Neighbor Enemy

WHEN I finally dragged myself awake that morning, the first thing to hit me was murder. Not just any old murder, either. A very particular murder. One that had absolutely everything to do with the music viciously tearing apart any chance of the sleep I richly deserved. "Please, no, no, this can't be happening," I mumbled into my mattress, yanking my pillow over my head in a sad effort to smother the noise. "Not again. Not today." It didn't help. Nothing helped. Everything sucked. I pulled in a long breath, trying to settle the rising anger blooming in my chest, but it was useless. Hope had basically been chained to cinder blocks and tossed into a river of drumbeats and guitar. In through the nose, out through the mouth. We are calm and composed and sane. We are not killing anybody today. When I clamped my eyes closed and ordered myself back to sleep, I nearly fooled myself into thinking it might work. Then I had to face the fact that the bass was still pounding, still obnoxiously present, and still making homicide feel like a reasonable hobby. "Go away, please, if there is any goodness left in the universe, please, I swear I'll never illegally download anything again," I whispered to whatever higher power might care, cocooning myself deeper in my blankets. The thought after that was where a person could get medieval torture equipment on short notice. A spiked mace felt like it might solve things. Craigslist, maybe? Groaning for what had to be the thousandth time, I hurled my pillow across the room, heard it smack into my desk chair, and ignored it. I stared holes into the ceiling because that was about all my body had in it. Getting up sounded horrible, but apparently it was happening. The noise outside kept seeping through the closed window, the glass doing nothing for my frayed nerves, and I swore at him, the center of this disaster, like he did with most of the miserable events that had plagued my life lately. Him, who was somehow going to wind up with a mace to the face. Because I was determined, and I knew my way around marketplaces. I threw back my heavy duvet and scrubbed sleep from my eyes with the heel of my hand while acid rage burned low in my stomach. The light stabbed at my retinas, and, right on schedule, another groan leaked out. Fueled entirely by spite, I dragged myself to the window and yanked the blinds up to the usual view of my neighbourhood. Green lawns, elm trees, suburbia at its most offensively wholesome. That unfortunately included the new guy next door, also known as The Antichrist, otherwise known as the person blasting his music obscenely loud on a Saturday morning. Most of the time, I just called him the worst human alive. I shoved the window up and stuck my head outside. My bedhead and polar-bear pajama shirt barely registered next to the homicide blueprint developing in my head. And there he was, exactly as expected: Jude. All light brown hair, tanned skin, and irritating swagger, there stood Jude, aviators perched in the deliberately messy waves of his hair. Those ridiculous dimples dug into his cheeks, and all I wanted was to carve them off. With a blade. Ideally a machete. I shot daggers at the guy lazily polishing the hood of his bright red car. Every door was thrown open, pouring out a wave of sound that some people might classify as music, while I classified it as the score to his future murder. He stopped, glanced up, and greeted me with that trademark Mercer grin. All teeth and trouble, stretched far too wide. Then he waved, standing absurdly casual beside his stupid car that apparently demanded a stupid cleaning this stupid early with his stupid music blaring.