Lithium

When she moved next door, I could tell something was not right. There was a strong negative energy coming from her when she introduced herself, although she seemed pleasant enough. She was a single mom, but instantly it was apparent that her daughter was not her biggest fan - the tension was so thick I could feel it in my chest. My wife is a beautiful person, who assumes the best in everyone, and she felt I was being too judgemental about the neighbors without giving them a chance.

As the weeks went by, we did not interact with the neighbors all that much; however, we knew they were avid gardeners. They had a beautiful pear tree in the backyard that produced the sweetest, juiciest pears I have ever tasted. The previous neighbors always shared their pears with my wife and I, as they did not like pears but did not want them to go to waste. Every fall I was so excited to go in the backyard and pick as many as I could before they fell and the red squirrels jumped into action and ate them. This year, however, the new neighbor was cutting off branches and grafting new branches from peach and apple trees onto the pear tree to get more variety of fruits. I did not bother her by asking if I could pick any of the fruits this year - the negative vibe I had toward her really bothered me. But when autumn arrived, she brought us a very large basket filled with pears, and I was so happy. Maybe I was wrong about her.

The next year she wanted to plant some beutiful aspen tress on our property line, but wanted to ask our permission first. Without thinking, I said to go right ahead, as that would enhance the beauty around our homes. Over the next few years the aspens grew quite qucikly, but looked fantastic as a nice border between our properties. Even though she planted them, I helped take care of them; trimming branches as needed, weed trimming around the bases, and hanging lights on them during the holiday season. It felt so good having neighborly cooperation happening between us, and we shared many of the fruits and vegetables we grew with each other - her with her pears, peaches, and apples as well as many varieties of tomatoes, and my wife and I with our gooseberries, okra, various herbs, and over fifteen different varieties of peppers. The feeling was wonderful to be able to share the abundance of each of our garden crops so they did not go to waste.

The seventh summer since she moved in was when it started. I was out mowing my front yard with my headphones on when she suddenly burst out of her house and stood in my mowing path. I stoped the mower and asked her what was wrong. She told me to quit touching her aspen trees, because when I was weed trimming around them I apparently stepped on an elderberry bush she had growing and killed it. Now, I think I would have noticed if I stepped on a small bush, but I just kindly said was sorry, and I would gladly buy her a new elderberry bush immediately. She seemed grateful for my offer, but still had an appearance of anger on her face when she went back in her house. I listened to her, and for the first two months of the summer I did not go near the trees, even though they were partially on my property. By August, I had enough - she mowed her yard once all summer, and the weeds were thick, not just around the aspens, but in her whole yard - dandelions, thistles, milkweed, wild lettuce, and many others I could not identify. So, I weed trimmed and mowed all around the trees and everything right up to the property line, as I am very particular about a well mowed yard.

Of course, that set off a firestorm. She came barreling out of the house screaming and swearing at me about the aspen trees, and I told her to shut the fuck up and get her fat ass back in her house. Obviously, this was a poor choice of words on my part. My wife heard the fuss and told me to stay calm and do not cause a fuss, and she will speak to her about the situation, as I can be a bit unreasonable.

The next day, my wife went next door to have a chat, and the neighbor just screamed at her about me being a terrible human being by destroying her yard she worked so hard on, which if you saw her yard you would know that's the biggest lie ever told. My wife stayed very level headed, but stated that we will have a property survey performed to assess which side of the property line the trees are more on. The oddball neighbor was fine with this, but she clearly stated it would be at our cost - she was not shelling out a penny to help with the survey.

Three weeks later, the survey crew arrived at our house, and once their final assessment was complete, it turned out that the property line was quite a bit off. We actually had 3 more feet of land toward the neighbor's house, so the aspens were completely on our property. Of course the neighbor did not believe this, so she actually paid for her own survey from a different crew, and the results turned out to be the same. This ended up being the proverbial "straw that broke the camel's back".

A couple weeks later, the police knocked at our door. My wife answered and they asked if we had been spying on our neighbor. We wife chuckled and asked why on earth would we do that, and the officer said he just needed to ask the question, and he did not see any reason to not believe us. However, that did not sit well with my wife, so she pushed for more information. The officer told us he has dealt with complaints about our neighbor in the past from where she used to live, and we just needed to be careful of her. This did not sit well either, so after a little more pushing on the subject my wife got the officer to tell us off the record that our neighbor has been on and off her lithium for a number of years, and when she goes off it she starts to cause trouble with her neighbors. Great. Just what we wanted to hear. A psycho is living next to us, although my wife did not like me calling her that.

A couple days later, the neighbor is banging on our front door hold a stack of pictures. Both my wife and I answered the door together for safety, and as soon as we opened it she told us we had to get all the damn crickets off her porch. Not sure how this was our problem, but she further went on to explain that she knows we are listening to her through the crickets as we have microchipped them with electronic listening devices. Ok, at this point I had enough and walked away while loudly telling my wife to please deal with this psycho, which of course made both of them cringe. She continued to show my wife pictures she took of various insects and creatures in her backyard that she knows have listening devices attached to them, and she wanted us to stop spying or she won't be calling the police - she will be handling this issue herself. My wife inquired what she meant by this, and the neighbor said that we did not want to know, but she knows people that can get rid of us. Now we are actually being threatened by a psycho - just another beautiful day in the neighborhood.

We called the police, and the officer who we spoke with earlier that week came out again and told our neighbor to stay away from us or he will have to arrest her. For some reason, that appeared to work - we did not she her or her daughter for several weeks. It was nice and quiet around our property finally. But just when I thought everything was great, I saw the news that the daughter had been brutally murdered, and the corpse was found with the head and hands removed adjacent to the gazebo in our town square. Quite chilling for such a small town that we live in.

Reporters were then gathering around the house next door for weeks, attempting to extract some sort of statement out of our neighbor. But she stayed inside. Not a sound to be heard. A few weeks went by, and the reporters slowly dwindled away. Mail and boxes and flowers kept accumulating on my neighbor's porch, but she never came out to retreive it. Eventually, the police arrived to perform a safety check on her and she was just sitting on her sofa listening to the radio and rocking her body back and forth as if she was still in shock. Apparently she was still capable of taking care of herself, as social services were never called.

Then one night my wife and I heard a loud buzzing noise coming from next door. Not the sound of a drill or saw, but something higher pitched like a dremel tool. The sound came and went for about thirty minutes and then it was gone. The next day was the first time I noticed my neighbor in her backyard since her daughter's death. She waved at us, which seemed suspicious, but looked in a good mood. She was working on her pear tree - starting to graft new branches to it again. We assumed she was back on her medicine, and had passed through the grieving period finally. Of course since I am nosy, I decided to take a closer look at what she was doing, and that's when I saw the grafts on the pear tree - they were all perfectly sized fingers that had been buffed down to the bone on ten of the branches and on the largest branch was the head of her daughter with the tip of her spine coming out of the base of her head and well sanded down to a fine point to precisely fit on the grafted branch. She wanted to regrow her precious girl in the only way she knew how.