P-O-T

	It was a commonly quiet morning in the upscale neighborhood of Porter
Oak Town, Maine.  A cool breeze slipped through the tranquil suburban
community, carrying with it the early signs of autumn.  There was that delicious
aroma of life beginning to fade into winter’s cold touch.  The sun teased to
break through the clouds as two moving trucks lurched down the street and
stopped in the driveway of a two story cream house.  They were two grimy
metal beasts, black blemishes against the posh scenery. As a trio of burly
movers began to unload a seemingly endless amount of cardboard boxes, the
unseen eyes of the community came alive around them.  Blinds and curtains
were pulled aside so curious eyeballs could observe every movement.
	“Looks like somebody new is moving into the Wilson’s place,”
whispered Earl Jansen to his wife Sharice.  Gazing through a small gap in his
kitchen window curtain, the slender man waved for his spouse to come to his
side.  “Come on Hon, get over here and take a look.”
	A short, raven haired woman came strolling into the kitchen, clad in a
fluffy pink robe and matching slippers.  She calmly stopped at the counter to
pour herself a cup of coffee before joining her husband at the window.  On
tiptoes she caught a quick peak from her husband’s viewpoint, then wrinkling
her brow she sipped at her coffee.  “I can’t believe they managed to sell that
place so quickly.  Whoever bought it must be rich.”  Sharice took another sip
before sauntering out of the room.
	“Yeah,” said Earl, his small gray eyes were transfixed on the mountains
of boxes being brought into the house across the street.  “They must be.”
	As the two moving trucks finished depositing their cargo and left, a
black sports car came burning down the road.  It spun to a rest where the trucks
had just been.  Earl watched intently as two people skipped out.  Smiling
brightly the two hugged and kissed on the lawn before walking into the house
hand in hand.  From his vantage point Earl thought they looked very young,
much too young to be able to afford that house.  He was about to turn away
from the window when the couple came bouncing back out to retrieve the few
boxes the movers had left on the lawn.
	“Honey,” Earl spoke, not caring if his wife heard him or not.  “I’m
going to introduce myself to the new neighbors.”  Still in his pajamas and
slippers, Earl slithered across the street towards the couple.  The closer he
came, the younger they appeared to be.
	“Good morning,” he called when he was almost on top of them.
	“Morning,” answered the young man, extended his hand, which Earl
shook graciously.  He observed that the kid gave a soft shake but his hand was
callused and rough.  Earl could feel powerful muscles underneath that soft grip,
muscles filled with energy.  “I guess we’re your new neighbors.  I’m Todd and
this is my wife Leslie.”
	Earl was taken aback at the sheer youth of the two.  Not a wrinkle or
blemish mapped their faces.  The man whose hand he was still holding looked
no more than a pup.  There were not the ravages of age in their eyes, just that
golden light of hope that always burns in the young.  The husband was a tall,
muscular, blonde haired child, with both ears and eyebrows pierced.  He was
dressed casually in a baggy T-shirt and blue jeans.  Earl’s eyes darted from the
young man to the cleavage of his even younger wife before finally coming to
rest on her smiling face.  From her violet eyes to the dimples on her cheeks
there was a provocative yet wholesome appeal to her.  The more he gazed at
her, the more Earl realized she resembled a smiling kitten.  Cats aren’t built like
that, he thought, glancing lower at her full figure.
	“I’m Earl, Earl Howard.  I live across the street.  I saw the trucks and
had to come and sorta welcome you to the neighborhood.”
	Leslie’s smile grew more broad and wicked.  “That’s so nice of you. 
We didn’t even think anyone was around this place, it’s so quiet.”
	The three exchanged pleasantries for a few minutes, chatting about the
little things in life.  They seemed nice enough on the surface but Earl felt uneasy
around the young husband.  There was something corrupt behind those dark
eyes, something cruel.  Sharice would say it was just his imagination but Earl
knew what he felt.  
