I didn’t want to write a new blahg until I finished the new short story I had been working on. I had the gist of an idea after writing HOWARD’S SIXTEEN CHAIRS back in May. The properties box of the file for “Bad Neighbour” states that I started writing the story on July 21st. That tracks because I posted my last blahg, TFCON TORONTO 2026 on July 19th while I was still on holidays. So, today is July 29th and that makes it eight days since I started “Bad Neighbour.” My record is four days on “Howard’s Sixteen Chairs.”
I’m not sure where the inspiration for “Bad Neighbour” came from. It popped into my head one day and then finally eight days ago I started writing on it. This one did not come as fluidly as previous short stories. I usually write from start to finish and then do an edit and add and adjust. This time I wrote a fair chunk and then wrote a piece for later on and then went back to edit both pieces with a connection. I think that happened a couple of times. Today, I was able to piece everything together and then move it forward toward the ending. I like it. The end came out how I had envisioned it and connects it back to the beginning and other parts of the story. I hope you enjoy it.
BAD NEIGHBOUR
BY
SCOTT HENDERSON
Bad Neighbour. Kurt Jenkins knew what that was like. He should. He had one.
Of course, if you asked anyone else, they would say they had no problems with Kurt’s neighbour Ted. Even Kurt’s partner Dana would declare that she never experienced anything amiss about the person who lived next door.
“What about that time he borrowed my lawnmower?” Kurt railed to Dana one evening when trying to prove his point about Ted.
“What about your mower?” Dana asked. She didn’t add her thought that Kurt’s mower was actually ‘their’ mower. It wouldn’t have helped. “He returned it, didn’t he?”
“That’s it exactly. He returned it. He returned it in better shape than he had found it. It had been cleaned and oiled and the blade had been sharpened! He even put fresh gas in it!” Kurt was on a roll.
“And that’s the sign of a bad neighbour, how?” Dana couldn’t understand Kurt’s line of thought.
“He thinks I don’t care for my belongings. He has to return things better than he found them because he thinks he’s better than me!”
“Ted doesn’t think he’s better than you. He probably felt obliged to do all that because you loaned him the mower in the first place.” Dana rubbed her temples. She’d been down this road before with Kurt; different scenario but same squabble.
“Exactly, he came to me,” Kurt continued. “His mower broke down and then he asks for the loan of mine. Some nerve.”
“He hasn’t borrowed it since,” Dana offered. As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she regretted it.
“Of course not! He goes out and acquires a cordless model that’s better than mine. Just to show off. It’s so quiet he even cuts our grass the next day as a favour, so he says. Early morning, before I even get up. “What a sneaky ba—”
“Don’t say it Kurt,” she said, cutting him off. “It’s not true and it’s not nice. His mower had died. What was Ted to do?”
“What a sneaky bad neighbour, is what I was going to say. You never take my side.” He threw up his arms and walked out of the room.
Dana wasn’t buying it. When Kurt was fired up he always resorted to profanity. Even his exit from the conversation was deliberate. Everything with Kurt was staged for dramatic effect.
Dana thought back to the beginning when she and Kurt had first moved into the neighbourhood. They had bought the house as a quick sale from a husband and wife going through a messy divorce. Everyone in the neighbourhood had been surprised. They’d seemed like a lovely young couple. Bitter arguments and suspicions some said. Others commented that the husband had become unhinged. The purchase seemed perfect timing for Kurt and Dana who had been together for five years and thought buying the house was the first step towards expanding into a family. Dana often wondered what had happened to that dream?
Ted was the first person they had met when they moved in. He’d knocked on the door and introduced himself right away. He said if there was anything he could do to help out then he was just a shout away.
“He seems pleasant,” Dana had recalled saying.
“Until he isn’t,” Kurt had responded. “Getting used to neighbours is going to be an adjustment.”
“What are you talking about, Kurt? We had neighbours in the apartment building we lived in.”
“Yes, and they were on the other side of a wall or a ceiling or a floor. Here it’s all open. The only thing separating us from the overly friendly guy next door is a hedge.”
Dana couldn’t follow Kurt’s logic. Their new neighbour was more than fifty feet away. It wasn’t like Ted was an invading army sizing them up with intent to steal their land. Kurt would soon see that.
But Kurt didn’t soon see that. He was constantly suspicious of Ted.
There was always the cheery greeting from Ted whenever he saw Kurt or Dana outside. The friendly wave seemed to put Kurt off.
Then there was the lawn mower incident and Ted’s thoughtfulness. It certainly wasn’t the way Kurt saw it. In his mind, everything that Ted did seemed a game to engage Kurt in one-upmanship.
