Noise Complaint // Alex Ernst

one

➢ Mara

"Good morning, Noelle," I greet with a warm smile to my roommate. "Good morning! How did you sleep?" Noelle replies with an annoyed tone hidden within her voice. I chuckle at her extremely sarcastic question. "Rather well," I reply, mimicking the sarcasm in her voice. "Except for the fact that the obnoxiously loud idiots below us were screaming at 1 in the morning," I add.

Noelle and I have lived here for four days. Only four days! And all of our neighbors have been extremely sweet. They've welcomed us into the complex and helped us move boxes. They've even dropped off a few welcome to the building packages. Nice people, right? All was nice and dandy until our next door neighbors, Bridget and Tom, a lovely couple about 40 years of age knocked on our door. They sat us down on the couch saying they had to warn us.

"I'm really sorry," They had said. "For what?" "The landlord doesn't say anything about this but it's about your apartment. The people below you are the loudest people you will ever meet and the floors are thin so it's going to be really rough," they told us.

And they were fucking right. Every night, every day, they were loud. They were either yelling or slamming doors or screaming out their balcony down the street or cheering. It was obnoxious.

"You have to go down there and tell them to shut up," I tell Noelle. "No way!" She refuses without a second thought. "Why not? Please? You're nice, they'll listen to you," I plead. "Yeah, I'm nice. They're not going to listen to some girl that looks like she's 16 marching down saying 'Can you pretty please not be so loud?'" Noelle says.

"You're more aggressive and get mad easily. You can go scare them," she adds. "Trust me, if I get mad at them I'm going to break all of their bones and we'll get sued," I point out. "Ugh," Noelle sighs. "Ugh," I repeat for emphasis.

And almost as if they heard us, they started yelling and cheering. The floor was pretty thin, so I could hear a lot of what they were saying. "Alex, no! No, don't he didn't mean it!" A male voice says.

"It sounds like they're beating someone up," Noelle says. "Yeah, well I'm about to beat all of their asses if they don't shut up!" I fume. They're so obnoxious, why can't they be obnoxious out in public? Like why the apartment? This was supposed to be my sanctuary!

"I'll give it 2 more days, maybe it's someone's birthday? If they don't get any less obnoxious by then, then we're going down and complaining," I vow. "You're going down there," Noelle corrects. "Whatever," I say and continue to eat my breakfast.

After breakfast, I shower and change. I slide on some jean shorts and a normal black t-shirt. I slide on some white converse and grab my wallet. "Hey, want to go to Target to get some fake plants and other decorations?" I ask Noelle. "No, I have to finish this essay for biology," Noelle says. She goes to university at UCLA. I'm taking a gap year, mostly because I have no idea what I want to do with my life.

I nod and head out the door and walk to the elevator. I press the down button to the garage floor but it stops on the floor below us. I roll my eyes; I hate riding in the elevator with strangers. I'm just an awkward person in general. Not an antisocial kind, but I just make conversations awkward, especially with people I don't know.

Two boys walk into the elevator, one of them holding a camera. I bite my lip and lean against the elevator wall, trying to avoid making eye contact with them. One had black, kind of long hair, with a black hat. He was wearing a black shirt and black pants. He was the one holding the camera.