And now for a little bit of audience participation. I need your help, dear readers, in providing me with a key component of a story I’m trying to unfold. A mystery, an intrigue. A true story (up until this point), and when finished, a potentially entirely true story but likely only partially true story, depending upon the accuracy with which you are able to use the clues I’m going to give you to provide me with the missing piece of this tale. Are you ready?
Meet my neighbors across the street (or at least take a look at their house):
The House Across the Street, aka the House of Mysteries!
Let me set the stage: we live on a normal street, in a normal neighborhood. Our houses are all ranch-style, built in the 1950s (when people evidently didn’t need any closets or counter space). Our houses are fairly nice – kept up, yards managed, pleasant. Except for the house across the street. Note the following:
- Blinds drawn on all windows all of the time
- Front porch light left on all of the time
- Front yard consists of gravel, which also serves as a driveway to a gravel parking lot in the back (where the back yard should be)
- Crumbling paint job and general shoddy appearance
- Yellow sign and stickers in all windows advertising the security company that protects this gem of a home from potential robberies
Who remembers Gladys Kravitz from Bewitched?
I’ve lived across the street from this house for over three years now, and about a year ago came to the conclusion that this house is some sort of business. Two or three cars arrive every morning at about the time I leave for work; I usually see one normal-looking, middle-aged woman (the same woman, daily) park on the street and enter the home in the back entrance. Occasionally, an unmarked white van (it looks like a utility type van, not a passenger van) will park in the driveway or go around back. For the past year, I’ve been trying to figure out what type of business this could possibly be. Are they making or packaging meth? Is this some sort of prostitution ring? Are they breeding small monkeys for circuses and fairs and shuttling them in and out of the house with the vans? I don’t see a lot of strange men visiting, nor do I detect any odd fumes wafting through our neighborhood, so I think that rules out the first two possibilities. But the third??? Hmmm…
Last week, as I was backing out of my driveway and the woman I usually see was locking up her car at the start of our day, I seized my golden opportunity to get more information. I rolled down my window. “Excuse me…hello?” The woman looked up at me and smiled. “Hi! Just curious, but what type of business is this?” She paused, and said, “oh, it’s a tax business.” I wrinkled my nose, puzzled and disappointed. “Oh, ok…thanks.” I drove away.
Wait a minute, LIES, all LIES!!! When I got to work, the first thing I did was search for “tax business” in the vicinity of my address. It took a little digging around, but a business did pop up – Jackson Hewitt. But since when does a Jackson Hewitt tax service look like THIS??? I’m thinking it’s got to be a front. I, for one, would not be surprised at all if there were indeed small primates being bred in that house!
Here’s where YOU come in. Tell me, WHAT KIND OF OPERATION IS GOING ON IN THIS HOUSE??? Leave your ideas and thoughts in a comment, and I will try to incorporate the winning idea (or ideas, or maybe even all of them) in a short story or poem or diorama or some other medium of my choosing. What do you think is happening here? Should I be scared? Are they missing some key permits? Are they underground because they can’t meet some sort of compliance or regulation? Are they building something? Are they harboring space aliens? Are they under quarantine for an infectious disease and the women who visit daily are there to feed the infected??? What do you think? LEAVE YOUR COMMENTS BELOW, PLEASE, and I’ll choose the winner(s) at the end of June! Good luck – I can’t wait to find out what my neighbors are up to!
**UPDATE UPDATE UPDATE** This morning, I saw the other woman (who, incidentally, always arrives in a newer model black Mustang, so I assume there’s money actually involved in this business) enter the house with a small bouquet of flowers. Who are the flowers for? Is it the birthday of the lady that I talked to? Or maybe they are for one of the lepers that they must have impounded in their basement? And YES, THEY HAVE A BASEMENT.
Fuzzy Undertones 
Medical marajuana grower. The middle age woman is the client. The driver of the white van is the person responsible for keeping tabs on the grower. That’s my guess!
Foxy,
That is exactly what I thought. If there were an industrial sized fan, then I would say absolutely! 🙂
Dirty
Ha! Dirty – no fan in sight, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t one. They could have one in back, for sure!
