Three Is Company

Old Friends and Forgotten Felines

When dinner had finished and the dishes had been done, John set to trying to plug in the television. There were many wires and plugs that he had to learn to connect, and at the moment the house did not seem equipped to admit them. His parents hadn't been very good with technology, as they had only just figured out how to turn on the radio by the time he had left for school. At the end of the night John had given up, sitting with a bundle of wires in his hands, staring at the blank gray screen as if expecting a picture to miraculously pop up and begin playing.
"Any luck?" Mary wondered, wandering through the living room with two large glasses of wine. John chuckled, glancing upstairs to where the baby was sleeping, hoping that their relaxation did not suddenly stir her from her slumber. Rosie seemed to sense when her parents were enjoying themselves, as she was always very good at interrupting with her screaming. When no sound came from the upstairs John allowed himself to ease a bit more comfortably into the couch, accepting the wine from his wife while she curled into a neat ball at his side.
"How old do you think this couch is, John?" Mary wondered, plucking at the pilled fibers in potential sabotage.
"Not old enough to collapse under us, if that's what you're worried about." John assured.
"Did you have it growing up?"
"I don't think so. If we had it must have had different cushions." John guessed, smoothing his hand over the empty cushion to his left while allowing his wife to snuggle deeper into his right.
"It must be strange, living amongst your childhood memories." She presumed.
"It's even stranger that I'm the only one who knows them. Some part of me forgets that you haven't always been here." John admitted. "I feel like if I tell you a name you'll know it, or if I recite a memory you could finish it."
"Soon enough. After you tell me all about your childhood, all about this place. Perhaps I'll even come to like it." Mary suggested, to which John gave a little scoff and took a sip of his wine. He'd pretend not to hear the last part.
"There's not much to tell about my childhood. Nothing more than bikes and baseball." John admitted.
"What about your parents?" Mary wondered, poking John's cheek with the cool side of her wine glass before taking a long, generous sip. "What were they like before they had to be wheeled out of here?"
"Just parents." John admitted with a long sigh. "They were...well they were normal. Dad was an electrician, mom stayed at home with us until we were in middle school. Then she worked the counter at Sears."
"Anything spectacular?" Mary wondered.
"I mean...well my mom enjoyed the piano." John offered. "And Dad had this thing for puppets."
"That's rather odd." Mary pointed out. "Story worthy."
"Nothing you need to hear right now." John complained. "Nothing I'd ever want to hear as a child, either. Who cared about Mozart? Who cared that I'd suddenly find one of my socks missing, soon found with googly eyes attached?"
"That's actually a little unnerving." Mary admitted with a chuckle, looking around apprehensively as if expecting an animate puppet to approach from around the corner.
"It was tame." John assured. "No, we were actually some of the most normal people on this block."
"Oh ya?" Mary's eyes glowed in enthusiasm, snuggling farther with her nose nearing John's now crossed eyes. "Gossip, hm?"
"I don't want to be spreading rumors." John scoffed. Mary gave a noise of insistence, pushing John's wine glass closer to his lips as if she expected a state of drunkenness to loosen his lips.
"I love rumors, John. Come on, there's nothing better to do." Mary defended, giving an accusing look to their blank television. John gave a heavy sigh, though he leaned his head back and craned his neck towards the neighbor's houses, as if trying to gain inspiration from the slight glances of shingles he could see out of the front windows.
"Well, there's always the story of the Hudsons. Martha next door was the only one left by the time I was growing up, and she always used to tell these elaborate stories of drugs and guns to explain why her husband was gone. I'm not sure I believed a word of it, but my parents always ate it up. That's why they never let her around us; for fear that she was caught up in the drugs herself." John admitted.
"I'm sure he would've had quite the market. I'm sure all of the kids feel the same boredom we're experiencing. Nothing to do around here but get high." Mary chuckled.
"Don't take on that attitude. We've got a child to raise, you know." John scoffed.
"Yes I know." Mary assured. "But still. We'll have to get her into sports if we want her to stay busy after school in a healthy way."
"I don't think we've got a drug problem here, I really don't. Mrs. Hudson was just...well I'm sure she was just making stuff up to make her divorce sound more dramatic than necessary."
"It certainly is dramatic." Mary agreed with a chuckle. "What else?"
"Well, I suppose the biggest story that's ever been told happened just next door." John admitted, hesitating as he wondered the consequences of sharing the morbid tale. The details still haunted him to this day, and he was growing reluctant to spread that darkness onto his wife. Nevertheless, she'd find out eventually. The talk of the town never quiets, not even two decades after the main event.
"Across the fence?" Mary presumed. John nodded, sighing regretfully as he opened his brain to the more ghastly experiences of his childhood.
