Tuesday, February 4, 2014

TALES FROM THE HELL HOUSE #4



       One night we were sitting in Klutch's room, and as usual, drinking beer and watching T.V.
   I guess the television was a little too loud, because our upstairs neighbor started pounding on the floor. We turned the volume down a bit and continued watching.
    Again came the pounding, so the volume went down another couple clicks.
We thought it was pretty quiet, but it seems our neighbor didn't because again she pounded on the floor.
"What the hell?" Klutch asked, looking up towards the ceiling as a light rain of plaster dust filtered down.
Dave shook his head, "just turn it down a little more"
We turned the volume down to a level so low that we were literally all huddled inches from the T.V. just to hear it.
     Then the pounding started again, and then turned into stomping, Then Jumping up and down.
Then came the scream. It was like an air raid siren. it started as a low howl, and grew in pitch and volume, culminating in stomps that accented the words "SHUT-UP, SHUT-UP, SHUT-UP.....SHUT- THE -FUCK- UP!" It was so violent that the light fixture in the ceiling came loose and fell to the floor behind us, shattering on impact and spraying the room with glass shards.
    The crash of the light fixture was followed moments later by a muffled scream from upstairs,
accompanied by frantic pounding foot steps that went in a sort of marching run from room to room, while she continued screaming.
"fuck" Dave muttered. we looked at each other silently. The next move was unclear.
     We were cleaning up the broken glass when there was a pounding on the back door.
    We answered it, and found our up-stairs neighbor standing there in tears, pulling her hair, babbling about no sleep and too much noise and no one understanding about how hard she tried to be friends but how she had to work tomorrow…
her eyes were wide and slightly crossed, a mix of anger, confusion, crazy...
I smirked, “you want to hit me, don't you?”
It was a taunt, not an offer, but she took it.
she stept into an oddly theatrical martial arts pose,  and swiftly punched me in the stomach.
I stumbled backwards and collapsed on the kitchen floor holding my gut.
     All of the stress drained from her face, and was replaced by an odd serene look and a slight smile.
“Thanks” she said, heading back up the stairs to her flat.
Klutch and Dave nodded and smiled nervously as she went back upstairs, but after shutting the door  we huddled for a quick house meeting. It was evident that she had gone insane, but the question was should we call someone? a hospital? the cops?
    We finally decided it would be best to just torture her in our own special way.
  So we gave her a few minutes, then crept up the stairs with some fireworks, squirt guns and water balloons.
    A battle ensued, and by the end of it we were all soaked, sitting in her destroyed kitchen singing songs and taking turns bare knuckle boxing her refrigerator door.
    Aside from the broken light, our swollen knuckles, and taking a punch to the gut, it was a pretty good night.
The next evening she showed up at our back door again, this time looking very sheepish and holding a six-pack of beer. Her knuckles were wrapped in a bandage.
     "So…?" Dave started to ask.
      She cut us off and apologized, then went on to explain that the night before she had been on some kind of heavy duty mind and reality altering drugs, and she remembered almost nothing about it.
But she said it looked like she had gotten a little crazy in her apartment, and was sorry if she made too much noise. 
“I didn’t… do anything… did I?”   She was holding the beer like an offering, her eyes pleading for us to say no.
 “Nope” I said, “I mean nothing really. You did come and asked us to keep it down, 'cause you had to work or something, but…”
She looked relived. "thanks," she said.
I smiled and took the beer.
"Anytime"