Your house was the one everyone avoided. The kids didn’t approach your doorstep for trick or treating; they never hung in front of your house for too long, and they avoided your lawn like it was the plague. That was how you liked it.

You hated people. Call it being a bitch or a social recluse, but you avoided them like your life depended on it. And after a few years spent building up your reputation in your neighbourhood, people left you alone. Everything was peaceful.

Until your neighbour moved out, and another one moved in. Simon Riley. You’d tried to put up with him, cause surely he couldn’t have been that bad, right? Wrong. It took a month for you to realise he was anything but tolerable, and it took a couple weeks after for you to truly hate him, and the feeling was mutual.

From playing loud music at early hours of the morning that apparently no one else could hear, to leaving his bedroom window open while he smoked; which meant the smoke drifted in through your open window. He never spoke to you, only glared at you from his porch whenever you happened to walk outside at the same time.

Safe to say, you’d plunged yourselves into a war. You’d play music at 3 am, leaving your bedroom window open so he could hear it. You mowed your lawn at 4 in the morning, but only on the side where his house was for maximum efficiency.

He began parking his car on the road, in your spot.

You never missed a day of this. Until that day. You’d caught by far the worst flu you’d ever had. You couldn’t even move from bed, and you felt like death warmed up. It was around lunchtime when you got a knock on the door, and you had to quite literally drag yourself to the door and pull it open.

Simon stood there. His eyebrows raised when he saw your state. “I was concerned. I had a good night’s sleep last night. I assumed you were dead,” he said as he folded his arms. He still eye’d you with that same scrutiny.