 There was a man hanging in the apartment above mine. I could hear the wooden beam over which he'd thrown the noose, creaking as it strained under his weight. A damp patch was appearing on my ceiling after his bowels and bladder had emptied and now it was leaking through. The ceilings are paper thin. The walls are the same. Hell, here is a noisy neighbor. 20 minutes before, I'd stood looking him through his open doorway. I'd gone up to complain about the noise. The same country and western song again and again for 12 hours straight. On my first angry knock, the door had swung open. It had not been locked. His mind must have been on other things. I stood and looked at his body hanging there and then I came back down to my apartment and poured myself a stiff drink. Overhead, the song continued on repeat. I'd lived in this apartment for a year and I swear it had aged me by 10 years. It's the music and the screaming, the rose and the love making, the slamming doors and the howling babies. A good night's sleep is a memory, feeling relaxed, a distant dream. I finally dialed 911 about the man upstairs but only because I wanted the music turned off. I didn't care about the man. I kept myself to myself as much as I could. I was focused on saving up from my job at the car dealership and moving as soon as I could afford more than dirt cheap rent. After the emergency services had finished, the apartment above mine was quiet for a whole week. I scrubbed the damp patch on the ceiling with bleach, which only added an extra stench to the room. Then, someone new moved into the apartment above mine. I could hear them walking about, closing cupboard doors, their TV, the cackle of game show host and the syrupy theme tunes of soaps. I could hear their toilet flushing. I could even hear the bastards snoring. None of this was new or unexpected. I told myself through gritted teeth to at least be grateful they didn't seem to be a fan of country and western. Then, something new and unexpected happened. It was a couple of weeks after the new neighbor had moved in. I was walking back from the grocery store. Only one of my headphones worked, so I was getting classic rock music in one ear and dogs barking, sirens, car horns, a singing drunk and a junkie arguing with his dealer in the other ear. It was late, early June, way too hot. Only the junkie looked to have a worse sweat on than me. I was getting my keys out when I heard the howl. It stopped me in my tracks. It was a fearsome, piercing animal scream. Something has escaped from the zoo, I thought, and wanted nothing more than to be safely locked in my apartment. The damp patch in the ceiling, from which small black flies were now emerging, no longer seemed so bad. A second howl tore through the sky. I looked up to where it was coming from. The apartments here come with balconies. They're pathetic, tiny. A man was standing out on his balcony. And for a third time, let rip a blood curdling cry. He was staring off into the distance at a full moon. It was pretty hazy, but there it was. So I thought, not an escaped animal, but someone in my block howling at the moon. I counted floors upwards. Just great. Just fricking wonderful. It was the man in the apartment above mine. I let myself in with a heavy heart. The howling continued. About 3 a.m., I'd had enough. Did I mention that the country and western song, the hanged man played over and over, had a yodeling section? I would have paid good money to hear yodeling at that moment in time. I stomped up the stairs and began to punch the man's door. It creaked open a little, and there, cut in half by a door chain, was a face. Close up, my upstairs neighbor was jowling, unshaven. His bloodshot eyes blinked at me, and his breath, sweet lord, hit me worse than any solid object had ever done. The smell of his breath made me gag, and I struggled to get my words out. Will you please, for the lover, stop howling? The door began to close. He was ignoring me. Of course he was. That's what everyone did here. Then, to my surprise, the door swung wide open. My neighbor stood there. He was wearing a pair of boxer shorts and a vest. They'd been cleaned sometime around the invention of the internet. It was what was poking out from around the shorts and vest that was much more disturbing, though. What covered pretty much every inch of his exposed skin? He was hairy. So hairy, thick matted black hair from his toes upwards. Then, he surprised me. He smiled. Would you like to come in? He asked. His words wrapped in a new rancid cloud of bad breath. Not really, I replied. I just think that if you could get to know me, understand me, then you wouldn't be so angry. Wouldn't that be better? To not be angry. I was struggling to think of a response that went beyond telling him he was clearly a crazy mother. When I noticed there was a slab of meat on his couch, it was fat and pink, and dribbles of blood ran down its front. It almost looked like it was propped up so that it could watch TV. I couldn't see the screen from where I was standing, but I could hear that the show was reaching its climax. 50,000 pounds. A tinny TV voice squealed. The man smiled again. I think it was meant to be invitingly. I noticed he had a crumb of pink meat caught in his upper teeth. A speck of dark red was clear in the sickly lightness of the pink. Fear made my skin tingle, tightened my guts. I started to back away. I no longer wanted to complain. I no longer wanted to be anywhere near this individual. I wanted to be locked inside my apartment, and he could howl to his heart's content. Back in my own apartment, I poured myself a hefty measure of the cheap whiskey I'd brought back from the grocery store. I sipped it and thought about the slab of meat. It was the size of a small man's torso, which, obviously, it wasn't. Surely, it couldn't be. I poured myself another whiskey as the howling started again in the apartment above mine. I mean, it was going to be a long night.