To be so close to Hell is, I’m sure, a great advantage to me. I am edified. Not every night, my neighbor goes on a bender shouting so loudly I feel as though I had been invited into her living room. She goes around screaming and slamming doors.
I have to bite my tongue—there are many rude, sadly comical comments I could make, and though true, they are deleterious, sins from my Memento Mori, my meditation upon the last things, one of the four, that is HELL. I do not want to then subsequently contemplate my own uncharity in light of a final judgment. That is a different meditation, a different number.
No, the point, what struck me—well I’m getting ahead of myself.
I called the cops; normally against policy. The sudden screams, rousing me from sleep, and hearing what sounded like a physical fight taking place, I made the imprudent judgement to call for help. As I conversed with the operator, my foggy brain slowly reinterpreted the sound of bodies being beaten with fists to doors being beaten upon.
911 had heard enough, though, as her screaming was so loud the operator did not need to take my word for it. I was raising my voice just to be heard.
The cops came, the screaming ceased, but my neighbors are never quite silent. I was made a party to their indignant colloquy about rude neighbors calling the cops. I listened, with a certain amount of personal interest, as they wondered aloud, in tones I can only describe as genuine befuddlement, who had been so graceless.
I cannot write about this without making it funny; Damnably funny, to put it plainly. I suspect there is laughter in both hereafters, and a chasm so great between, or gulf, whichever word is most apt, that no one will mistake the two as I do here upon Earth—God forgive me.
I listened and was stunned to hear them settle upon our newest neighbors. Revelation came, though, as the screamer of the tale started mocking the new neighbor for looking nice and acting kind, something she could only conceive of, I suppose, as false.
She has started again. God have mercy. As I write, her voice rises.
Fireworks? Thank God. They are happy tonight. Maybe they will be so good as to allow me to sleep. Perhaps they shall burn the apartments down and wonder why someone would call the fire department.
Tale Told 