"There was a boy who lived there, Sherlock Holmes. Troubled kid, really. He was my age; in fact we basically grew up together. We would play sometimes, baseball in the yard, flipping rocks in the woods, swimming down in the river. He was strange, I couldn't deny it. My parents never liked me hanging around with him, as they were convinced he had killed our cat."
"Killed the cat?" Mary exclaimed, nearly jumping in her repulsion.
"I'm not so convinced. Their only reasoning was that he had taken to feeding it, leaving a bowl of tuna out on his porch. About a week after, it vanished." John explained.
"Well he could've just taken it inside." Mary suggested. "Stole the cat, rather than killed it."
"My point exactly. But we'd never have known, not really, because his father wouldn't let us inside. No one was allowing in or around the house. That man was...evil. It's the best word I can use to describe him. There were days when Sherlock would show up, battered and cut, telling me stories about dragons and tigers and things that I thoroughly believed. I was young, you know? Couldn't tell what was actually going on."
"Oh no." Mary muttered. John nodded his head regretfully, a shiver going up his spine as he imagined the wretched face of his elder neighbor, his yellowing teeth poking over the top of the fence to scold John for keeping his son out too late.
"Thankfully the police caught up to him. I think it was the school nurse who figured it all out. I mean, that kid was battered beyond recognition some days. We'd walk to school together and he'd be stumbling over his own feet, eyes swollen shut. Well, they caught the father, and he's not getting out anytime soon. They shipped Sherlock off with some relatives before middle school, I never did get to say goodbye. But it's all in the past, you know? I'm sure he's doing fine."
"I didn't think abuse got you locked away for that long." Mary pointed out. "System's rigged in that way."
"It wasn't just physical abuse, at least that's what I heard." John defended with a shiver.
"Oh." Mary muttered. "Oh."
"Ya."
"That's terrible. So the house is empty then?" Mary presumed.
"Empty of all of them, I suppose." John agreed. "I'm sure it's been sold off without the true story being told. I'm sure our neighbors don't even realize where they're living."
"For their sake I hope not." Mary agreed. John remembered the silhouette he had been observing the night before, that strangely shaped figure who had been staring at him through the darkness. Perhaps the thing had been a hallucination brought about by the early morning child care, though the experience still unnerved him. Had John been witnessing their new neighbors, or had he been falling prey to the ghosts of the past?
"I hope that's the worst thing that has ever happened in this neighborhood, and furthermore I hope it's the worst that will ever happen."
"Tragedies are rare, hopefully." Mary agreed solemnly, her eyes staring up towards the ceiling as if trying to check on the baby through the floorboards. John nodded quietly, hoping that the neighborhood had spilled enough blood to satisfy it for a while.
"That all the stories you have for me tonight?" Mary presumed, finishing off her wine before setting the empty glass upon the coffee table.
"I'm afraid it doesn't get more grotesque than that." John agreed.
"Too bad." Mary hummed. "If only there was another way to pass the time, now that we're all alone." She leaned even closer onto John's shoulder, dangling her fingers across his chin before falling to the first available button on his shirt. John chuckled nervously, knowing that they were alone but feeling the eyes of all of his ancestors trained upon him.
"Not with the curtains open." John complained.
"Why, nervous they'll start rumors about us?" Mary presumed, twisting onto John's lap and holding him tightly between her legs. John turned a strange color of red, already hearing his mother's scolding yells in the back of his mind. "Get that woman off my couch!" It was a deafening cry, something that he desperately wanted to override.
"What if their first impression of their new neighbors is through the window?" John pointed out.
"Then they'll be very jealous, I presume."
"Let's go upstairs." John suggested, wiggling away from Mary's preliminary kiss as he began to wonder what faces might be witnessing on the other side of their blinds.
"What, and wake the baby?" Mary whined.
"We'll be quiet."
"Maybe I will be." Mary defended, drawing her lips across her husband's neck and collecting a small sigh of satisfaction from his lips. "Let the neighbors watch, John." she added. John smiled helplessly, starting to wonder if an onlooker would be the worst of his problems. Perhaps he ought to take things one step at a time, enjoy his new house rather than fear the consequences of living in it. The next kiss he accepted, this time more passionately than even he might have predicted. Perhaps it was time to leave the old stigmas behind. His parents were gone, their eyes and their judgment. And the neighbors, as closely packed as they were, probably had better things to do than spy across the curtains. John might allow himself to enjoy this house, now more than ever. His own house, with his own family. One might think starting your life progressed linearly away from the point of origin. Well, here he was, completing a full circle and falling back upon his parent's couch with the woman he chose to love.