The Caveman Upstairs

Prologue

Prologue

I was woken from my peaceful sleep by the scream of a woman.

"Ah, oh my god, where did you learn that, Jack?" The high-pitch screams of the girl I don't know and the creaking noises of bed and wooden furniture I couldn't recognise echoed from above like skyfall.

This is not the first time I am forced into attending a live porn broadcast from the caveman upstairs. If I draw a line on the wall of my room every time he invites a girl home, my wall should be black now.

I always wonder whether they'd be in pain the day after. Every time I hear those violent rattling noises, I imagine someone would have to go home in the wheelchair in the morning. Humans are not objects, after all.

The first time I heard those noises was 3 months ago, when I broke up with my last boyfriend and moved here temporarily through a friend's recommendation. That night I thought I was dreaming. Or somebody effed-up and accidentally play it loudly through the Apple TV instead of his EarPods. It seems pretty normal to watch porn openly now than they used to be.

But no, it turned out that this building was not as soundproof as I was sweet-talked into renting it. And now I am cursed when the night came. Not most night but I have now been in a constant lack of sleep and angry stage.

The only thing I can do about this is sending complaints to the landlord. But she always replies with a guarantee that she will remind the guy from above me, Jack, that he needs to keep it down and so on.

"Is it good, kitty?" Jack's deep voice roars loudly from above. I can feel the room vibrates with this dude low growl.

"Yes! Yes! Stronger, Jack!" 

But everything continues to happen. I feel like it is because I've just moved in and as a result, my voice doesn't have much weight to this land lady compares to the longer lease caveman up there. But I don't have any need to quarrel now. After the breakup, I'd much prefer the world leave me alone for a while.

I'm tired of hearing family and friends asking questions similar to "Klaire, how can you ruin this? Daniel is a wonderful man, you won't be able to find anyone better than him. We won't be accepting any other man for our son-in-law."

Daniel is a wonderful person. He is trustworthy, understanding and stable, mentally, physically and financially. Which by the way, most important fact for my parents it seems. We met in college but only started dating after graduation. Daniel works in the auditing, while I write freelance. In addition to newspapers and magazines articles, I also write stories.

I have a few stories published online, but the income from them is not too high, just about enough. I really wanted to take a big jump, write a full length novel and take the world, or a small chunk of it, by a tornado and get published, by real publishers. But in order to do that, I need to put my more attention into my own writings and less on other jobs.

When I talked to Daniel about it, his silent objection over a few years of watching me working on my own time finally exploded. We had a big fight, and he dared to say that my writing job was not a stable job while I still had income and still could share the cost at home.

After 3 years of being together, I had a realisation that day, that if Daniel were to disappeared from my life, I would not have to compromise what I love so desperately.

Then we broke up. When a partner is unable to support what I want to do, especially when it still has the potential and it won't cost him shit, its disrespectful..

"Ahhh~" There, she came.

After that is a growling response from the primitive creature, and a thud sound like the bed's leg just broke. And silence takes on the atmosphere.

I really wanted to applaud them, but I won't be able to sleep anymore now. I am contemplating a move out soon, but right now I am not in the right mind to make another repulsive change. The available option is keep sending complaints to the landlord until she gets extremely annoyed and have to come here to suffer this with me. Or I can go straight to caveman Jack to complain.

Right now I don't want to see anyone, the after breakup time is a locked in period. I refuse invitations to meet up, travel, or even just go out of the house to stay in and write. More or less, it is a healing period for me, just to focus on myself and what I want, like whoever dating expert used to say all the time.

Maybe next week I'll complain straight to the guy upstairs.

-

This morning, I woke up and decided I want to go out. After three months of living in like a vampire, getting out of the house started to feel attractive to me again. Sometimes, I will still recall past memories, but not too much, not too miserable. It was really painful at first because it seemed like all of my life after graduating until now was crashing down around me and I had to rebuilt everything from scratches again.

As soon as I slam the door of my room, I hear a low murmuring voice from above. It might be from the hairless gorilla named Jack, who woke up pretty early for my expectation.

The sound of heavy footsteps rushing down the wooden stairs follows and I feel an extremely tall figure appears behind me, at the base of the stairs going down.

"Ah, Emily, here you are! I'm about to call you, the landlady wants to meet us in the gathering hall. It's urgent! Let's go!" The man reaches out for my left arm and pulls me down the stairs. He turns away so quickly that I couldn't see his face.

"My name is not-" I open my mouth to protest but his rumbling shout

"Amanda, you go ahead! My meeting can last the whole morning!"

I could only see half of Jack's face looking up. His hair is in chestnut color, messy with lose waves, and a bony jawline connecting with his thick ear lobe.

Then he turns  his face towards me and winks. I now understand why so many girls agree to bed this caveman. His eyes are greyish green, his eyebrows' thick and sharp but carefully trimmed and the corners of his mouth lifts up like a cat.  There would be no doubt about massive number number of girls who would jump this tall, brooding figure of a man on a daily basis.

"Thank you for playing along. I'm Jack." When we reached the first floor and made a temporary escape to the emergency exit, he releases my hand and smile brightly.