I have solved my m problem by stacking the keyboard from my desktop computer on top of the laptop one, all makeshit (some typos are meant to be) solutions such as this have problems of their own, but I can’t stop writing this story long enough to address the real problem, and dealing with the after effects of halfarsedness is nothing new to me, just ask my accountant, the top keyboard keeps depressing the illumination key on the bottom one which is adding to the spookiness of this story.

This was only going to be part two of The Widow Next Door but I am really getting into it here and I’m already on part four so I thought I’d combine part two and three into one and give you this as a weekend present, or curse.

I don’t do outlines, outlines are for sissies, I go in totally half-ready, so I can’t wait to see what happens next either.

Thanks for being here.

If you want to read part one first, here it is.

The Widow Next Door – Part 2 by Sherry Cassells

That bourbon-tinged night I had a David Lynch fever dream, a dream of glorious, uncomfortable, mesmerizing madness. It was one of the most credible dreams I’ve ever had and I woke up in a state of savage confidence that it was not a dream at all.

If I thought of the other me – the one that had brushed his teeth and gone to bed in proper pyjamas the night before – I thought of him with indifference. I was willing to let him be the one to diffuse into nothing with the dawn, the Victorian gentlemen would slither away, back into his Victorian novels, perhaps as the doctor attending Mrs. Rochester on the top floor of heaven, he would burn off like the dew and fog, gone by noon but for an outline that would perforate when jarred, and eventually flee. Throughout my new life he would at intervals be evoked, over coffee or sunset, the new me would remember, wistfully or not, the me that I was in a brief ripple of deja vu.

But of course I came out of it, and it is instead this dissipating stranger who ruffles my feathers and breathes down my neck, the pulseless figment hangs desperately on, by the time I am walking down the stairs to put on the coffee he is a pain in my ass, thankfully I can work from home, imagine going into the office with this shadowy dream over my head, still aching from the night before.

The night before.

Stella like a dazed actress trying out her lines. I used to live here. She said it once twice three times before I asked, finally, when on earth did you live here? but it was Charlotte who spoke up, she said Stella moved out in the summer.

This summer?

I said it incredulously, as one would say this ghost? or in the examining room this lump?

It is untechnically winter at the moment, the clocks fell backward last week – strange that in our automated world where time changes itself we still practice these ancient customs – this morning there is a careful lacing of frost over the windows, yesterday's rain has been preempted for snow, a Pearl Jam song squeezes through my head and into the thin November air.

I was trying to sell my house, Charlotte said, but when my sister told me her circumstances were about to change I suggested she move in with me, you’ll sooner or later find out how big these houses are, they are endless, too much for one person.

So it was premeditated.

I wondered if I could ask the murdering sisters a favour in return for my silence.

 But first I must tell you who I want dead and why.

Remember back to the penthouse that started it all, I was my sister's lunch guest, she is 2025’s version of Mrs. Rochester – I pulled the old poisoned chalice switcheroo when she went to the kitchen for the salt I requested – she is one ceiling away from heaven she says, but I trust that 2025’s hell hath the appropriate fury.

 INTERMISSION

When you grow up on a farm words like kill and slaughter are simply verbs of intention, average words in farm vocabulary, necessary and non-evocative. We learned young me and Hex that our lives were going to be full of this language, and we developed a playfulness about death which we incorporated into our lives.

We took enormous risks because death was everywhere, we were seeped in it, running with scissors was nothing compared to the fuckery we ran with. I suppose we challenged death to cope with its constant presence. We roared at death. Our Irish mother served us blood pudding and red eggs for breakfast, red eggs were the ones unsuitable for baking, she cracked all the eggs we gathered into a glass before throwing them either into cake batter or pan. Have you seen Dexter? We got twisted like that early on. There’s the smell of iron stuck in my nose or maybe elsewhere in my head I can never shake the taste or the smell of slaughter. We used death as a comedic crutch, I mean how many siblings do you know who stick their knuckles between each other’s ribs and say you’re nearly ready for the kill and what about the pokes we gave one another indicating our nicely marbled loins, we were always calculating, when Hex turned to look out a window I’d hold an invisible knife to her neck you’re dead I say and swipe. We had a rule about nighttime, no hunting in the dark, but Hex was an early riser and some mornings I was dead before I even woke up.

We played truth dare double dare promise or repeat endlessly, we always chose double dare, in the school playground we were the entertainment, our audience were pig-tailed and knock-kneed children doing The Scream as we exhibited our superiority over death, that’s why we climbed birds cliff with such abandon, fearlessly, death wasn’t a possibility for us but a certainty so fuck it we said.

Who knew we’d make it this far?

In the doorway of our shared bedroom where normal families drew lines indicating new heights, we wrote the names of the recently slayed, they did not have names when living but when dead we granted them identities in trends, from the cast of Gilligan’s Island, to every Muppet we could think of, The Beverley Hillbillies, Granny was the oldest laying hen, one of the few souls who had her name all along, a privilege earned by the few, including horses and our dogs, allowed to achieve natural deaths.

Hex kissed me when I left her penthouse apartment and whispered into my ear you’re dead. It was in the salt, you idiot.

You might want to take a parachute next time you go onto your balcony, I whispered back.

Last year Hex had a health scare and the salt and balcony whispers are the first indication the game’s back on, when I drove through the gates I looked up, she was sitting side-saddle on the balcony. Little shit.

So after all that gore – I used the word death only eight times in this, wait, that makes it nine but it feels like more – do you think Hex is the one I want dead? Of course not. Perhaps you think I will threaten the sisters next door into the serial killer genre to simply give Hex a close call, a real close call, one that will make her finally say you win, brother, you win.

Or – and give this some thought for I do not tell any of this story lightly – do you think it's possible that I might ask them to kill me?