The nuisance

It was the year 2008 when it started. I remember that period so clearly, an indelible scar it left in my mind. When it began  I wanted somebody to blame, I needed somebody to blame. I had become agitated. As a result of this I swiftly conducted a sophisticated investigation.

This investigation was one that I did in my brain and it quickly gave me answers. I realised that it wasn't the prat who lived above me because he barely knew what day of the week it was, and besides that he had an obsession with listening to the Notorious BIG. So I deciphered it couldn't have been him. The odd couple below me, that raggedy  looking woman with her younger middle Eastern fancy man. I gathered it wasn't them. They preferred to constantly argue anyway. Plus, I was sure he didn't posses the required documents to live in the UK. For that reason I doubted that he would want to draw attention to himself. 

So, it must have come from next door. Yes, next door. It seeped through the walls and scratched my ears. It was the sound of a saxophone being played, and badly at that. At first this unpleasant noise - because that's what it was would come through the thin walls every now and then. It was instantly disconcerting and I didn't know what to do.

Then one day the person behind the 'playing' decided to crank up the frequency and that's when I realised I had a major problem on my hands. 

I enjoy many genres and I'm partial to a bit jazz. So, in theory I should have welcomed the playing of a saxophone near to me. Well I didn't! It didn't take me long to decide that I hated it. I couldn't stand the quite awful racket. It was beginning to feel like an assault on my mental state. As though the person responsible was hell bent on offending my poor ears so much so that I felt like they were beginning to bleed internally.

The more the person played the more irate I became. And man alive! The timing was never right. Always when  I was eating cereal, watching TV, in the shower, getting dressed, thinking, reading, on the phone or in bed trying to sleep. That's when the person would decide to slowly massacre jazz music. Why couldn't he or she have played it when I was out?! Oh no, why would would they ever be considerate. The evil person had to wait until I was home before the persecution started. 

Nights I would lie in bed wishing ill upon whoever this individual was. Imagining what I would do to them with my bare hands given half the chance. Then I would bury my head under my pillows and fall into the utter depths of despair.  

I still had no idea who was attacking my sanity but I made it my number one mission to find out. And to do this I would need to venture next door.

Well, stand or walk past and look at it with an angry face. 

I didn't really know who lived in the plush apartments next to mine,(you know). But I started to stalk the outside in a semi covert manner so I could figure out who was the culprit. It didn't take me too long at all. 

I deployed MI5 esque powers of deduction and found out it was a clammy looking man with greasy hair and a distinctly shifty looking face that I didn't like. To be frank, he looked like he was a sandwich and bottle of home made lemonade short of a picnic. This was the horrible sax pest. The man who appeared dense and goon like but was in fact - malicious, vindictive and seriously lacked skill in saxophone playing. 

Retribution. Sweet retribution. This was the word that filled my mind. I rubbed my hands together slowly and chuckled wickedly before looking around to see if any of the neighbours had spotted me looking like a weirdo.

How would I get this glorious retribution?  This cracker had caused me too much stress and anguish. He needed to be taught a lesson he wouldn't forget in a long, long while. 

I needed to make him suffer like he had made me. So I spent my time plotting lots of clever and calculated things; such as donning a balaclava and breaking in whilst he went to collect his prescription and pouring cockroaches into the sax funnel. He would have come home jumped on the sax and inhaled cockroaches into his screaming mouth. And I would have heard it via the thin walls and laughed heartily to myself whilst sipping on my green tea. Stealing the sax came to my mind, too. Leaving a cryptic note cut from old newspaper letters telling him that the saxophone had been kidnapped and if he ever wanted to see it again he would have to kill himself because there was no way he would be seeing it again in this life. 

Then I felt bad. My better nature thought that was a bit too far. But you have to understand - I was a chap on the edge! And it was all sax mans fault!! I'd already been to the doctors a few times in this period and complained my ears hurt terribly. And when I told him he looked at me funny. I flatly told him that I required anti depressants or my ears amputated. But Dr. Karanam wouldn't sanction either. This added to my simmering hatred for the wicked sax man. I was desperate and even my doctor wouldn't even help me.

I was at my wits end. By now I had decided to not break into his house because I'm not really a criminal. And as for cutting out letters from newspapers and meticulously gluing them onto A4 paper... I felt that would be laborious and I'm hardly six years old anymore.

So, like the wimp I am I did nothing. Nada. I just continued to moan and grumble to my family and friends until one day I didn't hear anything and that continued for days and weeks and then well I just didn't hear it anymore.

Sax man had moved out. 

Demola, TCC