That first Christmas when Kurt’s light display paled to Ted’s holiday extravaganza, as Kurt called it, only made Kurt feel inferior. The next year, Kurt went all out and sunk a small fortune in lights and yuletide inflatables. Ted scaled his back accordingly. It was clear he was respecting Kurt’s moment to shine.
Kurt didn’t take it that way.
“Look at that Dana! He’s challenging me by not flaunting. That’s not how this is played. He goes bigger and I go bigger. He’s showing off by not showing off. That, right there, is the tactic of a bad neighbour!”
Kurt kept it up for the next few years. He taunted Ted with his ever-expanding outdoor spectacle. Ted remained demure. He marvelled at how much Kurt must really like Christmas.
Dana held her tongue as she always had to do when it came to Kurt’s Ted fixation. She knew better than to speak up. Kurt would always have the last word.
Kurt re-entered the room and picked up the thread from his lawn mower conversation. “And then there’s the hedge,” Kurt started in again.
Dana had thought the conversation was over. She should have known better. It was never one and done with Kurt.
“What about the hedge?” Dana thought it was a valid question. The hedge ran between the two driveways and Ted did a good job of maintaining it.
“For starters, Ted’s always trimming it.”
“He’s keeping it from becoming overgrown,” Dana tried to explain. “Besides, it’s on his property.”
“Is it? I have half a mind to find out where the property line really is. It might just run up the middle.”
“Then we’d be responsible for trimming our half,” Dana pointed out.
“So what? Then Ted wouldn’t have to come over to our side and trim it all the time.”
“We don’t even own hedge trimmers, Kurt.”
“I’ll buy some. If it’s on my side then I’ll do my own trimming, thank you very much.”
“And seethe about that,” Dana tried to say under her breath.
“What’s that Dana?” his tone suggested he was suspicious that her thinking was not in line with his.
“I said, ‘I see that’…that you’re upset about it, I mean.” Dana hoped she’d covered herself without reprisal.
“Damn straight I’m upset about it. That’s another check mark in the bad neighbour column.” He walked out of the room again. Dana hoped there wouldn’t be a repeat performance.
Of course Kurt checked out exactly where the hedge lay on his and Ted’s property. He was angered to learn that the entirety of the hedge was not only on Ted’s side but a fourteen inch grassy section running parallel was also not Kurt’s. Ted continued to trim the shrubbery and the green strip bordering it. Dana had been right, Kurt did seethe about it.
“There he is again,” Kurt had started in again about Ted one evening after having watched Ted outside busy with his landscaping. “I can’t stand to look at him anymore.”
“So why do you?” Dana thought to herself. Kurt couldn’t let anything go when it came to Ted.
“And he looks like one of those AI generated images of a fit older man from those Tai Chi Chair Exercises ads from that golf game I play on my phone.”
Dana knew that game well. Kurt was always playing it. He’d average three games during breakfast. He’d get in a couple more when he was getting dressed and then would be out the door with phone in hand trying to complete a course before he got into his car. He’d be playing when he came home and on and off throughout the evening. Dinner was a device free zone. Dana insisted. After eating, however, Kurt couldn’t wait to get back to the game.
“What’s Ted’s secret? He must be doing his chair aerobics fifty times a day. Nobody looks that good at sixty-seven.”
Dana thought about Ted. He was a good looking man for his age and he kept himself fit. It must have been all that lawn-mowing and hedge trimming and other outdoor activities keeping him young. He also was an ardent speed walker. He’d pass Dana when she went walking early in the day or in the cooler part of the evening. He always turned to acknowledge her and walked backwards a pace while conversing and then would turn and be gone quickly up the street or around a corner.
“Throw in a spray-on tan,” Kurt continued, “and he’d be an embarrassing mock-up of a neighbourhood lothario.”
Dana tried not listening. She hadn’t finished her mental comparison of Kurt and Ted.
Ted was fit. Kurt? Not so much. He’d started to develop a paunch. He wasn’t as active as Ted. He did fancy himself a golfer though, outside of his game app, but when he did play, mostly with better golfers, he’d traverse the course from the safety of a cart…getting out only to three or four putt his ball into the hole. If Kurt had to spend energy looking for his ball he’d often drop a new one and exclaim loudly he’d finally found where it had been allegedly hit.
Ted was quiet. Kurt was the opposite; especially when he was on the topic of his bad neighbour.
Ted was considerate. He always talked to Dana over the hedge. He listened to what she had to say. Kurt would go off on weekend golf trips with his buddies. He wouldn’t call. Dana never even got a text. She didn’t know he was on his way home until he actually opened the front door.
