The Neighbors

The Neighbors

Her new apartment was perfect. The hardwood floors were flawless. The thick white trim contrasted well with the neutral grey walls that would match any available color palette of Ikea furniture. The location was good. Not great, of course, because great was stupid expensive, but good nonetheless. Better than most of her friends had at any rate, and that’s what really mattered. “I live inside the loop,” she would tell them. “It’s expensive, but so worth it.” “I wasn’t born for a long commute.” “You can’t put a price on your time.”

Her life was as close to complete as she could imagine. After several long years of racking up debt as a medical student, she was finally making money. She had a trustworthy paycheck, an enviable apartment, and a car that would be paid off in a mere twenty more months. She had joined a recreational volleyball league, and was taking a Thai cooking class. All of the hard work was finally paying off. This was the life she had sacrificed so much to obtain. The stars had finally aligned, and she was fulfilled.

The trouble started about six months into her professional career. It snuck up on her before she even had a chance to realize there might be something wrong. Toward the end of the summer, she woke up one morning with an odd feeling in the back of her head. It was almost as if someone were pushing very lightly on the back of her brain. There was no pain, though, so she didn’t think much about it.

The day started very normally. One moment she was walking through the hospital, lecturing students about the importance of taking a thorough medical history. The next second, everything was dark, and someone was very annoyingly interrupting what felt like a perfectly good nap. She opened her eyes slowly and saw a halo of people looking down at her with concern.

Blood pressure, heart rate, reflexes, and everything else that could be easily observed were normal. The tests all came back clean. The first night she searched internet for hours trying to self-diagnose. The next night, she looked with less focus. The next day, she had decided to chalk it all up to too much work and not enough REM sleep. What started off as worry faded as the business of daily life took center stage, and it became easier to focus on more pressing things.

One night a few weeks later, she finished eating dinner, sat down on the couch, and opened her laptop. “Working doctor’s hours doesn’t leave much time for meeting people,” she had told her friends. “I’d rather shop for a man online.” She opened a dating site and began browsing her unread messages. As she scrolled through the mostly substanceless conversations, the silence of the apartment was suddenly interrupted by the sound of heavy footfalls from the apartment above. She rolled her eyes.

Over the last few weeks someone in the apartment above hers had started clomping around as if they were trying to smash something with every step. “Maybe they have roaches,” she thought. She had never met any of her neighbors. The apartments were generally quiet, and people didn’t make eye contact when they passed in the hallways. Much easier to pretend to be absorbed in a phone or preoccupied with your keychain than to make conversation.

That night the person upstairs seemed to be pacing back and forth across the living room, and it was distracting. She turned on the tv for background noise and went back to her messages. “If only I could filter out the losers,” she thought. Surely most of the guys messaging her knew she was out of their league, right? She had everything right now and wanted someone who also had it together. The footsteps upstairs continued their measured pace. She turned up her music, closed the messages, and started browsing profiles.

Five am. The alarm on her phone was chirping, and she was completely disoriented. She was still sitting straight up on the couch, but her laptop was closed on the table in front of her, and she felt like she hadn’t slept at all. Shaking her head, she tried to remember what had happened the night before. Unless she was drinking wine and watching a movie, she never fell asleep on the couch. She didn’t even remember feeling tired, and she never went to bed without taking a shower on a work night. What happened?

After a quick shower, she was dressed and on the road. With minutes to spare, she was firmly in the swing of things at the hospital, coffee in hand. Occasionally throughout the day she would think back on the previous evening and wonder what had happened. When she had a few spare minutes, she would browse medical websites and online articles regarding her symptoms, but there were more pressing things going on, so she never dwelled on it for very long. That night she went to bed early and fell asleep immediately. By the next day, it had passed out of her mind entirely.

The next week was rough. It was fall, and a particularly mean strain of the flu was ripping through town. The hospital was overwhelmed with patients, and doctors were falling ill as quickly as everyone else. She was working extra hours, and the days began to blur together. After the third long day in a row, she couldn’t even begin to entertain the idea of cooking, so she picked up fast food on the way home and then ate on the couch. She looked at the computer, but couldn’t muster the motivation to open it.

Apparently the upstairs neighbors had purchased a dog, because it sounded like something with four paws and claws was running back and forth across the hardwood. Thunk. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. Thunk. Click. Click. Click. Click. Click. “Are you seriously playing fetch inside right now?” she muttered. “Have some common courtesy.” She turned on the tv to drown out the noise but couldn’t get into anything available to stream. Eventually she showered and went to bed where she tossed and turned all night despite being completely and totally exhausted. She kept rolling over and checking her phone for articles about things like “chronic exhaustion” and “short term memory loss”.

