MORIA
I had always thought it had been a dream.
My our next door neighbor back in the human world had been a burly 70year old man with a potbelly and a voice that seemed like it was permanently on the edge of a cold.
Raspy and wheezy.
He barely had any hair left and his shirts were never his size, always having those yellow, round stains of sweat under his arms even when it was still morning and the day had barely begun.
Old man Howie they called him.
The oldest resident on our street, he had lived in the house next to our own for as long as anyone could remember.
And he had hated me and my mother.
Perhaps hated is a strong word.
Maybe even the wrong one.
I believe the right word would be distrusted.
If not distrusted, then feared.
And it hadn’t been me and mother.
It had been