	The couple invited him into their new home and Earl readily agreed,
nosy to get a better look at the house.  As he followed them into the house he
informed them of the locations of the best grocery stores, restaurants, and
schools in case they were planning on starting a family.  The young couple
seemed to listen, but gave no new information about themselves.  Earl
continued to ramble, finding more reasons to stay in the house and peak at all
the assorted boxes.  He weaseled his way into a cup of coffee, which kept him
there another twenty minutes, carefully watching while Todd rummaged
through the oceans of unpacked things.
	Leslie excused herself and disappeared upstairs while Earl was nursing
his coffee.  A beeper on Todd’s hip went off while Earl was bringing him up to
speed on which of their neighbors was cheating on their spouses.  As Todd
made a phonecall Earl went poking around the boxes, peaking into open ones
and accidentally opening those that were closed.  One thing that struck him was
the large amount of top soil, tar paper, aluminum foil, and fluorescent light
bulbs that were nicely arranged in one corner.
	Todd finished his phonecall and joined his neighbor.  “Sorry about the
interruption, had a small emergency.”  The young man smiled softly and Earl
nodded.
	“I hate to be rude,” he said flatly.  “But what do you do for a living?  I
just had to ask.”  Earl watched Todd’s face age a hundred years right before his
eyes.
	“I’m an independent contractor,” he answered, stumbling with the
words.  “I inherited the business from my dad.  He always told me to work
smarter instead of harder.  So I took what he gave me and made a nice chunk of
change.”
	“That’s good advice.”
	“Yeah it’s the only good advice he ever gave me.”
	Earl finished his coffee and left the house with a thin smile on his face. 
He scurried back across the street and went right for the phone.  His heart was
racing and he found his hands unable to dial.
	“Where have you been?” his wife asked.  She was sitting at the kitchen
table, a towel wrapped around her body, smoking a cigarette.
	“I was introducing myself to the new neighbors.  And you’ll never
believe what I found out.”
	“What?” Sharice asked after a long drag.
	“They’re growing drugs!” Earl exclaimed, almost shouting.  I just know
it!  Marijuana, Ganja, Hashish.  I guarantee you they’re growing them.” He
took a deep breath and finished dialing.
	His wife just stared at him blankly for a moment.  After a long sigh,
Sharice got up and left the room, shaking her head as she went.  Earl was too
busy grinning from ear to ear to notice her exit, he was already off in his own
world.  He listened as the phone on the other end rang and was answered by a
deep, low voice.  “Hello Sheriff Howard speaking.”
	“Hey cousin, it’s Earl.  Get over here now!”
	“Earl?” the voice groaned.  “It had better be important.  Not another
one of your fantasies.”
	“Would you just get your fast ass over here.  There’s a bunch of drug
dealers in our neighborhood.”
	With a grunt the Sheriff hung up.  Five minutes later his squad car
pulled into Earl’s driveway.  Grumbling all the way, the large man lumbered out
of the vehicle.  He stopped for a moment to let his long legs clear the steering
wheel and then crept up to Earl’s frontdoor.
	“Cousin?” he called, ignoring the doorbell and bashing his fist on the
wooden door.
	“Pssst,” came a noise from the bushes just a few feet to the side.  The
Sheriff turned and found his younger cousin crouched stealthily under the
shrubs.  “Over here Jimmy,” Earl whispered.
	“Oh good god.  What the hell are you doing down there?”
	Earl repeated to his relative the events of the morning, placing extra
emphasis on the materials he saw in the house.  “And that’s why you dragged
me over here?” Jimmy snarled.  The Sheriff’s round face crinkled and turned
red.  “Did you ever think to ask if they did any gardening?”
	Earl froze for a moment, as if in deep thought.  He looked off to the
distance for a moment and averted the stone cold  eyes of his cousin.  “Umm no
I didn’t.”
	Jimmy took his hat off his head and smacked Earl on the side of the face
with it.  “You stupid shit!  Dragging me out here this early in the morning.  I
can’t believe I’m related to you.”  With another snarl and a few more expletives
the large Sheriff stormed off.  He spun out of the driveway so fast, his tires
smoked.  Earl spat on the ground and retreated into his home.
