He paused. Yes, there it was again. He had just gotten down to work at the best possible time, slightly past midnight, when his ambition ran the highest, and his nerves were frayed enough as it was from the aromatic blend of caffeine that rushed through his veins. Two little capsules in his machine and he was off to the races, filling out the Excel spreadsheet with relative ease.
He was no stranger to this- how many mornings had he stayed up until 4, 5 A.M. to enter a couple more tabs, transfer all the pertinent data over? How long had he stared into the vacuous abyss of the screen and it had refused to yield anything of legitimate value?
He couldn’t say, really.
What he did know for sure was that his downstairs neighbor, in the apartment directly beneath him, was the absolute worst. For the past two weeks- perhaps longer- his neighbor had caused a serious disturbance which interrupted his flow and his ability to process these crucial documents. If it continued, he’d have to notify the landlord, and when that happened, the poor bastard would probably be evicted no matter what.
He hesitated to tell the building’s owner for a few reasons- for one, the landlord was unpleasant in his own right. He didn’t like something about his attitude, and he hoped to rent this apartment for maybe a year until his lease expired, and then get the Hell out. Until then, he hoped to serve as a model tenant, displaying a good example. Perhaps his enigmatic neighbor would be forced to leave simply due to the contrast between them. He couldn’t say for sure, he’d never met the guy.
But then, that was the troubling thing. He didn’t know why his neighbor did what he did.
Each night- no, that wasn’t right- nearly every night, with a few notable exceptions- the pounding would start. It would rear its ugly head around 10 P.M., right when he was getting himself into the right headspace and adopting a productive mindset. This was the worst possible time to be disturbed, but all the same, his feet were rattled by the impact on the floorboards under him. It would be erratic and it would be insufferable.
Ten, twenty dull thuds shaking the carpet beneath him, right as he activated his laptop to catch up on emails. Never predictable, always with little spaces, like morse code but without a point. Just noise. Just horrible, needless interference, and his mental cloud was scattered to the winds, and once he even thought one of his paintings- which he bought on Santa Fe for around five hundred- was going to be knocked to the floor as a result of the vibrations, which rang through the dimly lit living room he occupied most nights.
Then, around eleven, the noise repeated. By this point, he was maybe fixing himself a snack in the kitchenette, a makeshift sandwich or a carton of soy milk he didn’t even particularly like- but even from there, he could make out the tremors. And usually, at this second occurrence, a male voice would scream, right after the dozen or so knocks:
“Stop!”
It was extremely muffled and distorted by the carpet, but discernible all the same. It was all the voice would ever say, but it was enough to form a decent picture of this cohabitant- maybe around forty, probably working class, as he was. Likely also trying to get some sleep or perform some important work or otherwise prepare for the day ahead. The voice was one of exasperation, also of quiet desperation. He knew this state well; it was exactly what the pounding elicited in him, although in his case he was patient and tolerant enough not to knock back.
He would just resolve to sit quietly, carry the plate over, rest it on his knee, and wait for the loud banging to stop. And sure enough, it did- and then, an hour later, and each hour after that, sometimes well until 3 A.M., it would resume, in sporadic yet evenly spaced bursts.
It was horrible, because he felt bad for his neighbor- he could envision the gritted teeth, the hair pulling, the calloused fists and the dry vocal cords. He could feel, every time the stray word made its way up to his ears, the outright pain his fellow occupant must have been experiencing. The needless suffering of the hectic modern world.
And the strangest part of all this was- it was the kind of outburst he would expect if he were a rock star, blasting away on a Gibson well beyond any reasonable hour, creating a ridiculous public disturbance that would prevent the entire neighborhood from catching any sleep. If he were, say, to turn the flatscreen TV up to 150 and leave it there while it played nothing but the home shopping network on a loop.
But he was the only occupant of the apartment above the apartment below, and the pounding was definitely on the floor- his neighbor’s ceiling- and he did nothing any night except type quietly on his laptop, keeping entirely to himself. Nobody should have even been aware that he was up- they would have no way of knowing.
He paused on the stairs. They led out into the back yard, a solitary porch light casting shadows on the rafters beneath. The grill he’d bought at the hardware store sat unused on the edge near the railing, and it was forty-feet or so to the lawn. Above, a few dozen stars twinkled impotently, their full brilliance held back by urban light pollution. To the west, the last vestiges of twilight had departed with the final shades of orange over the Rockies.
“Ah, fuck it,” he muttered as he detected the familiar sound emanating from behind him.
It was only 9 P.M.- a little early for the pounding to start up- but all the same he resolved to stay out on the patio for as long as possible. He could put some of the work off now, he’d entered all the important fields the previous night and besides that he was going to ask for a three-day weekend as soon as possible so he could walk down to the park and watch the geese. That seemed to take him away from his status here on some dead-end perch.
