Something I pounded out at the coffeehouse

I have no idea where this is going...correction, I have an idea, but this was not what I intended....figured it was time to post something after four months!

Roger had developed a love and hate relationship over the years with the gawkers beyond his second story apartment's window. He was old enough now to know that life is much more complicated the older you get and no where near the black and white friends your childhood brought. He learned he loved his family; but liking was still up for discussion.

The people outside his window were annoying him. They came by day and night and just stood there, failing to whisper at what they stared at. He supposed that he could move his computer away from the window and close the curtain more often. And, even though he hated the smell of smoke, he loved his cigarettes, so the location in his bedroom was maintained. He could smoke, chat online and stare at the annoying passersby.

He knew why they were there. He admitted to himself, long after, that the house across the way was, in a sense, why he also stayed at the window. When he first got the job downtown, a nightly cruise of gawking at the Star home brought the apartments to his attention.

Roger was a writer. He had written much but published nil. This did not stop him. In fact, online chatting, a form he considered writing, kept him socially active, even if in passing.

That and the gawkers.

"Yep, more, this time a single one, a blonde, just like the rest," he said to himself. After realizing he had said it out loud, he feigned a glance to the ground to pretend he was talking to a nonexistent cat.

He felt the blonde woman glance up at him in the twilght. The Indian summer had run longer then was expected, but the time change had brought the shadows a wee bit earilier. Experience had taught him that anyone south of his window could hear pretty much anything he said.

It made recent visits with Kenneth a bit more quiet then one would expect.

The Star house deserted since the early evening, watched the exchange with a lone lamp in the wooded living room.

The blonde put her hands on her hips and slide them down into her pockets glancing to the second story window.

A car passed and Roger grasped a view down onto the street at the wandering stranger.

He knew her.

The Thursday night, normally a doorway to the impending weekend, changed in character. He could not remember how he knew her. Her looks, no matter how commonplace, resembled a memory--if only for a flash. He started to light a smoke. No one was in the chatrooms he frequented anyhows.

He stood and decided to leave the desk lamp on. The streetlamps were less personal on the dark street below.

He climbed the wood steps slowly, hoping secretly that the young woman was who he thought she could be, a colleague who could chase the night. All his histories had been erased from this town he grew up in; recent interactions with locals fruited little.

The orange and red light of his sparking lighter illuminated his face more then the street around him and the front porch. A swinging bench had been added when the home was built in older times--if history was correct, his builiding was created at the same time as the Star home across the street--in the early 1900. And the timeline was still somewhat evident. The bushes had groomed themselves into borderline trees before the porch's rails. To sit on the bench and smoke would have afford him more privacy then his apartment window.

He elected to merely lean on the column.

She was still there, only a few yards across the tar.

He exhahled and aimed his head high.

The Star house was a marvel of stereotypical haunted hosues. Built a hundred years ago, the only modern intrushions were a satiellie dish on the steep green roofs and an airconditioner attached to the rear kitchen. In the daylight, as the same as this night, the stained and beveled glass clean as to be considerred new, shone like pictures into the interior. It made gawking inevitetable. People could see as far back as a servant stair from the front parlor. An old television broke the view, but reflected the gawkers from it's angled screens.

The house was the only reason to visit downtown, in this area. No map found a listing of it, but the locals know about the Star house. In the 30s, a young bachelor moved in and used it to board travelors. Business never ended until discoveries of several corpses on the Fountain Valley, a short walk away. In fact, the paths encouraged gawkers to stroll along the creek, depositing them here.

The home's notoreity increased ten fold when a group of hippies moved in. In this conservative location at the edge of the mountains, the churches needed a reason to begin their barrage of discontent. Following a series of disaapearances, the house found itself in the news again--the hippies killed for cash and their habits.

Roger knew more about the house then expected. He had planned on writing a fictionalization of events inside. This dream ended when his mother sent him a copy of the book written by a guy he knew in high school.

So it was more then chance that he would end up here, off of downtown, near the house of ill-begotten fame, trying, desparetely to write.

And find a life.

The girl stopped and looked up the street.

"Looks innocuoous enough," she stated, looking back at the second story.

"Me or the house?" She smiled and her teeth matched the whiteness of her eyes. The dark erased the edges off of her face. The smile he could define. The rest was a blur, more visible if you looked off to the side. The streetlamps, either by design or accident, bracketted the house, but cast shadows before it.

"Cute, funny." She changed her facing and a kick of wind blew in the opposite direction, carrying smoke towards her. He fluttered his hand in front of face to aid the disipation of gray matter.