First-person short story competition - Runner Up

So here I am, standing in the dirt with my Dutch hoe in my hands, shaking like a leaf and thinking about how long it’s been going on, so long in fact that I’d almost got immune to it, but not immune enough since it’s just got a whole lot worse, and I can’t get away from it her living next door and all and wanting to talk to me every time I see her, which might be only twice a week or so but that’s twice a week too often in anybody’s book, honest to God, every time I’m out in the garden she’ll stick her head over the fence and say hello, Andrew, how are you today and I’ll say I’m fine thanks, Denise, how are you and then it’ll start, guaranteed and for certain, off she’ll go about how she’s just had a long chat concerning plastic bags in the ocean with that nice Mr Attenborough, or maybe she’ll want to tell me about the suspicious pair of cockney lads she’d seen in the Queen Vic last night and their rather sotto voce, Andrew conversation about a stolen van, well, the first time it happened it took me a while to cotton on that she was simply rehearsing stuff she’d seen on the telly, rehearsing it or reliving it or whatever, because as far as Denise is concerned everything on TV is real and involves her personally, she thinks Dr Who’s a factual investigation into the dangers of foreign travel for Christs’ sake, and I’ve figured out she watches a lot of political chat shows as she’s always banging on about having attended a protest somewhere even though I know she never leaves the house except to do her shopping and maybe go to a garden centre for potting compost on a Saturday, don’t get me wrong, I’m not mocking the woman as she clearly has issues upstairs, but it can get pretty weird, particularly as to look at her you wouldn’t know that she’s mad, her being one of those people who visually could be either in her late twenties or early forties or anything in between, I think they call her type of face generic, and she dresses pretty normally although relying a little too heavily on the primary colours for my taste, all of which combines to make a conversation with her quite unsettling, particularly as following her husband Malcolm’s recent demise Denise apparently signed up for Now TV or something thus discovering masses of new films and made-for-TV series which I’m certain the woman binge-watches because she’ll appear on her patio all wild-eyed having a complete panic attack about season six of Game Of Thrones, and I’ll have to listen to the whole thing being retold as if it was actually happening to her, right here and right now, which it clearly isn’t but I’m far too polite to say so, at least back in the late 90’s when all this started it used to be mostly routine government stuff she got confused about - in fact the first thing she ever said to me was Andrew, I don’t want to make a fuss but we’ve got twenty four hours to save the NHS - nowadays though it’s post-apocalyptic ninja zombies shooting it out with teenage cyber vampires in her en-suite shower room complete with sound effects that I can hear even with the windows closed, which is obviously and undeniably a great deal worse than it was before, I mean give me strength, how on Earth Malcolm put up with it I don’t know but the man managed to keep a lid on it while he was still with us, bless him, by confining her television habits to documentaries for the most part, now he’s gone and of course her viewing’s spiralling completely out of control, anyway thereby hangs a tale in its own right as Malcolm’s surname was Dennis, so when they got married Denise went from being Denise Fairchild to Denise Dennis and overnight became convinced that her imaginary best friend Debbie Harry wrote the Blondie song of a similar name specifically about her, well that’s just dotty old Denise being charming and harmless you might think, and you’d be quite right too except for when she hears it being played in public which is exactly what happened a couple of years ago at our village fete, the song came on over the Tannoy and Denise began winking significantly at the local children and nodding towards the PA tent, understandably much to the kiddies distress, after which she was asked not to attend any more fetes, I only mention this as it helps to clarify the position I’m in, stood here with my hoe in my hands and unable to move I’m that scared, all right I’ll admit not all her make-believe episodes have been entirely antisocial, she did once appear in her garden with a flower behind one ear and hippy-dippy bohemian bed hair, hugging herself in an alarmingly girly way and when I asked her how she was she just smiled and said my unusual-looking gentleman friend from under the sea has come to stay, so I said that that was nice, he’s ever so tall, and a god to certain South Americans you know she said, then her eyes went all big and round and, leaning right over the fence, she whispered I think I’m going to need a plumber, which was a jolt I can tell you, but I gave her the phone number of Simon who does my plumbing and she evidently rang him as he came round to see me a bit later, Christ, he said, she’s bonkers isn’t she, and did you know her house’s full of seawater, when I gave him an old fashioned look he added on my mother’s life, I checked every inch of her pipework and it’s sound as a pound, not a leak in the place but I swear it’s completely full of salt water, carpets curtains the lot, smells like being on holiday, well that little pointer plus what she’d already told me about her boyfriend clinched it, The Shape Of Water was, evidently, the film of the week for Denise but how in hell she got all that seawater in there still beats me, that was as I say one of her more benign hallucinations and has nothing to do with why I’m in such a state, oh no no no, it’s all because of the storm we had yesterday evening, not a rainstorm you understand as there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, more of a summertime electrical storm with lots of thunder and lightning which went on well into the night then stopped as suddenly as it had started, which was as nice as ninepence by me as it meant that this morning I could get on with the weeding in peace until, you guessed it, up pops Denise at the fence and says well, Andrew, that was an awfully dramatic storm wasn’t it and I’m thinking to myself go away Denise, I mean seriously girl you need to get some professional help, but being a polite chap I went with yes, Denise, it was and she then said all those lightning bolts wasn’t it exciting, one of them hit my lawn what do you think about that, not much thinks I, although all I actually said was come on, Denise, it’s statistically very unlikely any of them really landed in your garden which was a schoolboy error on my part as she did the big eye thing and tipped her head indicating I should see for myself so, like I said being as how I’m so polite, I went round to hers with my hoe over my shoulder and what do you know smack bang in the middle of her lawn there’s a hole, a round one about eighteen inches across with a raised rim of dirt and stones and loads more dirt sprayed outwards over the whole garden like some four year olds’ idea of an asteroid impact or whatever, here we go I thought, bending over to take a closer look and Denise bends over too so we can peer into it together, there she says all pleased with herself told you so, it’s ever such a deep hole, Andrew, and when I felt around in there just now it’s freezing cold, rather than being warm to the touch as one might expect which annoyed the hell out of me, I mean for crying out loud, who digs a damn great hole in their own lawn at midnight just to impress the neighbours, so I said let’s see how deep it is shall we, Denise and picked up a stone from the rim, held it out over the middle of the hole and dropped it, well, after a fair old while I straightened up again and here I am hanging on to my hoe like it’s going to prop me up while Denise goes all told you so and walks back indoors to turn her telly on, just walks away like everyone’s got a neighbour who can turn reality inside out so why should I be so jumpy about it, and all the while for all I know that damn stone is still falling, and it’s pretty obvious that Denise is ripping off the Tom Cruise remake of War Of The Worlds where the Martians ride down in lightning bolts to take over the world, only when Denise rips something off it’s way different to how you or I would do it and I hope, I mean I really, really hope that something new on the telly catches her interest because I just heard a loud clonking noise and the little stones and bits of earth around the rim of that hole in her lawn have started skittering about and falling in, and I need her to find something else to think about before whatever it is she’s woken down there decides to come up and have a look around.