“Stop!” came the familiar expletive, and this time he could make it out through the floor and vaguely somewhere behind the window beneath the staircase. That window, whenever he passed it, was dark. His apartment, he liked to think, was kept with a cheery demeanor. An American flag jutting off the rails, a bulb with the right ambiance, a doormat that he could wipe his shoes on following an afternoon spent trekking through mud. His counterpart’s porch was not maintained in such a fashion, it did not give off the immaculate attitude he hoped to convey- both to the landlord and to anyone who would rent the property after him.
This is a nice building. Normal people live here. People you can trust.
He took out a cigarette. He had been trying to quit for years but something like this always came up, some minor annoyance that got him back on the wagon. So it was, just a smoke or two each night to dull the senses. Because he was closing in on accounts and he was finalizing very crucial deals, and his horrible neighbor didn’t factor into that equation. His adversary couldn’t be tabulated or cross-indexed, could never fit in row D or column 7.
He’d considered whether maybe his neighbor suffered from paranoid delusions, was schizotypal, but he knew very little about the subject and wasn’t one to presume. Still, he posited, one would need to have something going on to hear some kind of noise where there was none, and to then respond with actual noise. To view oneself as persecuted when one was in fact the persecutor. That required a certain conviction, a special degree of gall.
He sighed and discarded the spent cigarette over the rails.
-------------------------------------------------
He thought for just an instant that he had caught a glimpse of his downstairs torturer. The one who kept him up late, the one who made noise and then pretended that he had been making noise. Every night now, he had to stuff the pillow around his ears to prevent the goddamn racket, the heavy morse code of illiterate thumps. And sure enough, if he was correct, the neighbor was every bit the kind of irascible clod he had presumed.
Around seven he had been heading out to the office- he was usually only able to catch around 5 hours now, and his boss was quickly catching on. There were dark circles under his eyes, he mumbled when he gave a presentation, and though he tried to make his presentations perfect there was always some minor error in row 9 or cross-column W.
His boss would lean forward- he didn’t know the boss’s name, even after 7 months employed it always slipped his mind, as he was a nondescript sort of investor with a doughy face and grey flannel suit. He would remove his glasses, put them in his pocket, and ask plainly:
“Why is that $700 figure where the $850 figure should be?”
And he would stumble, perplexed, never explaining about the downstairs tenant and the ongoing, terrible struggle, the degree of vitriol he felt towards the neighbor. How if he could, if it meant he could earn more for the company, he would go down even then, go home on the lunch break, and wrap his meaty fingers around the annoying little freak’s neck and squeeze the life out of him until there was no more.
He didn’t say this, of course, and the boss remained motionless for some kind of explanation, but none ever came.
“I think I’m going to try theanine supplements,” he had said. Then, one week later: “Theanine doesn’t seem to work for me. I’m going in tomorrow for some melatonin. Some kind of sleep disorder, I’m sure. But my doctor will take care of it.”
“Alright,” said the boss. “Just remember- our company healthcare is going to that. So don’t waste it. I will review all the charges.”
Yes, he had motioned with his hands to dismiss the accusations of dishonesty. Yes, he would go and get checked up, even if he knew all too well that the reason he couldn’t sleep was because his dear friend downstairs seemed to have a kind of penchant for banging two rocks together in the dead REM time, tapping and slamming and jamming his body against the ceiling like a possessed animal. Maybe it was time he stopped consulting doctors and started consulting Father Karras, if the company plan would cover it.
Could you help an old altar boy?
He had gone all in for some noise-cancelling headphones, though. Sure his salary would take care of that. These were top-of-the-line, spring-controlled things, with pads and sponges and all the rest. They clamped onto his ears like clenched fists, they cost well over three hundred and at first he planned to use them while sleeping. However, being a side sleeper, they had been uncomfortable and left rashes on his earlobes- so in the end he had opted for a box of $10 earplugs, soft little spongy peanuts with handles on the end for easy removal.
But neither had worked. It wasn’t just a sound- it was a vibration, a quake which shook the posts of his bed and the mattress, and he felt it sink into his flesh and thereafter into his bones. He grit his teeth and pulled his pillow over his face.
And then, one morning after such an episode, he had seen who he thought to be his neighbor exiting from the general vicinity of the downstairs apartment and meandering towards the park.
It was early morning and he had to forfeit his usual breakfast ritual, and he had been pressed for time, but all the same he had caught himself above that plateau of artificial lime-green turf. It was dawn and the sun had not yet peaked over the roof of the complex, and on top of that he was thirty feet away- but the man looked as he had expected. Squat, brutish, with a thick head of wiry hair. Aside from a pair of rectangular spectacles perched upon his bulbous nose, the wretched thing could have passed for a Neanderthal.