One time, Kurt came home to find that Dana wasn’t there waiting for him to unexpectedly return. It was the only time he had picked up his phone to call her and chastise her for not being home when he finally showed up.
She hated to have to explain to Kurt that she was with Ted. Their neighbour hadn’t been feeling well and she had made him a casserole and a pie and had taken it over to him. Dana had lingered longer enjoying playing the part of a good neighbour. She explained it to Kurt and then added she’d be home shortly. She disengaged quickly before Kurt could serve up his displeasure. She still got it from him however when she returned.
“Sick my ass,” was his reply. “I told you, ‘neighbourhood lothario’.”
“And I told you,” she retorted, “wasn’t feeling well so I made him a casserole.”
“And a pie!” Kurt was seething again.
“You don’t like pie, Kurt.” Dana tried to say it calmly and matter-of-fact so it wouldn’t feed into Kurt. It was true, he preferred cake. He didn’t like anything with a fruit filling. It verged on being too healthy.
“How was your golfing weekend?” Dana tried tactfully to change the subject. Usually Kurt would come in bragging about the amazing weekend and how well he had played. Dana would smile and nod attentively. She only believed a quarter of what he said.
“Ruined now, thanks for asking. Is it too much for you to be here so I can share with you in my pastime? The pleasure of it all is gone now, thanks to you and Ted.”
Dana didn’t bite. She thought to ask Kurt if he could name even one of her pastimes but gave it up. She would probably find herself saying that one of her favourite distractions was the times when Kurt went away. Saying that would have provided too much ammunition for his speculation of what went on with Dana and Ted when Kurt wasn’t around.
“If you must know, I shot the best game of my life,” he began; obviously ignoring the pain it was causing him in having to discuss it at all. “There was this one hole where I took a seven iron and…” Dana’s smiling and nodding came again as if second nature.
Dana tried to call up the dream of a family again. It had seemed attainable once. She and Kurt had been on that journey but then came the suburbs and Ted.
Dana didn’t understand it. When it was just her and Kurt in their one-bedroom apartment they seemed more in sync. What was it about neighbours and a hedge that brought out the worst in her partner? It was if, when their world had widened so had Kurt’s distrust of other people.
“Doesn’t he have family to take care of him when he’s sick? Haven’t I seen a bunch of kids running around his driveway once in a while? Who are their parents?” Kurt was back on the Ted talk again.
“They’re his grandchildren, I think,” Dana responded; tuning back into the conversation.
“You don’t really know. That’s it exactly. No one really knows anything about Ted. I’m an open book for crying out loud. What’s that guy hiding?”
The bait of Ted being an open book wasn’t something Dana was going to pounce on. Still, Kurt had a point. What did they really know about Ted?
Some neighbours gossiped in passing and said he was a widower. Others said he was divorced. Kurt surmised once that Ted’s wife had mysteriously disappeared. He’d had no proof. Kurt had just let his imagination fill in the gaps on what he didn’t know.
Dana hadn’t bothered to snoop when she’d gone to comfort Ted earlier that evening. It wasn’t her nature. She did see some photos of young children on a side table so her mind did what Kurt’s had done, she’d applied guesswork.
“Well, he better keep those little brats in his own yard if he knows what’s good for him. We don’t need a bunch of hooligans running up and down the street causing all kinds of trouble.”
Where did that come from? Dana imagined a cartoon bubble over her head of her and Kurt and their own children. Kurt’s spiel had burst that to shreds.
“I thought you liked children, Kurt. Hadn’t we always talked about having a few of our own?” Maybe reminding him of that fantasy would spark some honest conversation.
“Are you kidding, Dana? We can’t bring an infant up in this kind of neighbourhood. Can’t you just see Ted yelling at us from his front porch to keep that baby quiet? That’s what bad neighbours do, Dana.”
“End of discussion, Kurt? Don’t I get a say in this?”
Kurt came up to her and put his arm around her. It felt like a gesture he’d probably made to a golf friend after the friend had chipped a shot into the woods. There was no tenderness in it.
“Listen babe, it’s not the end of the world if we don’t have kids. You and I have really got something special together. Why spoil it now? Maybe later on, like after Ted moves away or dies, we can talk about it again. It’s only the end of the discussion for now.”
Dana speculated that the discussion would never be revisited. The unseemly allusion to Ted’s death before they could talk about children again only managed to drive a wedge deeper between them. Kurt’s obsession with Ted was quickly becoming Kurt’s only focus. Dana started to wonder if she and Kurt really were still compatible.
For Kurt’s part he became determined to ramp up his animosity toward Ted. His thoughts were more often on his neighbour than on Dana. In his mind, all the problems between he and Dana were tensions caused by his bad neighbour.
