NEXT DOOR DUNGEON (book one) By Paul Tobin © 2020: Paul Tobin 2 Selected other works by Paul Tobin: COMICS: Heist Made Men Mystery Girl GRAPHIC NOVELS: Banana Sunday Bandette Colder Gingerbread Girl I Was The Cat Plants vs. Zombies The Witcher NOVELS: Genius Factor Book One: How to Capture an Invisible Cat Genius Factor Book Two: How to Outsmart a Billion Robot Bees Genius Factor Book Three: How To Tame a Human Tornado Prepare to Die! WEBTOON: Messenger © 2020: Paul Tobin 3 A FEW NOTES BEFORE READING Why I wrote this: A few years ago, I was in a writing slump. It just wasn’t fun anymore. Everything I was doing felt like work. And then I realized that everything WAS work. Every single thing that I was writing was for publication. And, yes, I LOVED most of my projects, but they were still work. They were still going to copy-editors, publishers, etc, etc. The work wasn’t purely mine to enjoy, to simply wander off in any direction I felt. So, ever since then, I’m always working on at least one project that’s for fun… a project that I’m never going to pitch, never have to think about reader reaction, etc, etc. Next Door Dungeon is one such project, but with all the Covid-19 bullshittery going on, I wanted to give something to people who are stuck in their homes, and this is a thing that I can give. I enjoyed writing this novel, so, yeah, there will likely be more. I’ve already begun preliminary work on the next one. What’s the appropriate age level?: Oh geez, I’m terrible at that. I was reading Anaïs Nin at age 10, so I’m a bad gauge. But Next Door Neighbor has some swearing, some sexual situations, and heaps of violence. I’d say young adult and up would be fine. This is Book One of… how many???: I don’t know. Until I quit having fun. But yes, it is a Book One, so don’t expect a complete story. Sorry. What you can do with it: You can read it! You can even send it to a friend. I don’t care. You cannot, of course, publish it in any way yourself. Feel free to comment: If you want to say you enjoyed the book, I’m all ears. If you want to say you did not enjoy the book, I have zero ears. If you want to say you’d like more of “X” in book two, or less of “Y” in book two, that’s fine! If you want to point out some spelling errors or an improper use of the Oxford comma, please don’t. I wrote this for fun, and am giving it away: I don’t care if a few words are misspelled or if there’s an instance of improper grammar. I can be reached at the gmail address of paultobinwriter and usually take a long time to respond, because of work. Dedication: This one goes out to Jerry, Bill, and Mike; my original high-school roleplaying crew. © 2020: Paul Tobin 4 CHAPTER ONE When I was seven I lived alone with my dad. Mom died in that Fisherville gas station explosion, the one that tripped the gas main under the Westfall Convenience Mart and caused the entire building to launch like a rocket, splattering the neighborhood with flaming gas, a rain of potato chips and melted candy bars, and the assorted remains of two employees and three unfortunate customers. Dad mourned Mom for just short of two weeks and then began celebrating how the ladies at the Friendly Shore strip club gave him free lap dances if he pretended to be sad. He was drinking again in those days, and the drugs had their grip on him. This part of the story isn’t important, although I have to say it was in those days that I realized most strippers are nice people and that my dad wasn’t. The important thing is that there was a woman who lived next door to us on the third floor of our apartment building. Salena was her name. Twenty years old, I remember, because when Salena mentioned she was thirteen years older than me I’d said that thirteen was an unlucky number, but she’d told me, “No, it’s not. It’s a fine number.” Salena babysat me whenever dad was out at nights, and I stayed with her three times when he was in jail for a few days. Her apartment was full of plants, like walking into a jungle. The air inside was clean despite how, one step outside her hallway door, the air was full of cigarette smoke and the carpets hadn’t been cleaned since our building had been a semi-famous hotel and Iggy and the Stooges had stayed in our rooms, with three groupies setting up a tent in the hall and pissing and shitting in the corners because Iggy wouldn’t let them in through his door. Salena claimed she was a witch. She told me she had magic powers and laughingly declared that if I didn’t go to bed at the proper time she’d make my ass turn blue or my penis start barking. Those were powerful scares for a boy of my age. I remember her as a gangly, spidery thing. More sexual, probably, in my memory, than she was in real life. One time she ate a whole bag of marshmallows two nights in a row. A bag each night. As a child, I was very impressed by that. Sometimes she would sing. No accompanying music. Just her voice. © 2020: Paul Tobin 5 Salena often told me stories when she was babysitting, epic tales of monsters defeated by clever women. One time when I went over to her place she was just getting out of the shower and I stood in that humid living room waiting for her to drive us to the pizza place, and then I realized I could see her in the bathroom, fresh from the shower, naked. What I mean is that the door was open enough to see her reflection in the bathroom mirror. I was amazed by that reflection because it was revealing something hidden, something that I wasn’t actually seeing, it being only a reflection of a truth that was powerful and real, with just a wall between us. I trembled in Salena’s living room, shivering along with all the leaves of her various plants, which were forever moving in the slight wind of her ceiling fan. One night when she was putting me to bed, I asked why she’d seemed so sad of late. This was in the days when sometimes, some nights, I could hear her crying through the walls. I’d lie in bed listening to her sobbing. It could go on for hours. It was killing me. I’d cry along with her. When I finally asked her why she was so sad, she’d gone silent for a time, and I expected she’d answer that I was too young to know about some things. Instead, she crawled onto my bed next to me, sending my mind reeling, to be honest, with her knees sliding against my sheets, my heart racing and shivering, and then she held my hand in a peculiar way. Our index fingers were straight. Extended. Hugged up against each other. The rest of our fingers were clasped. She breathed on our hands with a breath that was shockingly warm, and then used our combined index fingers to trace imaginary lines on the wall. A big rectangle, standing upright. Then she let go of my hand and stood on my bed, right on my mattress, rapping her knuckles on the wall like she was knocking on a door. She told me, “There, Josh. I’ve built you a doorway to elsewhere. There are terrible things in every world, but at least now you have a choice when things get too crazy, okay?” I nodded, because in those days I always agreed with whatever Salena said. She was an attractive woman, a mystery, and she’d been naked in that mirror, and she was crazy and often said strange things. I suppose I should’ve mentioned earlier how she often said strange things. Anyway, she did. But I loved her strange mind and the little slope of her breasts and the light t-shirts she would wear, always without a bra, because she claimed that bras interfered with her magic. I was too young to be sexually aware of Salena. I was just aware that she was sexual. There’s a difference. Anyway, that night of her drawing the imaginary door, that’s something I never told anybody. Maybe a week later there was a fire in Selena’s apartment while I was at school. They took her body away while I was at recess. By the time I was home, the landlord was assessing the damage and thinking about how soon he could have her place rented again, all while putting her plants on the sidewalk with the rest of the garbage. That night, at maybe three in the morning, I went out and took several of her favorite plants off the curb and put them on the desk in my room, but I was shit at taking care of them, and within a couple of months they were dead. © 2020: Paul Tobin 6 CHAPTER TWO “It’s unhealthy, Josh” my sister Binsa told me.