💀How Ugly Neighbor Was Born (Part I) The Trouble With Doug!

We didn’t mean to start a band.

I mean, maybe we knew we would one day—but this band? Right now? It wasn’t like that. This was about Doug.

Doug moved into the house at the end of the cul-de-sac six weeks ago. He seemed normal enough at first — single guy — took the trash out on time. But soon enough, he started doing some weird shit. Not like “collects stamps” weird. More like “feeds something in the attic through a doggy door” weird.

He mowed the lawn at midnight… In fucking khakis and a Cardigan. He installed plastic flamingo lawn ornaments impaled upside-down on tiny wooden stakes next to a sign that said, “Live, Laugh, Love.” Also upside down.

Last Wednesday night, Doug wheeled what looked like an industrial sausage grinder from a U-Haul into his garage, closed the door, and… like an hour later… started blasting Kenny G. Yeah. That one song. You know the one.

I snuck over, trampling one of those little gnome things to get a view through the side window. What I saw through those slats would defy all reason.

Doug, in his khakis and cardigan, arms outstretched, floating a good three inches off the garage floor. Not jumping. Not doing a Tik Tok dance. Fucking Floating and humming along to the music.

There was this unnatural fog in there that filled the garage and pulsed in time to that fucking jazz flute (or whatever). The sausage grinder was glowing this awful pulsing teal—like if sadness had a nightlight.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, but there was no mistaking it:

Doug was performing some kind of smooth jazz blood ritual and the sacrificial lambs? A pristine copy of London Calling in one hand, and Damned, Damned, Damned in the other—both first pressings. He was going to feed them to the grinder. To his… Jazz Lord.

I mouthed, “No,” as if it would matter.

Doug, still hovering like a J. Crew poltergeist, raised both albums high above the sausage grinder. The teal hell light flared. The machine began to spin on its own—not with the expected mechanical hum, but with more like the growling stomach of some ravenous beast.

Doug wasn’t playing Kenny G. He was summoning it from another place.

(To be continued)