Gossips are a pain in the neck. They take a rumour and pass it on with embellishments, never bothering to check if the original rumour was true. By the time a gossip has finished a man tripping on some broken pavement becomes poor old Joe was so drunk that he was falling down all over the place on the way home.
Just as bad in my books are the snoops. They poke their noses in where they're not wanted. For some reason it's considered bad manners to punch those noses. Don't know why. It seems an ideal solution to a snoop. Get them before they can find a bare bone to flesh into a full sized rumour.
I'd recently bought a house out in the suburbs. A very nice little place that suited me quite admirably. I could see myself bring a bride home someday and raising children in this new home. What I had no way of knowing before I moved in was that the woman next door was a snoop and a gossip. She wasn't your regular snoop. I'm quite sure this woman was a professional snoop who'd raised snooping to an art-form. She could walk in your front door and out your back door without stopping and be able to tell you precisely what was in your medicine cupboard and what sort of underpants you favoured.
I spotted her prowling around my place several times but if I went outside to find out why she wouldn't be there. For all of that the rest of my neighbours probably had a good idea of exactly what furniture I had and how I'd decorated. Michelle was seriously getting on my nerves.
Normally you think of an old woman when you think of a snoop, or a plump middle aged lady who was deeply interested in everything that goes on around her. That wasn't Michelle. She was in her early twenties, married, currently working but intending to have children sometime. I know this, not from nasty gossip, but by talking to her and encouraging her to tell me about herself. I also passed on minimum information about myself, enough to let her know I was a respectable citizen.
So knowing I was just an average bloke and a respectable citizen she just naturally turned her snooping ways in another direction, right? Wrong. She apparently assumed I lied about myself and she was going to find out the truth by snooping around.
I'd finally had enough and decided to take some action. Nice things mobile phones. You can carry them anywhere. You don't have to talk to people, you can leave messages. I accidentally left my phone on the small table that was on my front veranda. I'm too lazy to lock it. Just open and swipe and all my details are laid bare. Not that there were too many details. Just contact numbers really. Oh, there was one message still on it that I hadn't got around to deleting for some reason.
I made myself scarce, trusting that the phone would be safe from petty thieves. You would have to enter the premises to spot it and it was an older phone anyway. Not worth stealing. When I returned I saw it had been moved. I flicked it open, checked my messages and deleted the message I'd left on it.
What was that message? Basically a fairly vague message that told someone that I would set things up in my garage that evening. No-one would suspect that I had the stuff.
That evening I went to the garage and went in, turning on the light as I did so. Then I snuck out the side door and vanished around the side and waited. Anyone watching would assume I was still in the garage. I was prepared to wait for a reasonable length of time. If Michelle didn't come snooping, well and good. I'd give the plan up and just say some nasty things to her about her snooping.
She came all right. The phone had been too much to resist and now she wanted to know what was going on in the garage. The only window to the garage was at the back and that's where she came, sneaking up to it and peeping inside.
While she was peeping inside trying to see what was going on I moved up behind her. My hand closed over the back of her neck and she gave a small scream.
"Seeing you're so interested in my garage why don't I show you what I've been building?"
I didn't give her the option of refusing. I just marched her up to the side door and ushered her in.
"What do you think?" I asked, waving my hand around the garage generally. "It's a good one, isn't it? I built it especially for this moment."
"What?" She sounded confused. "Built what? It's just a garage with a car in it. Somehow I don't think you built the car and the garage has been here for years."
"You're not letting your imagination run wild," I told her. "It's a snoop trap, and I've caught a real live snoop."
"Oh, ha, ha, ha. Very funny."
"Do I look like I'm laughing?" I asked, a big smile on my face. I guess the answer would be yes but she didn't have the nerve to say so.
"The real question now is what do I do with the snoop? I suppose I can call the cops and hand over a trespasser. It would make for a juicy bit of gossip, even if they declined to file charges."
"You wouldn't dare," she said, looking as though she was afraid that I would.
"Oh, I'd dare, I'd dare," I said happily. "It would be fun. Alternatively I could march you back home and ask your husband to keep you under lock and key. That would make for a choice bit of gossip, wouldn't it? You can imagine the reasons people would give for your having been at my place."
She was now aiming little daggers at me with her eyes. Much to her chagrin I didn't collapse, screaming in pain.
