kind of joking but we're really not, so we laugh when we say it but we also make that face where you pull your lips back and bare your teeth. Just in case.

There’s a chain link fence between our backyard and his backyard and I’m glad the separation is there. Often, when I'm sitting on our back porch or sunbathing on the grass I'll look over at the shed and I'll shudder. The shed is a lackluster brown with a faded blue roof and it has a single window, off-center and tucked up high. The window is always illuminated, day and night with a warm, dull glow. All in all the structure is pretty normal looking from the outside but we all know that doesn’t mean anything.

Our neighbor is old and pretty normal looking, too. Though he does have that sort of might have a lady locked in my shed vibe to him.

"It's the glasses," my husband says. "Anyone who wears those old bifocals looks like they've committed a murder or two."

Sometimes my neighbor says hello to me over the fence and I smile and say hello back but inside I'm screaming, get away from me you motherfucking monster.

I’m very conscious of what the woman in the shed hears, if she's in there. I try not to sound too chipper. Does she hear us saying hello to each other? Does she croak the words, "Help me?" as we chat about the weather? One time I swear I heard the sound of a tiny pebble hitting the glass window from inside the shed. Another time there was a scraping sound coming from inside, a very distinctive metal on metal scratching. Shortly after that my neighbor started mowing his lawn.

In the middle of the night I take my son’s binoculars off of the hook by the back door where he hangs his adventure gear. I turn off all the lights in our kitchen and I spy. My husband caught me doing it once. On his way to the bathroom to pee, he turned on the kitchen lights and found me sitting on the kitchen counter, my feet in the sink.

“How often do you do this?” he asks. His blond hair is tostled from sleep, jutting out like the soft peaks of meringue.

“Often,” I say definitively.

I’m not concerned with my son catching me at anything because he’s thirteen and I don’t exist to him anymore. About a year ago he stopped talking to my face. He talks around me, over me, under me. I can't remember the last time we stared into each other’s eyes.

My son’s hands are too big for his body and he has soft brown fur that runs all the way up his spine to the nape of his neck. His pelt is dark and it glistens in the sunshine. My husband and I are both yellow. Yellow hair, yellow eyes, slightly yellow skin and teeth. Our son is all brown. We don’t know where he came from, but we don’t mention it. When he was little I used to pet his pelt to put him to sleep but I haven't touched it in years. Sometimes he still hugs me but when I hug him back it breaks the spell so I've stopped doing that. I just stand there rigid, receiving his love, breathing him in.

“You’re so weird, mom,” he says into my hair.

Most mornings the window in my neighbor's shed is all steamed up. Once there was a smear on it that kind of looked like the letters SOS. Like, if you were writing it with a stick and you were very weak and confused.

I want to help her, if she's in there so I walk our dog close to the fence and cough. Once. Twice. Pause. Listen. Cough. “Hello?” I hiss. “Are you okay?” Cough.

“Good morning Janet!” my neighbor says from behind his screen door, raising his hand in a friendly greeting. His movements seem stiff and rehearsed.

There’s a bunch of rotting furniture next to his shed. Christmas lawn decorations covered in moss and dirt. A pile of rusted folded chairs. An old couch that’s taken on the color of its environment. The furniture used to be inside the shed but one day, last summer, my neighbor spent all afternoon taking everything out and stacking it against the back of his house, next to his wood pile.

“Been meaning to do this for years!” he’d said joyfully. He spent the rest of the day moving in new things. Shiny grey Walmart bags, bursting with lumpy objects. A beige futon bed with a folding frame. A small portable television. A length of rope.

My neighbor goes to his shed a few times a day and he always has something with him when he does. A mug of something hot. A newspaper. A mysterious looking paper bag. One time he went in there and I heard something fall and then he turned on talk radio really loud for the rest of the afternoon. Sometimes when he comes out he looks sweaty, like there's been a struggle. He has been growing increasingly gaunt.

My husband says it's probably his workshop because my husband thinks he has to balance out my dark thoughts with rational ones so we don't start sinking. "Why would you go to your workshop three times a day?" I ask.

"To work," says my husband.

My neighbor likes to warn me about danger. The man who drives erratically down our street. The mama bear and her cubs who have been getting into trash cans. The poisonous snakes he’s found coiled up in his woodpile. "You can never be too careful," he says, touching his mustache thoughtfully. I notice a welt on the back of his hand, red and raised. It’s about the size of a mouth.

"Anyway, have a good day!" I shout as I run backwards toward my house, tripping over our coiled green hose.

Sometimes I daydream about the woman escaping. I imagine looking out of my kitchen window and seeing her running across the lawn. She’s wearing a sack-like garment, her arms open, her long, tangled hair streaming behind her as she runs. The sound of police sirens cut into the air and lights swarm the house. I imagine her turning around and mouthing the words thank you to me, her hands clutched to her breast.

"Mom. Mom! Mom. Mom!" my son is exclaiming. The spaghetti water is boiling over, fluffy hot suds are rolling out of the pot, sizzling against the red coiled burner.

If she did escape and the reporters come to interview me I don't know what I'd say.

"I had no idea," I would insist, my eyes wide and unblinking.

