New Neighbor
As an ambulance’s wailing siren approached us, the cops dragged me to their cruiser. I grew colder and colder the further we got from my apartment. “It’s not me, it’s him,” I told them with what little breath remained. “It’s my neighbor. It’s his fault. Talk to him.”
They told me to shut up.
We had just reached the police car when my heart stopped beating. When I woke up, I was in the hospital. Paramedics, having been called to the scene to deal with the dead body in my bathtub, were able to zap me back to life. The hospital kept me on life support for two days or so, and gradually my blood began to flow as it would in a normal person. I tried to get out of the bed I was in, but a set of handcuff kept me tethered by the wrist to a brushed-steel bed railing.
Doctors and nurses came and went, but none of them could answer any of my questions except those dealing with my medical condition. Then a detective came by. He said he wanted to interview me. I asked for a lawyer. They sent a public defender to my bedside, and I told him everything. “Find my neighbor,” I told him. “It’s imperative. He has the same condition I had, and he can back up most of what I’ve told you.”
The lawyer left. He came back looking deeply shaken.
“Well?” I said. “What happened?”
“You said it was your neighbor, right?” he asked.
“Yeah. Right next door.”
“I’m sorry. But there’s nobody there.”
“Oh, he’s there. He’s just not answering.”
“No, you don’t get it,” he said. “The super told me the place has been vacant for over three months. He let me in and showed me. There’s nobody living there.”
I just stared at him.
For weeks I continued to insist that there had been somebody living next door to me. I persuaded my lawyer to call the service that delivered groceries next door, but he came to me shaking his head, telling me the company had no records of delivering anywhere but to my place. “Did you ask for the Asian girl, like I told you to?” I asked him. My lawyer said he did. He told me there was an Asian girl who worked there, and yes, she’d delivered to my apartment complex. But she swore up and down that mine was the only unit she made deliveries to. “She’s lying,” I said. But she held firm on her story. In fact, she wound up testifying against me in court, telling the jury that I always gave off a “creepy vibe” whenever she dealt with me and that the last time she brought me groceries I’d scared her witless. I hung my head during the entirety of her testimony. The prosecution, in closing, told the jury that I’d killed the grocery kid for no grander purpose than to steal his wallet and get free groceries. For motivation of my crime, they brought out my bank records and showed how I was looking at eviction. As evidence of my criminal intent they told how I’d given to the delivery service the apartment number of the unit next door instead of my own in an attempt to obfuscate any police investigation that might come once the delivery guy went missing. And then, of course, there was the man’s corpse and what I did to it. The jury deliberated for less than two hours before coming to their consensus.
And that brings us to the here and now, where the metaphorical imprisonment of my apartment has been replaced by the literal imprisonment of my jail cell. I reside in this cell, concrete with a steel door, twenty-four hours a day. One hour a day I’m supposed to be brought outside to chain-link cage so I can exercise and breath fresh air, but I can’t leave my cell without getting sick, so they leave me in here around the clock. It hasn’t been as horrible as one might imagine. The food is edible. I’ve gotten a lot of reading done. The only part I can’t get used to is the tapping sound that comes from the neighboring cell. I’ve haven’t seen the man yet, but I know he exists. Even if the prison staff insists there is no cell next to mine, that mine is the last cell on its tier.
It matters little. The clock is ticking. My time is up. Where will I go now? To the infinite eternal? Or to another little room. With spiders in the corners.
