The other night (morning?) I got woken up at about six am by a screaming woman outside my bedroom window. She was fucking wailing. It scared the shit out of me. Enough so for me to get out of bed and peek out my window to see what the hell was going on out there.

"Don't fucking touch me!" "Get off of me!" she screamed and cried. I saw her run out from behind my neighbour's fence and into my view. She was wearing little tiny shorts and a little tiny top, sobbing, crying and screaming. After screaming and protesting for a brief while, she turned, hesitated, and went back. She stumbled back to where she had come from, sobbing and saying something about needing her clothes back. That was the last I heard.

I found myself overcome with conflicting emotions. I spent the whole day thinking about her. While this had been going on, I wondered if I should call the cops, or go out and try to help her. Offer her my couch, maybe. I didn't do either, and felt incredibly guilty about it. What happened? All sorts of hypothetical situations crossed my mind. Maybe she'd been up all night doing drugs with this dude and he pulled something. Maybe she was sleeping on the couch or the spare bed and he pulled something. Maybe they were getting fucked up together and she just freaked out. In east van, it's hard not to assume that drugs played some role in this domestic dispute, especially considering the time of the freak out.

But more importantly, it brought back a series of disturbing memories of my own. In times where i've had to make sudden, abbrupt exits (escapes), if I had been screaming in the back alley, would anyone have helped me? Doubtful.

Whatever the moral of the story, I have become ever more wary of my neighbours.