I live almost directly across the road from the old Parker house. I watch the kids playing on the lawn and hate them. The lawn is big enough for baseball games with the local kids gathering constantly during the long days and short nights. I watch them, picking out the loudest children for my anger, trying to make my eyes fill with special killing rays. Hating the screams. "Get it, get it, get it."

"No children live nearby." That's what the Realtor said. "No children." I try to explain that I'm allergic to them. The cries and the screams hurt my ears, making them bleed all night. I've wakened to a pillow filled with blood from my broken eardrums. I don't know how to say these things to a stranger who is only trying to sell a house. So I just say, "Good."

The screams are leaching the very strength from the old house. The boards are gray, showing signs of life sucked from the marrow of its skeleton. Two windows are broken out and have been covered with plastic sheeting. The house looks like an old person with cataracts. Blind and helpless. Even the roof is beginning to sag. I can't let them kill the house. I will be next. The townspeople will die, bleeding into their soft pillows. The children will survive as everyone and everything around them expires, maybe in one long last gasp. I must stop them.

I make trips to the house in the dark. Long past the kiddies'  bedtimes. I go over in the moonlight and make my way through the rooms. I can feel what must be velvet wallpaper in the parlor. There is a broken chair in a corner. The bedrooms upstairs are full of scurrying noises. Little creatures making soft sounds that help heal my ears. I bring food to encourage their trust. They soon eat out of my hands. Never mistaking me for a nibble of corn. Small field mice, mostly. Sometimes a squirrel will come to investigate the smells. I smash it with a hammer. I hate squirrels, chattering like children, hollering for more, more, more. Greedy, nasty ,things needing to be punished.

I take my time investigating the body of the house. Water still runs in the kitchen and bathroom. Life’s blood of wood. Trees long dead moan for a drink, so I let the water run onto the floor. The sucking of moisture is a phenomenon I never tire of watching. Upstairs the water flows down through the house into the cellar. Into the ground. where I feel a stirring of vibration. I hold my head to the wall and will the house alive. Will it to keep me company. Yes, the house responds to me. We concur.

Planting vines in the dark of the moon isn't difficult. There are a few sparse street lamps to light my efforts. I urinate on the seeds, feeding my life to them. It's a perfect summer for growing things. Vines intertwine the porch railings and grow up the posts. Soon the house is covered in beautiful lively vines, leaves wiggling and squirming in the sunshine. Keeping the house protected from the screams of those kids.

Now I can stay in the house all day if I choose. There is no sound that can penetrate the barrier we have made. The house and I are free for a long time. Until the kids spoil our lives. They begin by tearing off leaves from the vines. Big leaves they use for hats to cover their dolls heads from the late summer heat. Then they come for the vines themselves. Tying them together for ropes to catch each other like cattle on a roundup. I feel the anger rising from the house, reflecting my own rage. They can’t be allowed to do this.

Sunlight shines into the house once more, bringing slow death to us both. I must do something to save us. No one can stand this pain, inside and out for long. I go up into the hot attic and whisper my plans. Watching the children, feeling blood running down my neck, trying to ignore the pain so I can fully explain my idea. I feel the house sag with relief. The mice are there, too, waiting for food. I bring them downstairs with me, but I don’t feed them. Not yet.

Soon we begin. One by one children are enticed by wiggling vines, or a glance of a field mouse’s brown eyes before it runs to safety. Children are always too curious for their own good. They crawl inside the house looking to hurt something, just to hear the noise it makes when it's dying. I know children and their cruelty . They are led to the cellar, where the pit waits. Full of hungry mice. Even the squirrels are there. Hungry things. They have been kept hungry, like greedy children are denied supper and punished.

Over the next few days the screams of the children at play are replaced by the shouts of adults. Calling for their lost babes. I sit in my house and watch them gather at the side of the road. Adults and a few young children, caught in their parents hands like spider webs holding flies. Other than the occasional shouts, it's quiet now. My ears don't bleed anymore. The smell of autumn leaves burning replaces the smell of rotting meat.