She's Back

The mad woman downstairs for so long left me bereft of all delights, but not today. There I was, almost resigned to the assumption that her last bequeathment to me would be a cockroach complaint, but she simply cannot help herself. I occasionally see her potter around in the open, under cover of darkness, shining flashes of torchlight into the night's sky, communicating. But today she braved the onlookers and took out her garbage in daylight. How fortunate I was, dear reader! Barely descending the stairs to my mailbox I saw her, floating above the ground, half-consumed by the disposal bin. She had lodged herself on the edge of the bin, her feet a yard off the ground, and her head absorbed by the darkness, peering into the depths of rubbish into which she had only just thrown something clearly of greater value than previously suspected. If only I could see what! An unripened pear, perhaps? A rechargeable battery? I couldn't bare to be seen. What if I had foiled the whole thing and she had jumped down and retained some sort of dignity? I couldn't let that happen. The urge to take a photo, however, was too great. But by the time I'd turned back, she was gone.