And there it went, staggering past the pagoda in the complex’s center to hop in its Honda Civic, off towards some vital employment in the city. Of course that was why the neighbor could not simply sleep during the day while he was off at his own job. Of course the neighbor would never know peace because the neighbor was caught in the same cyclical pattern he was, where time and labor were dictated and demanded by various forces beyond their control.
He nodded his head in satisfaction. So this was his tormentor, the source of all his problems.
He had subsequently arisen early for the next few days just to stew on the patio and observe the bastard from a distance. He would never in a million years confront the monster directly, he was averse to conflict and the many sleepless nights had rendered him ineffectual. A master of sophistry he was not, he stuttered and mumbled his way through presentations and was, he assumed, very close to being fired. He would live on the streets in good time. But at least he would know the face and build of his enemy.
If he was to live on the streets, he determined, he would kill the adversary first. Upon an eviction notice being served to his door, he would head downstairs with a chef’s knife, and, with relative ease, dispatch of the problem such that whoever moved into the upstairs apartment after him would not have to endure the same. Then he would vanish into the night, crossing state lines and lying low for a decade or more, subsisting on the refuse of the world. And he could sleep.
But then, on Friday, something strange happened. He arrived home fifteen minutes early- because, for whatever reason, someone had agreed to fill in for him at closing time- and as he himself traipsed over the artificial park in the golden hours of hazy twilight, the animal himself parked nearby and, with relative efficiency, walked behind his building and onto the next one. The monster rounded a corner and ducked into the alley, and then he realized he had made a terrible mistake, a critical lapse in judgment.
The brute was not his downstairs neighbor. The brute lived in another nearby complex altogether. The thing was innocent.
He staggered home through the low-hanging mist perplexed, biting his fingernails at this great error. If he had been this mistaken- because, thinking over it now, every single time, of course the brute’s trajectory indicated that he was coming from behind the apartment rather than from directly out of it- how much of his perception was indeed reliable? How could he sleep?
There was only one answer. He would need to confront the problem head-on.
-------------------------------------------------
“Open up! Need to talk to you!” came the bark from outside, accompanied by five sharp raps. He stirred from the blankets.
It was, of course, his landlord. It was 8 P.M. and the pounding would start from below soon. It was no longer accompanied by words of any kind, just a repetitive ceaseless thump. By now it was every hour or half-hour in a consistent cycle. Three A.M., ten knocks. 3:30, fifteen. His companion was every bit as restless. And now the owner of the property had come. He unlocked the bolt, and his landlord’s eye peered through the chain.
“I’ve received a noise complaint,” the landlord said, raising a piece of paper. “Loud music. The tenant downstairs says you’ve been thudding away on drums or something. Like a repetitive machine, is how he’s described it.”
“Oh, has he now?” He grinned.
“Yes,” the landlord continued. “I’m going to serve you this warning, which you’ll need to read and sign. It says that, if I receive another complaint, you will be evicted, and there is also to be no contact between the downstairs tenant and you. No threats, no bickering. This whole thing has become a crisis and a headache for me. He keeps calling and he’s ready to move out. If I lose his rent, I’m sure there’s someone who would pay more for your own apartment as well.”
“I’m not singing anything,” he said, stone-faced. “I haven’t been making any noise. He’s the one who’s been making the noise. Go ask him about it. He keeps me up at night. I don’t type, I don’t stomp, I don’t play drums. I don’t do anything. I merely live here.”
“This isn’t a debate,” the landlord asserted. “You are not allowed to make noise after 10 P.M. It’s that simple.”
“Just a moment,” he said. “Let me get my pen, and I’ll sign it.”
The landlord waited for two minutes in the hallway holding the complaint, as the moon rose through the window to the side of the hallway, illuminating the railing of the staircase, and the breeze lilted pleasantly through the cottonwood trees.
Then the door jerked open, followed promptly by a 7 inch steel blade which tore through the landlord’s gut. The landlord emitted a sharp, blistering cry, but it was weak and could not be heard by any of the tenants above or below, because as soon as the landlord’s mouth opened, he clamped a hand over it to contain the sound and forced himself over the proprietor. The blade twisted, creating a vibrant fountain of blood which poured over his fingers. He hit some sort of cartilage and then finally the chef’s knife was making contact with the carpet beneath the landowner’s struggling body.
“If this isn’t a debate,” he said, “Then this is merely an execution. If we are not afforded the opportunity to air our grievances out in a civilized and sane manner, then this is inevitable.” Red bubbles began forming on the landlord’s lips, as if he had some retort prepared, but the lungs were quickly collapsing and the throat was giving way.
“You are a barbarian,” he said, picking up the complaint which was now dotted with crimson. “You believe pieces of paper afford you the right to own land? To build houses on it? To stretch your utilities like the burrows of a cockroach across the world? Hubris is what it is. Plain and simple. You think yourself a God. It’s your kind who were afforded advantages and rights by the Constitution, you think if we don’t own land we’re not people, is that it?”
