Walking round my block.

So the other day I was walking down the street round back from mine, where the plastic shingled horder house is, with it's own giant shipping container set up in the yard next to the toilets. We walk on that side of the street because of the big spotty dogs that slam into their fence at the house that has the refrigerator inside the front door and all the ivy, next to the clipper ship house. Just up from there, past the bars on the windows house where you hear all the yappy dogs going ballistic from wherever they're holed up, is the peely stucco house with black sheets duct taped up for window coverings.


This is where it's ok to cross back to our side of the street. A couple of windows are draped with old dark green and red plaid sheets, sealed tight with more duct tape. That house leans a little bit to the side, and someone has built a fence out of, well, stuff. Some boards, some other things, pieced together to barricade in the residents. There's a truck pulled up to the front door, resting on the weeds.


Over the wall, maybe standing up on some of the stuff, is a little blonde child with a ghost white face. She's staring at me and I stare back. We do this for a while, until she wins and I look away. Because look out for cars on that corner, that's the spot where the fedora guy tried to run me down the other morning, driving his big 70's car up on the sidewalk, flashing me a peace sign as he peeled off and drove down towards the beach.

 There's a man behind the ghost kid holding a shovel raised up over his head. As I get closer, I can hear him bludgeoning something. You hear that
thwack
thwack
thwack
and I can see the shovel rise and fall.


"You're killing it! You're killing it!" wails a voice from another kid that I can't see from behind the wall.

"YOU'RE KILLING IT!"


The blonde girl doesn't seem that concerned about the execution by shovel that just occurred. She's just watching the neighborhood go by. I am pretty late for agility. Or maybe I was going to wash the dogs that day. They've been so dirty. So I don't stop and be neighborly, and just walk the rest of the way home.