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Here’s a really short story I wrote a long time ago. It’s based on actual events. Honest. Most of it happened to my friend Joy, who raises Parsons terriers and has a knack for hiring freaks.

The Boy Next Door
by Jessica Zafra

When Mrs. Cruz who lived next door died of cardiac arrest during a botched liposuction, her entire fortune including the house where her two children had been born passed into the hands of her dance instructor, Bhob. “The h stands for horrible,” said June as she shampooed her stinking Shih Tzu, Bill. Almost the minute Mrs. Cruz had been cremated—”to destroy evidence of foul play, I bet”—Bhob had gone to work on the house. The lovely old house which had survived the bombing of Manila in World War II would not survive his entrepreneurial ambitions: he had it torn down to make room for a row of apartments.

“Next he’ll want to build a karaoke bar,” muttered June. The dog had gotten loose and was running around the yard, yapping. “Come back here you moron!” she called. She said moron with added volume so the people next door would hear. Since the Bhob takeover, June had had no peace—all day and all night she was plagued by the sounds of construction. June had a horror of construction workers. When she was five her nanny had abandoned her to run off with a construction worker. When her mother arrived that evening she found June alone in the house, singing to herself, covered from head to foot in the flour the nanny had been making cookies with.

June was hosing down the dog when she saw the man standing at the gate. It was one of the construction workers from next door, a short balding man with no front teeth. She could tell he had no front teeth because he was smiling at her. “Yes?” she said. She walked toward the gate, dragging the hose.

“Hi Miss June,” he said. “I’m Pompeyo.”

“Yes?” she repeated.

“I love you,” he said.

For a few seconds June was frozen in shock. “Excuse me?” she said.

“I love you.”

She aimed the hose at him and drenched him in cold water. He threw up his arms and backed away. “If you bastards come near here again I’m calling the police!” June screamed, then she picked up the dog and ran into the house.

That night when her sister Perry got home June told her about the crazy man with no front teeth.

“You shouldn’t have hosed him down,” said Perry as she kicked off her shoes.

“What do you mean I shouldn’t have hosed him down the creep was bothering me. . .”

“There’s a water shortage,” said Perry. “Haven’t you heard of La Niña?”

The following day was June’s birthday and she was going out to dinner with her boyfriend Dean. Dean was a lawyer and he was always late. His pockets were filled with scraps of paper and table napkins on which he scribbled notes for court pleadings. Otherwise he was compulsively neat and hygienic and carried a bottle of rubbing alcohol in his briefcase.

In the kitchen June poured herself a glass of water and caught her reflection on the glass pitcher. Her lipstick was too pale. “I look like a zombie,” she thought, and she rummaged through her handbag for a darker shade of lipstick.

Just then there was a knock on the kitchen door. “At last,” she said. “Our reservation was for eight-thir. . .”

It wasn’t Dean standing outside the kitchen door, it was the toothless madman. What was his name, Pompeyo. He had changed his clothes. He was wearing a pink shirt and gray trousers. His sneakers looked newly-washed. He was holding a bouquet of red roses in one hand, and a box of Choc-Nut in the other. He was smiling so broadly she thought she could see his tonsils.

“What the hell do you want!” she shrieked.

“I heard it was your birthday,” he said. He held out the bouquet of roses, the box of Choc-Nut. “Happy Birthday.”

Without thinking, June grabbed the pitcher from the kitchen table and threw ice-cold water on him. “Get out!” she screamed. “I’m calling the police!”

The toothless madman slowly took a white handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and with great dignity, mopped his pockmarked face. “Why do you do this to me?” he said. “Why do you make me suffer? I know I am unfit to kiss your shoe, but don’t I have the right to love?”

“Get away from me!!!” June cried, slamming the door in his face. Her heart was pounding so hard she thought it would rip out of her chest. She stood there for a long time, breathing heavily. Then, gingerly, she pulled up a chair and sat down.

“This is not happening,” she told herself. “This is not happening.”

Someone tapped softly on the door. “Miss June? Miss June?”

She stared at the door. The horror.