“This is God,” and he pointed at the glistening steel. “This is the will to power. I could, if I wanted, own land. I could spend my time enforcing my will upon those who I perceive as weaker than me. I suppose I have done that, now. For the first time, I have asserted my will and in so doing have become God. At least as much as you think yourself to be. But you’re not, anymore. After all, I’m not the one on the floor.”
The landlord whimpered and then his head turned to the side.
“How much will your pithy grant be worth when the great fires begin, when the land runs to ruin and people like myself survive in the blown-out shells of buildings such as this, on scraps and ashes? Then can you consult a realtor or assess damage? Can you flip a house or develop a lot when the world is in tatters? How can you enforce your will over a world that defies it? How can you own land when the land itself will outlive you?”
But the landlord said nothing, having departed the mortal plane.
He rose to stand, wiped the knife on the bottom of his shirt, and did not bother to clean anything up further. His footsteps vanished down the staircase, around the dagger shadows of nightfall, and then there was only the body lilting in silence.
He arrived at the door. It was shabby and paint was peeling off the top. There was a large bronze medallion affixed to the center, he lifted it twice and let it fall. No response. He glanced over his shoulder for signs of activity. Just the silent apparitions conjured by his feverish mind, and one light on in the building across the alley- but nothing beyond that.
He tried the knob. No good. But he knew the adversary would be waiting inside, and had locked it in anticipation of his arrival. The adversary, after all, had no life when night fell. The adversary was bound by the rules and expectations and principles of the world, unlike him.
How to approach the locked door, he contemplated. How to defeat such an obstacle. Well, it was close to giving way already, in very poor condition. He took the knife out and tried jamming it through a slat. There was a small crack of dust opened but not much else, the knife wasn’t as dextrous as a hatchet might be. There was no light on within.
He took his foot and, with all the strength he could muster, buried his leg through the wood- displacing five slats and producing a sizable hole. Then he knelt down and reached up so as to undo the bolt. He could just make out its form- there. It had slid home.
And so the door opened, and he was left on the precipice off the dwelling of the adversary, the diseased grotto from which emanated the pounding- he thought he could make it out, but it was only his own heartbeat, and he steadied himself on the jamb. He wondered why it was that the adversary had not been awoken considering the intensity of his kick. The bastard must have been sleeping soundly now. Perhaps he had always been able to.
He had no flashlight, but one of the boarded-up windows to his left had come slightly ajar, and so a single shaft of dusty lunar energy made clear what a mess the place was. He had a difficult time to keep from gagging as he traversed it.
There were cockroaches climbing the walls in the cramped kitchenette over spilled cereal boxes and jugs of milk which had burst from being left out; eleven steps further in what could perhaps be considered a small den, a nest of mice had set themselves up in what had been a red leather couch and were busy gnawing the stuffing to shreds. And all over the floor were the traces of insanity- broken dishes, ripped phonebooks, snapped cords- things which must have been torn asunder in a blistering rage.
And then, in the tiny hallway beyond, holes in the wall, cracks in the plaster, gaping wounds where fists had been thrown, night after night after night. Some leading to drywall, others to foundational wood, others to pipes which rusted in the building’s foundation, and from which crawled colonies of termites. He nearly tripped on a lamp which had been scattered across the floor, but caught himself.
From one of the holes there erupted a burst of steam- evidently a pipe connected to the water heater had been ruptured and made visibility even more difficult.
He held the knife aloft now and gripped the hilt, unable to breathe in the filthy miasma. He stopped outside the bedroom, which if his orientation was correct would have been located directly beneath his own bedroom. Something was deeply wrong. The stench of foul decay emanated even from this distance.
Clutching the weapon to his chest, he finally rounded the corner and prepared to meet his adversary, raising the blade in blind fury- he envisioned his attacker clawing at him with year-long fingernails and a scratchy tuft of mane, leaping like a wounded hyena with a scavenger’s fury onto his shoulders and then pinning him to the ground in a death-hold.
Instead, no such thing happened.
He neared the bed and heard only the buzzing of a million flies, and then with one final horrible motion he yanked the putrid covers back and was left forever with the sight of a half-eaten corpse, the breeding home of a million pupae, the maggots delighting in their nursery of blood and adipose tissue, of scarred, necrotized flesh and exposed meat. There was a gaping hole on the thing’s anterior, which could no longer be termed a stomach. Instead, the flies careened from it, out of the bedsheets which had held them and up towards the fractured ceiling.
And then he lifted the thing’s head, and cried out in a tortured fervor that lasted forever, as the thing’s face was his own, down to the very facial structure and hair color, though forever marred by the cold air and the stale dust, and it grinned pleasantly up at him, its jaws locked in mortal rest, with knowing aptitude.