Kurt was also determined to win the battle of the hedge. He erected a wire fence the length of the leafy barrier that separated the two plots. It was ramshackle. He told himself he could have done a better job if he’d had the right tools but there was no way he was going to ask Ted for a loan of the correct equipment.
Ted didn’t retaliate. He trimmed the half of the hedge that he could access from his side. Kurt let his side grow wild. His makeshift fence also prevented Kurt from being able to cut the grassy strip on his side that technically belonged to Ted. It suffered as a result and soon became unsightly. Dana could talk no sense into Kurt.
Kurt began tracking Ted’s movements. He kept a journal of everything Ted did. When Ted left his house, Kurt followed him from a safe distance. Even though Kurt could find nothing untoward in Ted’s actions, his speculation ran rampant.
“Have you ever watched him Dana, I mean truly watched him?” Kurt began again one evening. “Where does he go on all these walks? What’s the purpose?”
Kurt had shadowed Ted as best he could but couldn’t perceive any patterns in Ted’s movements. Kurt convinced himself the pattern was there because it was oh so obvious that Ted was being oh so coy in his actions in an effort to throw Kurt off Ted’s true intentions.
“Exercise?” Dana offered up as rationale. “He likes to walk. I like to walk, too. Where’s the harm in it?”
“It’s not natural. He’s up to something. I told you there’s too many unanswered questions about him. What happened to his wife? Why did the previous owners of our house decide to up and sell?”
“Incompatibility? Divorce?” Dana knew as much as Kurt when it came to the previous residents of their home. She wanted to add ‘the maniacal lunacy of a husband’s overactive imagination’ but she knew that wouldn’t go down well.
“This is no joking matter Dana! Do you want what happened to them to happen to us?”
In the end, that’s exactly what happened to Kurt and Dana. He continued his quiet campaign against Ted, only verbalising his inane ramblings when he was alone with Dana. Morning, noon, and night it was Ted this or Ted that.
Dana had no one she could talk to about how Kurt felt about Ted. She didn’t dare talk to Ted about it. She didn’t want to hurt him. In her mind, Ted was a good neighbour. So, she talked to him instead about the further expanding gulf between Kurt and herself. She didn’t explain how Ted factored into it.
For Ted’s part, he was a good listener. He never offered her advice. He just let her thinking take her where she needed to go. He didn’t understand how Kurt could treat a beautiful person such as Dana in that way. Kurt had seemed such a normal type person when he’d first moved into the neighbourhood. Ted had also thought the same of the previous male in the house before Kurt.
It all came to a head when Kurt came home from another golfing weekend and Dana wasn’t there. He called her cell phone. She didn’t pick up. He stormed over to Ted’s and asked if she was there. Ted told him she wasn’t. So Kurt made another call. He telephoned the police. He reported Dana as missing. He rambled about Ted and offered up accusations about Dana’s fate and that of Ted’s previous wife.
Ted was calm and answered all of the questions posed by the police. He didn’t know where Dana had gone but he’d known she was going. Kurt would have realized that, too, if he’d looked in the bedroom and the closets. All of her clothing and things important to her were no longer there.
The police took Kurt away babbling and screaming about the machinations of a bad neighbour and the disappearance of Dana. Kurt never saw her again.
Dana would finally reach out to Kurt…through her lawyer. The house was half hers. She insisted on a private listing. The house was offered up again as another quick sale. Others in the community remarked on how the dwelling seemed to be a curse for couples. None of them mentioned Ted. The thought that Ted had anything to do with it, never crossed their minds. For his part, Ted said nothing either. He was not one to gossip.
A divorcée with a teenaged son became the new residents. Ted was out to greet them the day they moved in.
“If there’s anything I can do to help out then I’m just a shout away.” Ted remembered saying something similar to Dana and Kurt.
“That’s so sweet,” the woman replied. “We’re so happy to be part of the neighbourhood.”
“I hope you got a good deal on the house,” Ted mused. “It’s too bad the original occupants couldn’t make a go of it.”
“That’s a shame. Did you know them well?”
“As good as anyone, I guess. She was nice,” Ted commented.
“She? I thought you said there had been a couple?” the woman asked inquisitively.
“Oh, there was. She was nice but he was a…” Ted let his voice trail off.
“He was a what? You can tell me. We’re going to be living next to each other after all.” It was clear that curiosity was getting the better of her. “Go ahead, I can keep a secret. He was a what?”
Ted thought about it for a moment. It wasn’t like he was betraying a trust. Kurt and Dana had separated and moved away. Where was the harm?
Ted leaned in to the woman and whispered into her ear.
“Bad neighbour.”
THE END