There was this woman I used to watch when I was 15. At the time I lived in Hampshire, just another small town on its way towards becoming gentrified with more and more cookie-cutter house neighborhoods popping up everywhere. I lived in one of the older neighborhoods; my house was probably from the 60’s- it sure doesn’t look like it’s from any recent time. My room is at the front of the house. It’s a ranch, so it’s a bit scary, kinda like living in a garden-level apartment. I’d be sort of on display, but I liked that I could see the workings of the neighborhood from my bed.
I started to notice this old woman that would walk past the house now and then, always with her little Pomeranian. I only saw those types of dogs in movies, so she caught my attention. I started to look out for her since she was always dressed nicely, usually wearing some sort of slacks and a nice blouse and sometimes, if I was lucky, I would catch her in a matching set: pants, shirt, and a matching jacket or blazer. My favorite was the lavender, it looked really nice with her wintered, blonde hair. She had a few from what I could tell. I imagined she was a real estate agent back in the day. She seemed very independent and I liked that, I clung to that.
Every once in a while, I would go on a walk either with my dogs or by myself, sometimes riding my skateboard or bike, maybe taking my film camera with me. One day I saw her; I had found her house. She lived just one street up, my house on Julie Lane hers on Jake. When I saw her I got kinda scared. I almost turned around, but then I realized she didn’t know that I was aware of who she was (and I didn’t even know her, I just found her fascinating). Her house was the same color as the light blue matching set I saw her wear a couple of times.
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I am walking slowly down the sidewalk, trying to take everything in. I see her, I think she’s gardening, I can see she’s holding a watering can. As I get closer I can see that there are two huge rose bushes framing her house on each side. Big, bright, red roses. I must have been hallucinating but I could’ve sworn I saw them bud and bloom right before my eyes like they were reaching out for me, the thorny vines luring me. I’m directly in front of her house now, she is off to the left side tending to the rose bush. For some reason I can’t move any further, I’m stuck. There was a crazy force pulling at my feet as if it was the positive side of a magnet and the ground the negative, almost impossible to pull apart. I caught her eye and she starts making her way towards me, but I still can’t move, I’m scared.
Then she smiled. The warmest smile I think I’d ever seen, and it melted the frost right off of me, the magnetic force eased up at my feet. “Hi, Dear,” she says, “is everything alright?” “Yes, fine!” I say, “just admiring your roses. Beautiful,” I say. She said thank you and I was on my way, I couldn’t think of anything else to say. It felt kind of wrong being at her house, it made me feel like a creep. After that I started to not see her as much, only sometimes out my window. I never knew her name but I called her Gladys, it seemed fitting.
One night before going to bed I could’ve sworn I saw a silhouette standing in my front yard. I squinted to see but didn’t want to move any closer to the window because the figure was already doing that. I scare myself like that all the time, so I turned off the lights, got into bed and tried to forget about it but all night I felt like there was somebody watching me through the sliver of my curtains. It was dawn by time I fell asleep. I woke up the next morning and when I got out of bed I went to go look out my windows like I always do, but when I looked down at the window sill outside, my legs almost gave out, my heart was pulsing. There was a single red rose just sitting there. Little did I know, Gladys must have been watching me too. I had no idea what to do. I said, “Thank you.”, to my empty room.