The next morning the alarm chirped, and she wanted to smash it to pieces. Pulling herself out of bed, she stumbled into the shower and wished that she could come up with an excuse not to go into work. They were too short handed, though, and she knew it. She was on edge for her shift and for the extra hours she had to work after. No one seemed to notice, though. The long hours were taking their toll, and everyone else was on edge too.

By the middle of the next week things had calmed down significantly. Most of the other doctors were back, and the influx of patients had drastically slowed. “Maybe I won’t skip volleyball this week,” she thought at one point. She did skip, but not by choice. On Thursday (volleyball day), she woke up feeling strange. It was as if a hand had taken a very soft grip on her heart. It was still beating normally, but something felt off. As any good doctor would do, she decided to get it checked out. X-Rays. An EKG. The full barrage. Initial results showed nothing out of the ordinary.

It had been a long day at work, and she had stayed late for the tests. By the time she got home the sun was down, and she was exhausted and in a bad mood. Something in her chest still felt weird, but armed with the knowledge of normal medical scans, she was not overly worried about it. She was, however, wildly annoyed by the sounds coming from her upstairs neighbors. This time, it sounded like someone was bouncing a basketball on the floor.

She paced across the living room and composed a strongly worded email to the property manager in her mind. “I don’t pay two thirds of my paycheck toward rent to put up with this.” “There’s a certain level of courtesy that can be expected when people live in a place this densely populated.” “The lease agreement states EXPLICITLY that quiet hours are enforced from 9pm to 6am on weekdays. If I’m holding up my end of the agreement, then please hold up yours by enforcing your rules.” “I am dealing with a potentially serious medical condition, and the noise pollution is not creating an environment conducive to recovery.” Eventually she sat down, opened her computer and started typing.

Everything was dark, but she could hear water running, and her legs were freezing. Her back, neck, and shoulders were sore, and she was propped against something hard and cold. It took her several minutes to realize that she was in the bathtub. She was fully dressed, and water was running slowly from the faucet onto her feet. The drain was open, so the water level hadn’t started to rise, but her pants were soaked, and she was shivering. The lights in the bathroom were off (except for the glow from a phone charger plugged into the wall), and the apartment was silent.

She crawled out of the tub slowly. “Did someone break into the apartment?” she thought. “Was I attacked?” Looking around, there didn’t appear to be any blood. It didn’t feel like she was injured anywhere. She wrapped her wet legs in a towel and apprehensively approached the door. She didn’t remember anything about how she had ended up in the bathtub, but every nerve in her body was on fire. Was someone in the apartment?

Peeking through the crack, she slowly opened the door. No one was in the bedroom. Everything was in its place. She crept silently to the door to the rest of the apartment and listened. Suddenly the alarm on her phone began chirping from the bathroom. It was 5 am. She rushed back into the bathroom and silenced the phone, which was plugged into the charger, and then crouched and held her breath. Still no sound from the rest of the apartment. It felt like hours went by as she crouched there silently.

“Plugging the phone in seems like something I would do,” she thought. “Did I fall into the tub? Did I hit my head?” She felt for a bump but found none. Eventually she worked up the courage to look in the living room. Everything was exactly where it should be. She went to the front door and saw that both locks were firmly in place. Her heart was still beating fast, but her brain was already rationalizing. She wandered distractedly to the couch and opened her computer. The strongly worded email she had been typing was still up on the screen. Try as she might, she couldn’t remember anything about what happened between when she had started typing and when she woke up.

“Maybe I started the water to let it get warm, reached down to feel the temperature, and then passed out and fell in,” she thought. That seemed like a good explanation. It was frightening but less so than any alternative she could imagine. “I’ve been working a lot lately. It has to be chronic exhaustion.” That made sense. She immediately started searching the internet for articles about “chronic exhaustion”, but that didn’t last long.

Suddenly a cacophony of sound roared to life in the apartment above her. The basketball was bouncing. The heavy feet were pacing. The claws on the hardwood sound raced back and forth. It felt like the whole apartment was shaking. She jumped to her feet, dropping the laptop to the floor. It was 5:15 am. This was the last straw.

She stood on the couch and yelled. “STOP! JUST STOP! I DON’T KNOW WHY YOU IDIOTS THINK THIS IS OKAY.” Then she screamed a long, piercing scream. Everything stopped.

* * *

That night she came home from work to find an envelope tucked between her door and door jamb. It had the logo of the apartment complex on the outside and contained a single page on the complex’s stationary.

Hello Resident!

Just wanted to let you know that a new member of our community will be moving into the apartment above you during the day tomorrow (11/1). During this time, there may be an unusual amount of noise between 10am and 3pm as a moving company will be unloading and arranging furniture. They have been notified that our quiet hours are from 9 pm to 6 am on weekdays and have assured us that they will not be active during that time.

We hope that you will help us welcome the new residents. This apartment has been empty for several months, so we’re excited to see our community grow!

Sincerely,

Sara Brown

Community Manager