The morning after finding the first note, Micah Valerius woke up feeling something he hadn't felt in a very long time: pure, unadulterated joy. He woke up on a pile of laundry that he'd intended to use as a mattress, the sun streaming through the large, uncurtained window and illuminating the glorious, chaotic mess of his new life. The first thing he saw was the wall. His mural. And taped proudly beside the cosmic figure's head, the elegant, furious note from his neighbor.
It was, he decided, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
He rolled off the laundry pile, his back cracking in a satisfying series of pops, and walked over to admire his work. The black ink of the note, so severe and controlled, seemed to vibrate with a special intensity against the wild, swirling colors of his painting. It was a dialogue. A perfect, beautiful, hilarious dialogue between order and chaos, silence and noise, beige and every color in the rainbow.
He felt a giddy, bubbling energy in his chest. This was better than a blank canvas. This was a canvas that was fighting back.
He made coffee—a thick, sludgy brew in a battered French press—and sat on the floor, sipping it from a chipped ceramic mug while he planned his day. The plan was simple: more. More color, more music, more life. He was going to fill this apartment with so much life that it would seep through the walls and, hopefully, give his ghostly neighbor a contact high.
His phone rang. He knew it was Jenna before he even looked.
"Morning, sunshine," he chirped, answering on speakerphone as he rummoved through a box labeled 'KITCHEN?' in search of a bowl. "Or should I say, good morrow, gentle neighbor?"
"God, you're enjoying this way too much," Jenna's voice came through, thick with sleep but laced with amusement. "I had a nightmare that I was trapped in a library and you were outside with a jackhammer and a boombox. I'm assuming you survived the night without being served an eviction notice by a man in a powdered wig."
"Better," Micah said, abandoning the search for a bowl and deciding to eat cereal directly from the box. "I've made a friend. A pen pal. We're collaborating on an installation piece. It's called 'Anxious Aristocrat Meets Psychedelic Space God'."
"You taped the note to the wall." It wasn't a question.
"It's the centerpiece! It provides crucial context. It's the voice of the establishment that my art is rebelling against. It's perfect."
"It's insane," she corrected, but she was laughing. "So what's the plan, revolutionary? Are you going to heed the final warning and embrace a life of quiet contemplation?"
Micah crunched on a mouthful of cereal. "I'm thinking of getting into experimental jazz. Or maybe death metal. Something with a lot of complex, jarring time signatures. You know, for the civilized cohabitation."
"You're a menace, Valerius," she said fondly. "Just… don't get yourself kicked out. I like knowing you have a place to live that doesn't have wheels."
"Don't worry, I'm a master of subtlety," he assured her, his eyes already scanning the empty spaces on his mural, imagining where he could add more color. "My response will be quiet. Poetic, even."
"Your idea of 'quiet' is a silent movie with a live punk rock score," she retorted. "Okay, I have to go to work. Try not to start an interstate war before lunch. And eat a vegetable today."
"I'll paint a carrot," he promised. "Talk later."
He hung up, feeling energized and validated. Jenna's amusement was the fuel he needed. He wasn't just being an asshole; he was being an entertaining asshole. There was a difference.
He put on an album by The Beastie Boys, Paul's Boutique. It was a sonic collage, a chaotic and brilliant tapestry of samples and beats. It felt appropriate. He was creating a visual collage, and this was its soundtrack. The bass started to throb through the floorboards, a familiar, comforting heartbeat.
He spent the morning unpacking, but not in any logical way. He didn't set up his bedroom or organize his kitchen. Instead, he unpacked his art supplies. He set up his easel. He organized his paint cans by color, creating a massive, glorious rainbow on the floor. He unrolled canvases, leaning them against every available surface. He was building his arsenal. The apartment was transforming from an empty box into a proper studio, his studio. The smell of paint and turpentine began to permanently infuse the air, chasing away the last ghosts of landlord's beige.
Around noon, he decided it was time for his poetic, subtle response. He took one of the small, rectangular pieces of cardboard he had bought, a piece no bigger than a postcard. He laid it on the floor and, with a can of black spray paint, created a simple, stark background. Then, with a series of intricate stencils he had cut himself, he began to layer the image.