“I knew all along,” I would confess, my head bowed in shame.

I listen for her at night. I lie in bed and let myself morph into her. What does she see? Which square of sky is hers? I close my eyes and let my other senses become stronger. The cars driving down my street sound like waves crashing against rock walls. The crickets are flawless, I hear no mistakes. The air smells like smoke and gasoline.

“You’re doing it again,” my husband says from the other side of the bed, miles away.

“Doing what?” I whisper.

“That weird moaning noise.”

I swipe my damp cheeks and turn away.

I feel exposed at night when my husband works late and my son is out with friends. The rooms of my home feel big and drafty. My spine tingles easily. I’ve taken to practicing complicated kung fu moves in front of my open windows in case anyone is watching. Sometimes if the blinds are open against the night, I’ll take a knife from the drawer and lick the blade, slowly and provocatively, staring into the darkness and whatever else is out there.

I teach my son about self-defense. Stranger danger. Drugs. I tell him to always listen to his heart. To follow his instincts. I tell him that he's strong and powerful and smart. I try not to teach him about fear, but I’m afraid that it’s already in him. I worry that he learned the pattern of it from my thumping heart and my nervous stomach, back when he breathed inside of my body.

My greatest fear is losing him but I don’t tell him that.

“Have a good day, stay safe!” I tell him every time he leaves the house. But what I’m really saying is: don’t fall off a cliff, don’t choke on a large piece of carrot, don’t step in front of a truck, don’t sit under an old rotting tree, don’t overdose on drugs, don’t become spontaneously allergic to peanuts, don’t attempt a complicated backflip, don’t drink and drive, don’t get murdered. Don’t. Don’t. Don’t die.

Yesterday my neighbor looked at me lasciviously as I was hauling groceries up the stairs. “Hot one, eh?” he called over to me, licking moisture from his lips. He’s taken on the angular shape of a cartoon villain. He’s pale and guilty.

That night I take a bath with the windows open and play music for her. Soft, slow songs that seep into the heart and loud, angry ones that are good for running. I think of her lying on her futon, arms dangling, eyes open against the void. Does the music reach her? Do the notes tickle her in that dormant place that remembers?

I haven’t seen my neighbor for three whole days when the sirens come. I have imagined. them so many times that I’m not even surprised. The lights descend on his house like a storm, wailing, frantic and surreal.

I watch from our kitchen window as the swarm focuses, pauses and stops.

My husband joins me by the window, his face incredulous. My son takes his headphones off and joins us too, his eyes blinking rapidly. We stand next to each other in a neat line, largest to smallest. I’m bouncing on the balls of my feet, giddy. My husband gives me a look like maybe I caused this.

The firefighters and policemen are inside his house for so long that my son and husband lose interest and go back to their corners of the house. I make my way outside. My body feels light, like I’m floating. My fingers are tingling and objects look very far away. There’s something caught in my throat, a noise maybe or a feeling, fluttering just behind my tongue. I’m having trouble swallowing.

“Montgomery, Alabama. Juneau, Alaska. Phoenix, Arizona.” The weight of the words begins to ground me.

Our neighbor Elizabeth comes out of her house, her hands on her hips. She sees me and begins making her way over to me. Her bare feet make a delightful slapping sound against the wet grass.

“Is it Peter?” she asks. Her eyes are red and glassy. She reeks of marijuana.

I gesture vaguely, not trusting myself to speak.

“Oh no. Oh. No. No. No!” She balls and flexes her hands quickly, her eyes becoming wet.

“He called me yesterday ... I didn’t pick up. I was doing something else. I meant to call him back but then I forgot. I meant to at least text but then - whatever, it doesn’t matter.”

“What?” I ask. My voice sounds very far away, clipped and falsetto.

“His cancer? Of course, you know, he refused hospice. Aren't you a part of the phone tree?”

“Yes, of course,” I say. But I’m not.

And then they are bringing out his body. They grunt as they descend the stairs. Footing is momentarily lost and a plant is knocked over. It rolls lazily down the driveway, spilling soil behind it as it escapes. Peter is a mound under a white sheet, strapped to a gurney, just like in the movies. The gurney is loaded into the back of an ambulance and the doors slam shut smoothly. As quickly as they arrive, the vehicles begin to pull away. The procession files down the street silently, embarrassed after making such a scene.

I’m relieved to see one cop car remaining. The radios of the two officers crackle and beep. Their uniforms creak and relax, creak and relax as they walk slowly around the backyard. They shine their flashlights against the trees, make big sweeping arches. The yellow beams of light illuminate the big plastic Santa with the moss-covered face, the lumpy, waterlogged couch cushions, the wood pile teaming with poisonous snakes.

They begin walking slowly towards the pile of discarded furniture.

Next they’ll look inside the shed, I think. Just hold on. Just one more minute. You’re almost free.

Eugenia Borkowski is an emerging writer living in Eugene, OR. In 2021 a short story of hers was awarded third place in the Twenty-Fifth Annual Zoetrope: All-Story Short Fiction Competition. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and a novel. Her humorous advice column, Ask A Woman, has developed into an unexpected community with wide reach. She is an eighth grade drop out.