when did you start hating me?

Was it when I called you a coward? I atop my steed and cantering off to battle. I asked you along and you declined. After all the battles we've fought and won together; you said to me, I can't follow you this time friend. I spat at the dust and called you a coward. It's because you are a coward. I didn't invite you along because I need you. How many times have I saved you in a fight and you pull this shit. I invited you along so you could say you were there as we kicked some ass. I wouldn't tell anyone you soiled yourself while it was I kicking the ass. I wouldn't deny you that. I know that despite being weak and feeble of mind and purpose you have pride. I would never have harmed your pride if you weren't so craven and yellow.

Perhaps it was the time when I laughed at your wife. And I know that you married her for the convenience of her money and easy attitude toward your personal physicality. Who could blame her? Far from comely, you lady's money, though extraordinary in its glint, would be insufficient to pique many a suitors' interests in light of her more noticeable attributes. Was it I who placed the long fiber of kale between her front teeth just previous to her holding forth on the state of the world, the balance of the neighborhood and the increasing chalkiness of my property bounds? It was not. And any man or child or manchild would have laughed the same as I. That you did not shows to me that you are pussy-whipped. I dare not imagine how.

Did I sense that this distaste for my person began when, after the ridiculous passage of the dog-curbing covenant, I withheld my Home Owners Association dues? I take care of my bitches, I don't need y'all to tell me how.

It was the gazebo fire. Really, how petty. I warned y'all that the thing was a danger to the neighborhood. But it's historic, you said. But it's not our place, you said. It's not on our property, per se, and besides, we're working on a plan to shore it up and restore it, you said. It's a goddam fire hazard, I said, but nobody listened. So I demonstrated that indeed it was a fire hazard. A controlled burn at the worst and y'all acted like I was burning your granny's britches on a flagpole.

And did you need to invest in the yard signs? The ones that expressed your desire that I leave the neighborhood. The petition? Who sends their children door-to-door with a petition? And asking me to leave? Do you know where you'd be without me in this neighborhood? Do you remember, not too long ago, when people didn't want to live here? When you were scared of everything and squabbling over whose mud patch was whose? When I moved to town this was a scary place. Genuine frightmare-type scary with the boarded up windows and the broken down cars and the landlords blaming each other for the sewage in the streets. I dug you trenches and laid pipes, and yes I made a dollar or two in the process but your faucet works.

And now this is how you thank me. Burning a doll, which really does not look like me in the slightest, impaled on the ends of your pitchforks. And the torches? Who does the villagers-with-pitchforks-and-torches revue anymore?