He worked with intense focus, the music a driving force in the background. He wasn't just making a picture; he was crafting a message. He chose a hot, aggressive pink and a sickly, acidic green. He wanted the colors to clash, to feel jarring and uncomfortable. He was painting the way his neighbor's note had made him feel.
When he was done, he held it up. On the cardboard was a perfect, detailed image of a vintage gramophone, the kind with a big, elegant horn. But a massive, jagged crack ran right through the center of it, shattering its old-world elegance. It was beautiful. It was rude. It was perfect.
He waited. He spent the afternoon working on his mural, the Beastie Boys giving way to Run the Jewels, the bass getting heavier, the lyrics more aggressive. He felt like a general planning a campaign, the music his war drums. He ate cold pizza for lunch and dinner, too engrossed to bother with cooking.
Finally, late that night, well after midnight, he decided it was time. He turned his music off, the sudden silence making his ears ring. He crept out of his apartment, the small cardboard painting in his hand. The hallway was silent and dim. He tiptoed to the door of Apartment 4A and gently leaned the painting against it, right in the center, where the note had been. He didn't knock. He didn't make a sound. The art would speak for itself.
He scurried back to his apartment, his heart thrumming with a childish, exhilarating thrill. He closed the door, locked it, and leaned against it, grinning in the dark. This was a new kind of dialogue. A war of aesthetics. And it was the most fun he'd had in years.
On the other side of the wall, the day had begun with the muffled, rhythmic thud of a bass drum. Elias Thorne lay perfectly still in his bed, his eyes wide open, staring at the grey ceiling. The simulated dawn from his lamp was performing its gentle, ten-minute crescendo, but the peace of the ritual was shattered. The noise from next door had already begun.
It wasn't as loud as it had been the night before, but it was, in some ways, worse. It was a low, persistent throb, a vibration that seemed to bypass his ears and settle deep in his bones, in his teeth. It was a physical presence, a constant, unwanted heartbeat in his sanctuary.
The high-pitched E-flat in his own head seemed to harmonize with it in a particularly malevolent way, creating a dissonant, nauseating chord that was already making his temples ache.
He had expected the note to work. In his world, a world of decorum, of unspoken rules and mutual respect among artists, such a clear and formal complaint would have been met with an immediate, apologetic cessation of the offending behavior. He had imagined waking up to a profound, blessed silence.
Instead, he had woken up to this. This… thumping.
He got out of bed, the carefully constructed calm of his morning routine already in ruins. He went through the motions of his tea ceremony, but his hands were unsteady. He measured the leaves, but his mind was on the wall. He heated the water, but all he could hear was the muffled bass and the screaming of his own nerves.
When he opened his front door to retrieve the morning paper—a habit he maintained despite reading the news on his tablet, simply for the ritual of it—he saw it.
Leaning against his door was a piece of cheap, brown cardboard. On it was a painting.
He stared at it for a full minute, his mind refusing to process what he was seeing. It was a garish, ugly thing, rendered in clashing, violent colors. A gramophone, its horn shattered.
His first reaction was bafflement. Was this a delivery? A mistake? Then, the meaning crashed into him with the force of a physical blow. This was a response. This was a reply to his note.
A hot, dark wave of fury washed over him, so intense it made him feel dizzy. This wasn't just a refusal to comply. This was a mockery. A juvenile, insulting, visual sneer. He, Elias Thorne, had composed a formal, articulate complaint, and the barbarian in 4B had responded with… with graffiti. On a piece of trash.
He snatched the cardboard from the floor as if it were contaminated, and stalked back into his apartment, slamming the door behind him. The sound echoed in the quiet space, a rare and shocking burst of his own uncontrolled noise.
He stood in his pristine living room, holding the offensive object at arm's length. The colors were an assault on the eyes. The cracked gramophone was a clear, unambiguous symbol. It was a middle finger, rendered in spray paint.
