“Now this is a house call.” Drew whistled appreciatively as Kyle steered the car off the main drag and down a side street.
Maybe this neighborhood was safer, but to Kyle it was...boring. Sure, the houses were big, and the lawns were neat, but everything looked the same. It was suburban hell at its finest. Most of the houses were cookie-cutter generic, from the fancy molding around the windows and the stylish wooden shutters set to make the places look semi-rustic. If just one of the houses had looked like that, it would have been fine, but driving through a bewildering subdivision of over a hundred of them was like being lost in some sort of Jungian nightmare hell. It was Kyle’s subconscious reminding him why he had a loft downtown on the borders of Little Mexico, the ghetto, and corporate satanism.
“I’d kill to be able to afford a place out here,” Drew said. “When Melissa and I get married, if I can score a place like this --”
Kyle privately thought that if Drew moved Melissa out to one of these mansion-wannabe monsters with the fake chandeliers and overly thick cream carpets, she’d tear her own hair out. All of the streets had ridiculous names on overly-gilded signs that were difficult to read in the glare of fading sunlight. Did that say Black Swan or Black Dawn? And who’d want to live on Black Dawn anyway?
Predictably, the house that had summoned them was at the end of a cul-de-sac, perched at the top of a ridiculously long and curved driveway. Golden light spilled from the massive front windows - a bay window on the second floor - and it felt like a three-eyed demon was staring down at them. The squat doors for the three-car-garage grimaced like so many teeth.
Kyle parked the car at the sidewalk and followed the curving path up the slope, nervous about stepping on the immaculately manicured lawn. From the doorstep, he could see the fake chandelier, and - oh hell, the woman coming to answer the door was wearing a 1950’s house dress, complete with pearls and high heels.
So this was West Omaha.
(370 words)
1 comment:
I could definitely see this place. I could feel his frustration and his almost disdain for those people. Very well described.
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