My Enemy
by Ryan Arnold
This is the story of my enemy.
I don’t know if a man still needs a nemesis in this day and age but It seems like people have an easier time defining themselves by what they’re against than by what they're for. That’s why Batman needs the Joker, why Darkwing Duck needs Negaduck and why for all of their hemming and hawing, the Westboro Baptist Church needs the queers.
Six years ago, I rented a house in a beautiful village in the middle of a dead end street. Shortly after moving in, some of the neighbors came to welcome me. They seemed nice enough but I think the last place you want friends is right outside your doorstep. I’d rather stay relatively anonymous and not feel obligated to make small talk when I’m checking my mail.
One day I was glancing out my bedroom window & noticed the neighbor on the north side. He hadn’t introduced himself when I moved in, which I liked. But there was something off about the cut of his jib. He was in his fifties, bald, bespectacled, slack jawed. He kind of looked like Milhouse’s Dad from The Simpsons. On weekdays he wore a suit and tie with a matching fedora, I thought he was in a ska band. Every other weekend there were two kids at the house so I think he was divorced. Probably his wife resented that he spent all his time with his ska band. He had a tiny white dog that was constantly yipping, which drove me crazy in the summertime when the windows were open.
Over months and years, we lived parallel lives, making food and going to the bathroom. Day after day with his suits and fedoras, his improbable dumb face, something happened and I began to resent him. I don’t know why. I worried he could see into my bedroom. A friend of mine once said “neighbors are just strangers who see you naked sometimes.” At some point resentment and annoyance turned to acrimony and paranoia.
One day, I was walking around the block listening to The Pogues; my enemy was coming down the sidewalk in the opposite direction. I experienced a primal terror far beyond normal run of the mill social anxiety. He approached me and pretended to be on his phone, but I knew we were sizing each other up. I knew that we were destined to battle each other until one of us was dead.
He looked up and gave me a weak little polite wave and a short, pained smile. I bared my teeth obligingly. My fur stood on end. I'm sure he was just waiting for me to let my guard down so he could leap into action and tear out my giblets. He may have looked old and fat but it was clearly all just part of his plan, so diabolical.
I fingered the knife in my coat pocket. I didn’t want to make the first move, my number one priority was avoiding violence, which I hate. But as I looked at his twisted turtle-like grimace, a maniac in his weekend red sox hat and khaki shorts combo, I knew that I was dealing not with a man but a harbinger of evil. I’d bet my right eye he listens to Bela Fleck and quite possibly the Flecktones.
That night I stood guard vigilantly by the window, sure that a siege was imminent. After a while I couldn’t take it anymore, the tension of waiting to be attacked. That is no way to live. That is when I decided that the only move was to take him out first. Murder? It’s the only way, otherwise I’ll never feel safe, always be looking over my shoulder. I decided to take the garden hose and fill his house up with water, drowning my enemy and his terrible dog & all the evidence would be washed away. It was perhaps the perfect crime. I set my fiendish plan into motion by the light of an icy half moon. I ran the hose from the side of his house into an upstairs window and turned on the water. I crept back home and slipped into bed, falling fast asleep, dreaming of revenge and bloated corpses.
In the morning, he was alive
& very angry.
Now we’re worse enemies than ever.
Ryan Arnold is a writer/comedian from the village of Housatonic in Western, Massachusetts. He is the singer/composer for the band, HardCar and the writer/director of the short film, “Stove Bird.”