Martin had taken to wearing pajamas and applying a stepladder to different sides of his house in fogged daylight. From across the way, Pamela watched him mount the rungs, stretching two stories, a garden hose in tow. He pointed the nozzle at a gutter, cranked it to full blast.
Good, he was finally doing something about that mess of leaves from last year. Though, there’d been a rumor that what he was really after was revenge; something had been putting holes in the stucco by his bedroom window while he slept. Perhaps, Pamela thought, he needed to focus a little less on killing a bird and a little more on reconsidering stucco in this sort of New England neighborhood.
Someone, not Pamela but someone, could say he had it coming.
She watched as water rebounded, a crank too far, and he tilted. A windmill of arms, a grasping at air. He hit the ground with a thump that Pamela heard through her window, hollow, like the earth had been dug out beneath him.
After she got her story straight, she told the authorities what she’d seen: something chartreuse and scarlet fleeing to open sky.
Salena Casha's work has appeared in over 150 publications in the last decade. Her most recent work can be found on HAD, F(r)iction, and Club Plum. She survives New England winters on good beer and black coffee. Subscribe to her substack at salenacasha.substack.com
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