Death, Sex and the Girl Next Door

Eight8

     Aleks was deep into a dream when his alarm went off. "Today" by the Smashing Pumpkins was playing on his phone on the night stand beside his bed. Rather than turn it off and get up he lay in bed for a few minutes listening to the song play as he tried to shake the dream from his head. He had dreamt that he was lying naked behind Jessica, inside her, finally.

In his dream she had turned her head towards him while he was making love to her but instead of seeing her beautiful face, it had been replaced by the face of Sam, the cat.

There was a sudden knock on his door followed by the voice of his aunt asking him if he was up. "Ya, I'm up," Aleks yelled back at the door.

"What the fuck was that" he thought to himself as he crawled out of the covers and stood in front of his mirror. The dream had freaked him out a little. He slapped himself in the face a couple of times as he stood in front of the mirror and then shook his head; the dream had been so real.

Aleks showered, dressed and then sauntered down stairs to the kitchen. His aunt was already up and was busy flipping through the paper, scattered in front of her on the table were a jumble of flyers. Aleks sat down across the table from her and started looking through them when his aunt looked up at him.

"Have you seen this?" she asked as she pushed a poster in front of him. It was a warning about a possible pet killer in the neighborhood. Aleks took a moment to read it without looking up at his aunt who continued to stare at him from across the table.

"No, I haven't," he answered as cool as he could, still not wanting to make eye contact with her.

"Apparently someone is poisoning pets in the neighborhood again, it might even be the same person that was poisoning pets last year. Seems weird don't you think, that the same person would start again after all the attention that came last year?"

"Well, Jim Morrison had it right, people are strange," Aleks replied, finally making eye contact with his aunt. He continued to look directly at her without blinking, until she eventually became uncomfortable and looked away. She got up and cleared off all the papers putting them in a blue recycling container by the garbage in the corner of the kitchen closest to the door.

"Aleks, can you please take the recycling and the garbage out before you leave? Oh, and Olivia dropped that flyer off in person this morning, you might want to check in with Jessica, see how she's doing. Olivia said their cat Sam being poisoned yesterday," Katy added. She was back watching Aleks when she added the last line, like she was looking for a reaction.

Aleks never gave her the satisfaction of letting anything show on his face. "I know, Jessica called me last night and I drove down and met her at the vet."

Katy's demeanor changed when she learned that Aleks had been with Jessica the night before. "Why didn't you mention that earlier Aleks? Is she OK? Does she need anything? I should call her."

"She's fine" Aleks cut her off. "She's fine. I spent a little time with her last night and she's OK. You don't need to call her," he added emphatically.

His aunt looked at him suspiciously for a just a second, but long enough that they both knew what each other was thinking. She didn't respond, she nodded and then left the kitchen.

Aleks grabbed the poster off the table and folded it as small as he could before throwing it into the recycle bin. He then picked up the bin and carried it outside through the garage. As he walked past the shelf where the antifreeze was kept he noticed that the jug was missing. He paused for a moment and contemplated whether his aunt was on to him. He shook his head telling himself he was just being paranoid, she had probably topped up her car and discarded it. As he was walking back into the garage he noticed Olivia coming back up the street carrying more posters. She acknowledged him with a salute of her middle finger, he smiled to himself but didn't respond; instead he turned his back and went inside closing the garage door.