	“Wasn’t that Jimmy?” his wife asked as Earl entered the house.  She
was sitting on the couch in the living room, brushing her hair.
	“Yeah,” her husband answered as he bolted by her.  
	“Well what did he want?”
	“Nothing,” Earl replied, marching up the stairs to his bedroom upstairs. 
“He’s just being an asshole.”

	Later that evening Earl and his wife were finishing up a light chicken
dinner when the thunderous noise of a truck engine filled their ears.  Sharice
barely flinched before carving into the meat on her plate.  Her husband on the
other hand was already up and at the window.  There, in front of his new
neighbor’s home was a large black truck.  Todd James was out on his lawn
shouting instructions at a group of four workers.  They were frantically carrying
bags and potted plants into the house.
	Earl almost fainted away on the spot.  He picked up the phone and
dialed his cousin’s number as quickly as he could.  “Jimmy’s not going to
appreciate you interrupting his dinner,” his wife warned.  “To hell with that lazy
son of a bitch,” Earl snapped back.  “He’d better do his job.  And I’ll tell you
what, if he lays another hand on me I’m gonna snap and whup his ass.”
	“Sheriff Howard speaking,” came that familiar deep groan from the
other end of the phone.
	“Jimmy, it’s Earl.  Get over here right now, there’s some drug
trafficking going on across the street.  I swear there is.”
	“You weren’t satisfied to ruin my breakfast, now you’re going to ruin
my dinner.  You’ve been hell-bent on making my life suck ever since we were
kids.”
	“Jimmy, I swear to you this is totally legit.”  Sweat began to form on
Earl’s face as he watched the group outside move swiftly.  They could bury the
evidence before his lazy cousin even got off his butt.
	“If this ain’t legit I might just kill you.” the Sheriff slammed the phone
down in Earl’s ear.
	A few minutes later that same dingy squad car cruised into Earl’s
driveway.  The large black truck had only sped off a few moments before, but
Earl was sure that his neighbors would be caught.  Once again the slender man
gave his cousin the details of what he saw, this time imploring the him to go
check the neighbor’s house.  With a snort Jimmy stalked across the street, Earl
eagerly in tow.  A knock on the door was swiftly answered by the smiling face
of Leslie James.  She was wearing a long white T-shirt and seemed ready for
bed.
	“Is there something wrong officer?” she asked innocently.  Her eyes
glanced at the sheriff, then at Earl and then quickly back to the sheriff.
	“I’m really sorry to bother you, but the commotion that big truck of
yours caused has the entire neighborhood rattled.  So they called me over to
check and see if everything was okay.  This is a real quiet type of place, so any
commotion gets people all jumpy and paranoid.”  Jimmy looked back at his
cousin when he said that last sentence.  “Can I just look around your house real
quick?”
	“Usually I would ask for a warrant,” the young wife answered with a
playful grin.  “But you go right ahead, just watch out for the boxes.  We
haven’t finished unpacking yet.”
	“You stay here,” Jimmy growled at his cousin before disappearing into
the house along with Leslie.  Five minutes later, he came out, a half empty beer
bottle in his hand and a smile on his face.  The smile faded when he looked at
Earl, standing there chewing his nails.  “Sorry to have bothered you,” the
Sheriff nodded to the wife.  He grabbed his cousin with his free hand and
dragged him roughly back across the street.
	“From now on cousin, don’t call me.  If the entire neighborhood is being
invaded by anal probing aliens, you don’t call me.  If you do, I’ll shoot you.” 
Jimmy was back in his car and down the road before Earl could even reply.  The
nosy old man took one last disdainful look at his neighbor’s house and trudged
back into his own modest home.
	
	Sometime in the middle of the night Earl was violently awaken by a loud
thud.  His eyes were burning with sleep and his mouth was dry and caked with
saliva.  The house was silent save for the soft moan of the autumn wind as it
teased the curtains.  Earl listened for a while and satisfied it was just his
imagination he laid his head back on his pillow and tried to get back to sleep. 
