Writers in the Building

Samantha was poised to attack. The words of her sister Evelyn echoed in her ears, "Why should you be the disturbed one always? Let you be the disturbance."

The Sun had settled after a day's burning. So was the city. Samantha was waiting for her new next-door neighbour to settle down. After a lot of heaving and dragging and pulling and pushing, he settled his belongings into his house. After a lot of drilling and hammering and screwing and hauling, he settled his belongings inside the house.

She overheard all these sounds and oversaw over to his house, hiding behind her window and its curtains. She was waiting for him to settle down on his bed, and she longed for the white light reflecting from his window to black off. Her legs turned numb from her motionless stationing and drops of sweat oozed out on her forehead from relentless overthinking. At once, the next-door window, reflecting the white light, blacked out, pushing Samantha to jump into action. From her tap, a bursting music blared out from her wireless speaker, placed on her window sill. Its noise splitted her ears, yet she continued, justified by her valid motive.

The blacked out window, next-door, was suddenly lit. And she could sense him moving inside, might be turning and twisting on his bed, unable to catch a sleep. Her lips smirked and her eyes smized in evilish joy, as she recalled her sister Evelyn's words.

The following evening, Samantha retracted back to her house after college. Fragmenting her time into four parts, she spend the first part by pushing the pen to complete her assignments, the latter part by playing with markers and rulers to finish her academic projects, the next part by reading pages of notes to study her subjects and the last part by clicking on her laptop to pursue her daily word limit for her novel. The fully recharged wireless speaker smiled at her. She waved back an energetic smile.

The clock ticked eleven at night, and her four fragments of time ended by then. Like the previous night, she bursted out a blaring music, aching her ears again. Through the parting of her curtains, she watched his house from her window. But unlike the previous day, the next-door neighbour threw his door open. Samantha's heart skipped a beat. She nervously recalled her sister's Plan B, if the neighbour opted to react.

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.

Taking a deep breath, Samantha turned her door open. The cold night wind sneaked into her door, and on its swift sneaking, it unknowingly tussled her long hair. The next-door guy's clenched jaw loosened a bit, his furrowed brows parted away, his bulging eyes settled back into its sockets and his reddened skin melted back to its origin. Samantha knew that he was smitten by her and also the winds were against her. Holding back her charms and masking a devilish face she maintained an intense eye-contact with him.

"Could please reduce the volume?" requested the guy next-door.

"No."

"It's disturbing to me," his voice roughened. "And I can't sleep because of it."

"Better change the house," she smirked and shut the door immediately.

Puffing and blowing out quick short breaths of relief. She realised that she was the worst at acting evil. The justice on the other side guilt-tripped her. But she justified herself by recalling her earlier experiences and her sister Evelyn's words. By extending her fingers towards the speaker, she reduced its volume. It was enough to scare her neighbour for the night.

Samantha's scare followed every night as clockwork. In response, the next-door guy requested her every night. Slowly, his requests turned to instructions, then to warnings and then to shoutings. To all his requests, instructions, warnings and shoutings, she calmly swished her head sideways, in stubborn negation. One noonday, someone knocked on the guy's door. A couple of knockings could not make the door open, as he was dead asleep inside. The midnight scares of Samantha had caused the guy to consume his daytime catching up with his lost sleep. Hence, he had taken a day off from his college to compensate for his sleep. The knockings turned to bangings and it shook his sleep. Enraged, he arose from his bed and dashed to the banging door.

Throwing the door open he shouted, "Who the hell are you? What do you want?"

Startled, the knocker replied, "I am Aftab-"

"-So what?"

"I stayed here before you."

"But now I'm the resident of this house," he, the resident-guy, shouted.

"But my stuff is still here-"

"-you should've taken it then, not now," the resident-guy began to shut the door.

"It was rented. If not returned the boss will come here to take it," Aftab pleaded, tossing a lot of words within seconds.

Pausing for a moment, the resident-guy said, "Take it and leave soon."

Aftab unscrewed the pieces of his portable wardrobe, shoe-rack and teapoy, one by one. The space-grabbing wardrobe, shoe-rack and teapoy became mere rods of steel when he dismantled it.

"What is your name?" Aftab tried to be friendly.

"Just grab your things and get lost."

After a while, the resident guy asked, "Who's that girl next-door?"

"Oh, she's Samantha."

"Samantha," the resident-guy said to himself, being curious to know the devil's name.

"How did you tolerate that bitch?" the resident-guy demanded.

"Oh, you should ask that to her," Aftab answered. "We were real nuisances to her."

"What?"

"Yes, we did our usual boy stuff like partying, playing, dancing, cussing, shouting and all. Those disturbed her."

"Did she disturb you guys?"

"She couldn't. She lacks the ampere to do so."

"Not even once?"

"How could she? She's a wannabe writer." Aftab added, "She needs peace of mind to read books and a silent atmosphere to finish her novel."

"She's a writer? A novelist? How do you know that?"

"She had told us when we were partying one night. She begged us to stop making noise."

"Did you stop?"

Aftab smirked and shook his head.

The resident-guy nodded in acknowledgement. He comprehended the reason why Samantha plays loud music all night. It was a silly counter-strategy to scare him and to show that she was the predator and he was the victim.

Aftab stood up, and poured the steel rods into a plastic cover. He rolled the cover and tied it with a rope. The resident-guy was immersed in his thoughts and composed new plans. When Aftab was about to leave, the resident-guy stopped him.

"Samson," the resident-guy introduced himself, extending a hand.

"Aftab," he held Samson's hand.

"Thank you Aftab."

"No, I should thank you."

"This is another case, Aftab."

Samson shaked Aftab's hand.

After Aftab left, Samson pondered on the information Aftab had just dumped before him. A plan was soon devised to counter her measures. Since he knew her motive for her attack, it seemed easy for him to choose the modus operandi for his counter-attack. Having enough time till eleven at night, he jumped onto his mattress and shut his eyes. The remaining sleep possessed him like a spirit and lulled him to sleep like a baby, that even a quake on earth could not shake his slumber.