The upstairs neighbors.

The two college kids upstairs in the front house are something else. In the dust on their front door there's drawn this cartoon insect like a little spider with zig-zaggy stripes and 6 bent legs and a happy expression, and the word "CLIVE" written above it. And, another day when they were on the porch and I was picking up the mail, they asked about what exactly I studied, and I said religion, but I went into detail, and the one who I hadn't talked to too much asked if I had any ideas about rituals, since they were all talking about with their friends about how it might be fun to go out in the woods and do a ritual. So, I told them the story about this recent Rolling Stone article that I had read, about how this FBI agent had infiltrated a white supremacist group that tried to kill a goat and drink its blood, only they thought you could cleave the goat's head off with one knife stroke but you couldn't, and it was raining, and by the time they finally killed the goat and drank its blood it was clotting and it actually made one of the participants go and vomit. "So be careful," I was like, "It's all fun and games until one of you drinks clotted goat's blood and goes and throws up in the bushes." Then, the other undergraduate, the one who's spoken to me in a strange way about the behavior of the local squirrels, turned the conversation to ask me about some of the ancient heretical groups that I've been reading aobut, and whether it was true that for one of their rituals they drank cum. So, I explained that probably not, but sometimes with different groups there can be a recurring phenomenon like there's been with modern Satanism, where people have demonized opponents with weird charges, and sometimes a few people then actually went off and tried doing those very things. "It's very alpha," he was like, but not in response to the conversation, though, and seemingly only to the other undergrad, the one who I don't talk with, and it was like this little private comment to him, and that guy nodded at him in a very quick small way, but very approvingly, like it was something between the two of them where he had gone and said that in front of me. Another day, I was on the front porch reading since it was nice weather but mildly raining - the neighbors said it was okay - and that very same other undergrad came home, and said hello to me. "I don't know how you can read out here," he was like. "If it was me, I'd just end up staring at the rain."