He was in that harmonious place between slumber and waking, vaguely aware
of the world around him.  A moment later the sound of twigs snapping under
the bedroom window brought Earl back.  He sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes and
trying to listen.  His mind put two and two together and he wondered if there
could be someone walking around the house.  He stumbled out of bed, almost
meeting the wooden floor head on.  Lurching to his feet, he quietly stepped to
the bedroom window, opened it further, and looked down at the side of the
house.
	“Don’t see nobody,” he grumbled inaudibly to himself.  A fierce yawn
brought tears to his eyes and it took him a moment to clear them.  When he did
he saw something that made his heart jump.  Directly under him the first floor
window leading to the living room was open.  His thoughts raced through
possible reasons for the window being open.  Maybe he forgot to close it, after
all Jimmy had put him in such a bad mood it would be easy for him to forget. 
But Earl did not remember even opening, and he knew Sharice would not touch
it because she always complained about how the cool Maine autumns gave her
the sniffles.  It had been all he could do to talk her into leaving their own
bedroom window open just a crack.  It was probably nothing, he concluded,
trying to reassure himself.  He gazed out at the rest of the neighborhood,
observing how the moonlight made the plush houses with their manicured lawns
look even more regal at night.  They shone like upper middle class palaces, the
shelters of American nobility.  
	“Beautiful night,” he proclaimed, wondering why he never enjoyed the
nighttime anymore.  He turned from the window and looked at his wife sleeping
soundly on her back.  He felt something virile stirring inside him, and at that
moment he wanted to shake her awake and fuck her like an animal.  Boy would
that put a shock in her, he mused.  But the moment passed as quickly as it
came, and Earl felt very old again.  He left his place at the window and ventured
downstairs in the dark to get a drink of water to clear the desert in his mouth.
	He just made it to the last step when a gloved hand reached out of the
darkness and grasped his throat.  The grip was as strong as a vice, and before
Earl could register what was happening his breathe was cut off.  A second
gloved hand came out of the gloom, shaping itself into a black fist and striking
the old man twice in the face.  Earl’s left eye swelled shut and blood poured
from his shattered nose.  Just as he was about to pass out from lack of air, the
hand was released from his throat.  He crumbled from the last step to the
ground, falling hard on his right shoulder.
	“Help!” he tried to scream, but his jaw was broken and blood was filling
his mouth, stifling his yell into a garbled squawk.  
	“You just had to be nosy didn’t you Earl?”  It was the voice of the new
neighbor, Todd.  But gone were the pleasantries, replaced with a sinister snarl
of murderous intent.  “One day and a night here and you had to be the nosy
one, calling the cops on us.”  Earl scrambled up to his feet, fear gripping his
heart as the young man stepped out of the shadows and slowly advanced upon
him.  The night obscured Todd’s eyes, making him seem even more demonic
and wrathful.
	“Todd?” Earl asked, but it came out more like “Gojb.”
	“Now you’ll have to be taken care of,” Todd said grimly.  “I would
shoot ya, but I’ve never been a gun kinda guy.  So this may get messy.”  
	Options for escape ran through Earl’s mind but he knew that was
impossible.  He knew that his old frame had no chance of overpowering the
younger man and that he was probably breathing his last few breathes of life. 
His neighbor reached out and that vice like hand wrapped itself around Earl’s
wrist.  Pain shot up his arm as Todd squeezed with all his might.
	“Sorry about this old man.”
	Earl knew he was coming to his end and at that epiphany he refused to beg for his
life.  He suddenly wished he had waken up Sharice, even just to see her face one last time. 
He fell to his knees, tears running down his cheek and waited for the end to come.  Todd
brought it with brutal efficiency.  He gripped the back of Earl’s head with his free hand
and smashed the point of his knee into his nose, attempting to drive the bone into the
brain.  Somewhere around the third blow Earl no longer became aware of the pain, he
passed from the torment to the peaceful calm of darkness.