Last Friday, during out Skype session, I mentionned how some of my across the street neighbours were intriguing me greatly.
I’ve lived in this same apartment for almost ten years, now. Needless to say that I am very familiar with the whole neighbourhood. I know every backstreet, every alley, and of course, though I don’t know them personally, pretty much all our neighbours.
There’s the couple of young men and their two dogs, above them an old man living alone with his cat and dog (he spends a lot of afternoons sitting on his balcony with his pooch on his lap). Above him, an annoying couple who owns a pressure washer and probably have sworn to each other that they would get every penny’s worth out of it. On their right (well, actually my right, but from their apartment) the place seems empty, but since there’s no ”For rent” sign, I’m guessing that’s just a very discreet neighbour. Bellow, a single old lady that regularly comes to her balcony for a smoke, and finally, bellow her, after moving in recently, a single (seemingly VERY handy man… He’s always outside with all kinds of tools, fixing stuff) man in his twenties.
The last year has made things even more interesting, with the lockdown(s) and the 8 PM curfew. Everybody’s home all the time, so my neighbour watch has intensified.
All the above neighbours live in the building on the right (the one with the two pointy things on the roof). You can forget about them… It’s the people living in the building on the left that interest us today.
Why? We’re getting there…
See, around here, the garbage gets picked up every Thursday morning. So every Wednesday night, we all take our bags out on the side walk (before 8 PM, you know… The curfew). We rarely have more than one bag per week. And if we do quick math, the people in the pointy building are like Chéri and I. Six apartment, six bags, all’s good!
But! The left-side building has only two apartments, and at least three times the garbage.
Of course, it is springtime, and they might be in the middle of an intense clean up session, wanting to suddenly get rid of all kinds of things, right? But this has been going on for years. E-ve-ry wee-k, they have that much waste to get rid of. At that rate, Chéri and I would have emptied our place within a month. Where do they find so much stuff to throw away??
Seriously!
So, last Friday, I joked about the fact that they might be serial killers. Then the what ifs started to spread in the group, and someone said that I should walk across the street and check the bags to be sure. What if there were body parts in the bags? I just might reveal the identity of an amazingly successful killer, and save a number of lives.
What if I didn’t check and let the slaughter keep going on like this. One day, I’d wake up to the sound of the police cars, and see officers arresting said neighbours… and when the lady from the news channel would ask what I thought about it, I’d have no choice but to think back to all the Wednesdays I had peeked out the window, and thought ”Wow, that’s weird! Where do they get all this stuff???”
But I’m a bit of a chicken (not about going through their garbage, I just don’t want the police to arrest me for breaking the curfew, and have to explain to them why I am tearing out neighbour’s bags), so I’ll leave it at that for now.
Instead, I’ll post a picture of the other side of the street every Wednesday for a couple of weeks. And you can make up your mind about it. If you also think it is kinda creepy after a while, I might reconsider checking the bags.
Maybe.
Cyranny's Cove 
Wow, that is a lot of garbage. I don’t blame me for wondering. My imagination would go wild too. When my mom rented her house (my next door) out a few years ago, her tenant used to have a lot of trash too. Fortunately, she used see through bags and it’s full of take out containers and bags of McDonald’s. 😀
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Hahahahahaha, well if these bags are filled with take out containers, that would explain why we never see these neighbours, they probably can’t get out of their apartment anymore… LOL
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I’ve heard since the pandemic has begun, some people refuse to go to the store. They’d rather have everything delivered than go get it themselves. I know one of my coworkers haven’t enter a grocery store in over a year. Maybe it’s the same with your neighbors.
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Well, I must admit Chéri and I are part of these people. We haven’t been in a grocery store since March of 2020. But to our defense, Montreal was the epicenter of Canada so we didn’t want to take any risk 😉
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you need to go see what it is them, get yourself a hazmat suit and if questioned say you were trying it out.
Or a fox (pick an animal that goes through rubbish) and pretend to be that
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LOOOOOOOOOOOL, we do have a lot of racoons in the area. Great plan, I’m considering it for next week (no way can I find a costume at this time of the night :P)
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I hope you are doing research into you racon costume
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Of course I am… 😉
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I am expected photos of you in it
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If you’ve never seen the film “Men At Work”, with Charlie Sheen and Emilio Estevez, you should check it out. I think you’ll see the humor in it, considering the potential situation on your block. 😃
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Mouahahahahahahaha I’ve never seen it, but I just googled the title and I can definately see the link. Now I have 2 dramatic scenarios for this massive garbage disposal… Is it possible that I find this hilarious and worrying at the same time? 😛
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Hmm….. very intriguing. I think you used this as a story idea too.
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This is very possible, I think I recall posting a similar picture a while back. It just proves that this is not a one time thing 😉 And I’ll keep an eye on these weird neighbours for sure now. Who knows what we might find out 😛
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You should. It’s a story waiting to happen.
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This is interesting. Looking at them I can’t see them being body parts but there are other crimes that could be going on. Money laundering for example?
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I’m not ruling any possibility out just yet… But as the list keeps getting longer, I am more and more tempted to cross the street and find out the truth. But that would ruin the fun of the planned series of posts. We’ll see 🙂
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Yeah you need to do the posts first! lol
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Haha, the mystery is now global… I shall be thinking of the reason for the excess rubbish/garbage with wild imagination 😉😆
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LOL If you come up with new possibilities, please share them!! Maybe we can make a pool and bet reasonable amounts of money, until I feel brave enough to uncover the truth 😛
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Definitely something fishy going on, are you looking out your “Rear Window”? Another good movie for you to check out
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Mouahahahahahahaha Good point Alice 😉 But our backstreet is very quiet, and unless the local racoons are planning to invade my back balcony again (it really happened a couple of summers back… I had to bang a wooden spoon on a skillet with much conviction to scare them away), I think we’re good. But I just might be wrong 😛
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There are bodies in those bags, no question.
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Having been a participant in the aforementioned conversation, and after reading this post again, I got a brilliant idea. Well, it’s brilliant in my mind at least. 😁 What would happen if each of us wrote 2-3 paragraphs about what might be going on across the street. Could we meld them into a short story of sorts? I’m just throwing this out to see if anyone takes the bait. We could develop the next Jimmy Stewart type movie…or not. Do we need more guidelines? I’m game.
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Oooh, I like games like that! I’m in 🙂 I’ll go check out your story, and I’d be glad to add my part to it! Should I continue your own story? Just let me check your link, and I’ll get back to you 🙂
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I had to write this Cyranny…too good to pass up. My take on the serial killer neighbor story line. 😁
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Mouahahahahahaha I really like the private detective thing, Hokey! I’m wondering… Should we all write from the detective’s perspective, or would it be interesting to have a character each? For an example, I could give that woman’s thoughts (I don’t know why that came to my mind LOL) and others who might join in could be other neighbours, or people working with the detective (you). Who knows? We might end up with someone giving up clues from the suspect’s perspective 😉 Let me know what you think about it! xx
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Huuummm…good questions. I’m leaning towards a character each to see how each views the guy individually. Maybe another neighbor or two – one next door complaining of strange noise? Maybe the trash guy grumbling about all the bags being so heavy, smelly? Maybe a cop asking questions about a missing person? A quizzical store clerk? The delivery guy?
I think going from the detectives view would require too much coordination for several writers. We could go one round of story line as each character, compare all notes and work off of that. My mind is going wild here.
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Mouahahahaha I love it!! We’ll have to wait and see who will join in… I’m sure we can convince Suzane, we’ll see about the others 🙂 Ohhhh this is going to be a lot of fun!
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thats very creepy! I’d be checking the bags! Definitely lol! 😀
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