Brendan let out a yelp and leapt backwards, tripping over a rug that had no business bunching up the way it did, and falling squarely onto the floor. He felt the breathe slip from his chest and spent what felt like the better part of five minutes working his way through embarrassing contortions to return air to his lungs.
When he was recovered, he sat himself up and stared at the curtained window. There was a tap that made him jump again, but thankfully he was already on the floor and had nowhere to fall. He stood back up carefully and approached the window again. This time he flipped the whole curtain back and there before him, on the other side, stood one of the three women from next door.
She had her head cocked to the side and a questioning expression sat on her face. She was so still that for a moment all Brendan could do was stare at her. Her black hair obscured one of her eyes in that position and the eyebrow above it was arched impossibly high.
He was so stuck in a frozen moment that when she opened her mouth and yelled “Are you okay?!” as loudly as she could to be heard through the window, it almost stopped his heart.
Without responding, he tromped to his door and flung it open. She was now craning her neck gazing through the window, trying to follow his progress to the door.
“What are you doing?” he asked sharply, secretly hoping to scare her as she had him. She turned to him slowly and hopped over to the door. Well, more of a skip maybe. Who skips at her age?
“I saw you looking at us through the window and thought you might want a closer look.” She smiled unironically and he took a step backwards, confused. She seemed to accept that as an invitation to enter and hop-skipped into his house. His house. She was in his house, this weird person.
