The Party Next Door

   by David Chorlton

     Splash goes the knife in one more watermelon and the spray tingles on the 
ruddy faces of our drunken neighbors on their lawn. It is full moon in the monsoon 
season, the heat clings to their shirts, and a hose shoots water up and over them. We 
listen to them singing out of tune, considering a call to the police, but pity eats away 
at us and we decide to get up, sit on the porch and watch them toss their earthly weight 
away with their shoes and dance barefoot on the sloppy grass. 

    The word is out. Helicopters have come to monitor the glee with lightbeams bleaching 
the scene. The revelers wave, bathe their faces in the flash, and make a light show of the 
water they loop around each other. They look medieval now, a band of mystics spinning to a 
beery high, who set the palm tree on fire like a candle to invoke an early dawn. 

    Here comes the siren of the fire truck, just as thunder bundled in the sky for hours 
finally belches out its rain, and fire and water dance together for a moment above the rooftops 
before the power fails, the flame fizzles and the neighbors drop, sated, to their ragged knees 
and slap the ground around themselves like happy seals.