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Backyard Portal

It looked like your typical city row home backyard. Three walls and the back of the house. Brick patio laid when the place was built in the late 1800s. The walls were newer cinders with curved, hollow centers that allowed people to see through to the yard next door. The neighbors were hardly ever home.

He and his friend played paddle ball for the first time in the yard's tight space on a spring day. The ball flew over the north wall into the north neighbors' yard. Rather than walk through his own house and knock on their door and walk through their house to get the ball, he climbed over the wall.

When he landed on the other side, the air around him had color, a burning orange. He could hear a constant hum, like that of a large power generator vibrating. He felt it was perhaps ten degrees warmer than it had been on his side of the wall. He tried to look back into his own yard but the curved, hollow centers of the wall's cinders were filled with images of his own face – younger, older, much older.

Above the wall was nothing but that burning orange. He felt himself slipping into a trance, paralyzed with intrigue and fear. It occurred to him to get out of there immediately, and he decided to reverse the path by which he came and climb back over the wall. When he landed on brick and saw his paddle ball partner, he knew he'd returned safely.

"Did you get the ball?" his friend asked.

"Ball?" He remembered. "No."

His friend frowned. "You okay?"

"That depends."

"On what?"

"Whether I can trust my senses."

House Envy

The middle house on the street's east side resented its west side counterpart. Staring at a solid mahogany front door opening and closing so perfectly made it angry and do things like, when there were no people around, shout profanity. Not that people could hear or understand house language anyway, nor could dogs. Cats understood and saw it all, but they were no help - they sat on window sills and listened and meowed. Houses just ignored them.

Limestone headers above metal paned windows on the west side's middle house added to the constant dismay of the east side middle house. For years, east sneered at west. West laughed at east with its peeling paint and water damaged brick. The laughter infuriated east further and its shouting would ensue until a point of exhaustion came, a defeated state of frustration. East felt hopeless to change its situation because no matter how much noise it made, it remained stuck in place. A house could scream and make a fuss, but it couldn’t move.

Years passed and people bought and sold the houses. Neighborhood cats died and others were born and still others were brought along by owners or renters. Dogs came and went too, but the houses paid them no mind. The middle house on the east side couldn't see itself as it underwent renovation inside and got a new coat of paint out front, but it felt the changes as they occurred, and it eyed the reaction of its nemesis across the street. Its nerves were raw in anticipation of something it couldn’t affect, something it had no choice but to accept. It knew everything was okay, though, when it saw the west side middle house cringe with jealousy.

When the east side middle house finally looked across the street with confidence, it missed the drama of the screaming it used to do. Cats missed the screaming too – they slept on the window sills in peace instead of meowing with eyes wide. Dogs went on as if nothing had changed.