You know, I was thinking it might be something like that! They could definitely have some sort of growing operation in the basement. The weird thing is that I see these two women arrive at the same time every day, dressed in business clothes (kind of) and leave at the same time (like a regular business day). I haven’t seen the van in a while though. So weird!!! ❓
I believe that’s the secret manufacturing location for fairy dust – specifically pink fairy dust. A highly sought-after commodity by Tinkerbell wanna-be’s worldwide. You’ll know for sure if you see a rosy afterglow on the gravel as the sun sets.
If you’re serious (does Fuzzy Undertones say “true story” only when true or also when truly imaginative because this could be either from my perspective!) then I suggest you call your non-emergency police phoneline and ask ’em to check it out. There are way too many dangerous scenarios, and it’s not reasonable that a legit business operates like you describe in a residential neighborhood.
Do keep us posted!
I *will* keep you posted, Sammy! I like the idea of them manufacturing pink fairy dust…I wonder what it does for those Tinkerbell wanna-be’s? Why is it in such high demand? Inquiring minds…
Seriously though, I have considered calling the “officials” to see if I can find out more about this, and if there’s any need for some sort of investigation or business verification. I definitely don’t want anything shady happening just across the street! 😉
I can see where the situation would arouse curiosity and stir the imagination. With computers so many businesses can be run out of a home. They could be telemarketing something and using the van for deliveries. Then again the van could be bringing in illegals until ransoms are paid and they are moved to another destination. I’ve heard many news stories about this kind of racket.
Lee
A Faraway View
I know – it’s kind of scary! I don’t think that anyone lives there, since the women arrive in the morning and leave in the evening, so it’s kind of weird that someone would run an internet or telemarketing business in a home that is not theirs. I have heard news stories about that kind of trafficking and ransoming of illegal immigrants – that’s a horrifying prospect! I will keep my eyes peeled and everyone here informed, of course! 😉
I spoke to the kat who lives there…(the invisible one)… Here’s the deal.
The kat is growing and manufacturing nip in the basement, and the humans are being held as slaves. They say its a tax service because the kat will take away their water and internet/cable service if they blab.
They don’t dare blab because somebody did once and the kat chained him up in the basement and fed him (cheap) dry kat food & he died.
The flowers are fur his grave (also in the basement).
Shrimp
Oooooohhhh – how nefurrrrious!!! Perhaps I will have to take a couple of my kitties over there to see if they detect the scent of catnip wafting through the breeze. What a horrible fate…forced to eat cheap, poor-quality cat food until death! May he rest in peace…how kind of the humans to honor his memory.
My cats do have one question regarding the nip: is it the good stuff, or is it all seeds and stems? 😉
I heard that it is mixed with stems…the dang cheapskate! *[HISS]!*
LOL!!! 😀
* trills*♥
Now that I know you are serious: It’s the always-closed shades and no indication of legit business that raise red flags. Even given all the home businesses and telemarketers, this doesn’t say “normal business”. This is the kind of situation that officials are talking about when they ask us to be eyes and ears. It’s worth a call to the non-emergency cop line. If it’s legit, worst case is women get a visit from the cops. If it’s NOT legit, there are a whole host of awful worst cases.
Yup – I’m going to call this week when the non-emergency offices are open. I’ve thought about the possibilities enough now to know that this could be a bad situation, in more ways than one. I will let you know what happens. ❤
Good. I would hate to lose my favorite Lady I Love to some crackpot across the street!!
Oh, don’t worry about me! We’ll get it taken care of 😉
Okay, so If I were cruising through your neighborhood playing my favorite traveling in the car game “Spot The Meth Lab”, this one would totally be pegged. But you say there’s no chemical odors.
So I’m going to have to go with secret evil luminescence lab. They’re injecting deep sea fish luminescence cells into various prototypes. (That’s why the shades are constantly drawn.) They obviously began with stinkbugs and sea monkeys, but have moved on to raccoons and orangutans. What will glow in the dark next?
Ooooohhh – those nefarious bastards!!! I wonder if the luminescence is only visible to certain creatures? Like my cats, for instance, are able to see stinkbugs on the ceiling/walls at 2 am, and start meowing and jumping at them and I have no idea what’s going on until I turn on the light. So sneaky and tricksy! In addition to raccoons, we also have op possums; I wonder if these people are really do-gooders, trying to make these animals glow-in-the-dark to reduce the amount of roadkill??? Hmmm…