On any given night, you could stand on the tallest building, at the highest point in the city, and know exactly what each individual person was doing.

It wasn’t a large place, or really that tall of a building, but when you stood at the window looking down, you felt like the king of the world. On that night, cloudless skies and a full moon illuminated the path into the homes of the others. Mr. and Mrs. Winke were cooking something brown, and by the look on the Amarinds one house down, it was also smelly. The Vick family was sitting around the table, pretending that the youngest son and the oldest son weren’t sleeping together, because as soon as they admitted it they would have to go to family therapy.

In the building next to yours, you saw Mariah, the young new transplant from a big city, who didn’t quite understand how a small city worked—how a small city talked. She was looking at herself in the mirror, wearing red garters and a matching corset. No bottoms. You knew that Marco, the city hot shot and slut, would be ringing the doorbell any minute. Because that’s how things happened in this town and Marco felt the need to break in every new piece of ass that walked through the gates. Two floors above her, Mrs. Wynd looked at herself in the mirror, wearing a similar outfit to Mariah’s, thinking about the years that had passed and how Mr. Wynd no longer looked at her the way he used to. She wore the expression of a life well-lived, and yet, somehow, something was always missing. The red wine goblet in her hand shone with the light of a flash, coming from fifteen floors below you, where Aric, seeing a semi-naked woman for the first time, decided to take his phone out for a quick shot. Mrs. Wynd not realizing that the flash came from a camera, and not her 18 carat ring, walked away swaying her hips in the way she saw rapper’s bitches doing in music videos. Aric’s parents will later find that picture in his phone and ground him—shutting him out in his room, without realizing that is just a way for Aric to grow into the voyeuristic creep he will become many years later.

The town called itself quaint; a place where people come to settle down or retire because there was always something new and something old coming together. But you knew better because you’d been there, sort of, ten blocks away from the furthest house from downtown, for the last 10 years. You knew that on Tuesdays Lindsay, would walk over to your house and knock, hoping to see you. You know that she wasn’t allowed out of her house alone, because her mother feared “pedos” and thought that any man could snatch her. You also knew that Lindsay snuck out every night to go up to the tallest building and see everything from a new vantage point. You know that she was most likely a psychopath, but that in this quaint town no one would ever know the difference between a psychopath and someone who thinks they’re better.

You took the time to go out to the building on the quiet and darkest nights also, because you knew the only way to stay one step ahead of them was to observe them. On one particular night, you witnessed Lindsay climb out of her bedroom window, while her parents drank themselves silly two floors down. She knew what her parents were doing, who they kept down there, but she knew that nothing could save her. She landed with a soft thud on the ground, and began calmly walking towards the center of town. Your eyes followed her every move and you had to run to the other corner of the empty apartment you had broken in to in order to see her. When she reached the intersection between “Armstead St.” and “Dubois” she hopped off the curb and began running in the opposite direction, only stopping once, to glance up at you.

You thought nothing of it and kept observing the town. The Wickers had now settled into their rocking chair, with their stuffed poodles on their laps—their knobby fingers intertwining with the matted fur. Further down the street, Mr. Sandstor, recently widowed, talked to his dead wife’s ashes, accusing her of cheating on him with God. When you were fully engrossed watching the made-at-home movie Wade Warston was watching, you thought you heard the faint click of the door behind you opening and closing. You ignored it, but you couldn’t shake the feeling of a pair of eyes digging holes in your back. You knew that turning was the beginning of the end. The sooner you connected with them, the sooner they would feel entitled to your life and your view. You thought about screaming at her to get out, but deep down knew that would only ground to her spot even more. You had a simply choice to make, fall forward into the abyss and potentially lose your life, but die independent, or turn around and become part of the chitchat, knowing it would mean giving up the last glimmer of separation from them that you had left.

By the time you made you decision, Lindsay was sitting on the floor, pulling a half drank bottle of brandy, two pairs of binoculars, and a wheel of Parmesan cheese from her bag.

She caught you off guard, even though you pride yourself on know where and who was doing what at any given time. Without a word you turned back around and kept looking down at the street, where sweet old Lava, the golden-doodle, was now walking her owner, who beat her in age by 5 years. You kept feeling Lindsay’s eyes on your back but told yourself if you ignored her long enough, making eye contact with her in the first place would eventually seem insignificant, and she would just go away. But she didn’t, and when she loudly began slurping the brandy, you knew if you didn’t join her soon, she would be passed out drunk in less than 2 minutes.

You walked over cautiously, expecting her to do something rash—you’d seen this girl grow up through the years, go from throwing rocks at pigeons, to kicking poor defenseless cats. By the time you sat down she had pulled a small plastic knife from her bag and presented it to you, as a peace offering perhaps, while pointing at the cheese. You said nothing, but knew that a simple plastic knife would never cut through the waxy thick skin of the Parmesan, whose label read, “consume raw or cooked, we don’t actually give a fuck.”