The not so benign powers of Annie

5 am is early unless you’re fueled by devastating anxiety. The kind of anxiety that multiples after each thought finds it’s next thought to spawn on and further you into the dismal cycle. To me, 5 am was the time I hopefully woke up instead of it just being another sleepless hour staring at the gray wall in my bedroom.

I ate my toast burnt mostly because I couldn’t pay attention to the timer closely enough to find the precise time it should take to create the protégé for all toast to aspire to be. I’d paddle my fingers through my hand and watch the sun rise most mornings. I wonder what dreary fate the horizon will reveal for me today. Perhaps the mailman will be a spy or maybe even a detective who thinks for some reason that I am involved in some illicit act involving drugs or the sale of contraband weapons. There’s no telling where my mind might take me off.

Maybe Annie will come out to fix her flowerbed again. Yes, Annie, the angel I adore. I have been watching her in her grace for close to a year now, ever since she moved in that brisk October day.

My name is Jeremy Minskle and I am 25 years old. I have been living here in this house on 124 Ridge Avenue my whole life but I have been living here alone since my mother and father passed in a car crash some odd years ago. I never leave my house and if I do it is only to farthest point of my yard that is fenced in. Things outside my house are evil and can hurt me.

All my groceries and toiletries are sent to me via mail or by a delivery service. I make purchases for clothes and other extras online or through home shopping channels.

Where are my safety goggles? I need them for smoking. I heard one day you see, while watching the news, that a youth was blinded in one eye by an accidental smoking accident in which the cigarette made it into his left eye burning the cornea. Since my education to this news, I have smoked only through the watching safety of my glasses. Ahh, yes, found them, which reminds me to include a carton of cigarettes in my next grocery order for I am running low. I make a grocery order twice a week and make sure it is constructed with most accuracy by reading it over 4 or 5 times and each time checking on hand quantities of fruits, canned goods, dairy products, coffee, rolls, you name it.

After my parents deaths I inherited a decent sum of money, which has paid my way through a life of self-exile and exclusion. The only acquaintances I have now are with Gus the delivery man who comes on Tuesdays and Fridays and Annie my neighbor who I have spoken to twice, waved at 4 times and traded smiles with 7 times, or perhaps it was 8, I am uncertain. These are the only two people I am not afraid of. All other packages I receive are left in front of my door. I made an arrangement with the shipping companies that I waiver all responsibility on the behalf of the sender so I don’t have to sign for them when they arrive.

I go outside mornings and sit behind the terrace near where my garden used to be when my mother was here to give it upkeep.