The racket! The noise of those kids, and constant bangs as they throw stones at every surface they find. They shout to each another while a few steps away, and they make sure you can hear every single syllable from their slapping tongues. You can barely see them, but they make sure you can hear them. The neighbours seem unbothered in regulating them, even when these kids plaster noise from five am until midnight; just what is wrong with these kids?
‘Bullwinkle!’, ‘Bullwinkle!’ - they shout at me, whenever I leave my apartment, and once I try to snip a view its almost as if they anticipate my movements, as they rush to their hiding spot. The naming calling won’t stop with them. I have tried to tell them that I’m a frail sixty-six year old man, but those brats still keep at it. ‘Bullwinkle!’, a small boy shouts out, without the slightest remorse for my pain. Yet, I try to ignore them, as I rush to the pharmacy.
A couple of months back, I might have managed to put the punks in-line, but after contracting some long term effects of that overglorifed flu, the kids seemed to have grown much louder, and taken advantage of me. I don’t understand what sort of people are raising their kids like that; raising them up, to just show an utter lack of respect. In my day, you knew what was coming when you didn’t pay your respects to people who came before you.
Once I got back home from the pharmacy, I headed for a hot shower, a meal, and some TV. It was around 20;00, and the kids had remained unusually quiet for this time, but it was hard for me to be sure that was the case. When I had moved into this compound, the former tenant who passed on from old age or whatever. Had left his soundproofing insulation as a gift for the next tenant. I figured the guy must have been crazy, and the young blossoming girl for the landlord had also found it peculiar. She told me the place had only housed the elderly, and they occasionally had some people with severe mental issues, and as soon as she had left everything had turned upside down, particularly with the neighbours. They were mostly twentysomethings, who had nothing much to say but stare at their screens, and offer a nod as greeting, but with the grandchildren I had, that nod was something I had been initially grateful for.
Fast forward to now. The nods, and the kids giggles annoy me to no ends. What’s worse is the hours from 22:48 to 00:58. Like clockwork they scramble around the compound’s courtyard, throwing stones across every door. It got to me one night, and as they pelted my neighbour I stood out at my door, as I awaited their attempts. They spared no mercy as they swung large stones at my feet and hips causing me to fall over, before I struggled to shut their door behind me. For seven brutal hours, they had taken the time to throw the tiniest of pebbles across my bathroom window, my front door inorder to teach me a lesson. I would be lying if I said the experience wasn’t horrific, as I immediately called my daughter the next day, hoping she could get me out.
She made the same arguments as she always did, about the rent freeze the place had for the elderly, and how it would inconvenience, her own kids if I had come back there. It mattered little to her that I had raised her myself, when her mother had chosen to die early in our lives. The very mention of that, had only strained the conversation further, to my disadvantage. She was always ungrateful. She passed by some weeks later, conveniently once the bruises had healed, as the kids had shut up once their was a ‘newbie’ around.
‘Newbie!, Newbie!, Newbie!’ Knock! Knock! ‘Dad?’, She called out.
I had wanted to ignore her, as I knew they wouldn’t expose themselves to her, and so we had a simple conversation. The kids, the weather, whatever political issue she was passionate about that week, and worst of all was the convoluted story she would spin out about her girlfriend/wife person. She would soon leave again, but not before making her strange declaration to me. She had the guts to tell me that I had always despised her as much as I had her mother. That I somehow poorly dealt with her, and I just laughed at it. She never went hungry, she wasn’t given away, and she got educated. She had however seemed to feel emotional about the topic, so I tried to give her hug goodbye, before she explained that she would not come back again.
‘I can’t do this to myself.’, she said. ‘What are you talking about? Just forget about it.’, I said.
She walked out of the compound, as I shut my door, and wondered what the hell had gone wrong inside of her head, but I had been soon taken back by the yelling outside. I thought someone’s parents had finally stepped up, but I had soon heard the horrible screams and shouts for help. I grabbed my baseball bat, rushing out to try and intervene. It could have possibly been my daughter, but it wasn’t remotely what I could have expected. Small figures, reddish hair, and almost a primate like sense of coordination had attacked a neighbour. I looked to them, and they too me, with their beady eyes, and brood narrow eyes. It was hard to believe this was the cause for all the mayhem, I looked around to the neighbours who quickly shunned their blinds as I instinctively threw the bat around the little men, and took the heavily wounded woman back my room.
I had honestly expected much more violence, but the ones I had hurt had curled up and began to cry. The others around them had acted aloof, almost as if they had no idea of what to do as I cleared it into my room. Its been some hours since then, without a word from whatever those things were, and some time since the woman I saved, has spoken any words.