It was at that exact moment I realized a locked gate and a steel-reinforced fence were insufficient against a person who had completely detached from reality. The liability was too high. The trespass was too brazen.
I walked to the pool equipment pad. I bypassed the standard filtration settings, connected the discharge hose to the primary cleanout drain, and turned the heavy brass valve.
Over the next forty-eight hours, I drained the pool completely dry.
Three days later, I was sitting in my home office when a police cruiser pulled into my driveway. I walked out to my backyard to find two uniformed officers standing near the edge of my drained, empty concrete pool.
Standing next to them was Sandra Fielding.
What I am describing now is the complete departure from the relationship between believing something and it being true. Sandra pointed at me and stated, without apparent irony or hesitation, that the pool was hers. She claimed that I, the neighbor, had maliciously drained it to spite her children and destroyed her property.
That is a person who has confused what they want with what exists, and who has made that confusion formal by bringing law enforcement to witness it.