"Unbelievable," he whispered, his voice shaking with rage. He wanted to tear it in half, to burn it. But he couldn't. He was, in his own way, a collector of evidence. He walked over to his writing desk and opened a drawer. Inside was a small, black, leather-bound notebook. He opened it. The first page was dated two days prior.
Saturday, 10:30 PM - 2:00 AM. Excessive volume. Appears to be some form of rock music. Intermittent rattling.
He turned to a fresh page. He wrote today's date. Monday, 7:15 AM. Received a hostile and mocking communication. He paused, then placed the cardboard painting in a large, empty desk drawer, alongside the first note he had written. He would document everything. Every transgression. Every piece of evidence. He was building a case.
His phone rang, the sound making him jump. It was his father. Of course it was.
"Elias," Alistair Thorne's voice boomed, devoid of any pleasantries. "Isabelle tells me the label is threatening penalty clauses. She tells me you've given her nothing. What, precisely, are you doing?"
The thumping from next door seemed to intensify, a mocking soundtrack to his father's interrogation.
"I am working, Father," Elias said, his voice tight and cold.
"Are you? Because from where I'm sitting, it appears you are doing nothing. Your last performance was a triumph, and you have failed to capitalize on the momentum. That is not how a career is managed. That is how a career is squandered."
"I am composing," Elias lied, the words tasting like ash. "It requires concentration. Something that is in short supply at the moment."
"Concentration?" his father scoffed. "You have the most sound-proofed apartment in the city. You have no obligations. No distractions. What could possibly be interfering with your concentration?"
Elias looked at the wall, at the source of the thumping, of his current misery. How could he explain it? How could he admit to his father, the great conductor, the master of his own universe, that he was being undone by a noisy neighbor? It sounded so petty. So weak.
"It is a complex piece," he said, evading the question. "It will be ready when it is ready."
"Do not be petulant, Elias," Alistair snapped. "The world does not wait for you. I expect to hear a demo by the end of the week. Do you understand me?"
The line went dead. Elias slowly lowered the phone, his hand trembling. The pressure was immense, a physical force constricting his chest. The label, his father, his own failing body, and now this… this person next door, all conspiring to tear him apart.
The days that followed were a special kind of hell. The noise was not constant, which was somehow worse. There were periods of blessed, beautiful silence, moments when Elias would feel his shoulders start to relax, when he would sit at the piano and feel a flicker of his old focus returning. He would touch the keys, find a fragile melody, and then, just as he was about to capture it, the assault would begin again. A new blast of chaotic music, a new series of thumps and rattles. Each time, it was a fresh shock to his system, a new violation.
And each morning, there was a new piece of cardboard.
The second one depicted a stylized human head, its mouth open in a silent scream, with jagged, colorful lines—sound waves—exploding from it.
The third one was a cage, its bars made of musical staves, with a vibrant, colorful bird trapped inside, beating its wings against the bars.
Elias collected them all, his fury growing with each new delivery. They were not just random images. They were targeted. They were about him. The barbarian in 4B wasn't just making noise; he was listening, he was interpreting, he was turning Elias's private agony into a series of garish, public cartoons. The intimacy of it was horrifying.
He stopped leaving his apartment unless absolutely necessary. The hallway felt like enemy territory. He began to feel like a prisoner in his own home, under siege from an unseen, unknown enemy who seemed to know him, to see him, without ever having laid eyes on him.
His phone conversations became more fraught.
"Elias, you sound terrible," Isabelle said during one call, her voice sharp with concern. "Are you sleeping?"
"I am fine," he lied.
"No, you're not. You sound like a violin string wound too tight. What is going on?"
He couldn't tell her the truth. It was too humiliating. "I am simply… under pressure."
"Then relieve the pressure! Give me a demo! Even a bad one! Just give me something to feed the wolves!"
He hung up on her, his hand shaking.
His world had shrunk to the four walls of his apartment, and even here, he was not safe. The silence he had curated his entire life was gone, replaced by a constant, low-level dread and the incessant, maddening thumping from the other side of the wall.
On the fifth night, he was sitting on his sofa, staring blankly at a book he'd been trying to read for three days. It was nearly eleven o'clock. The noise from next door was particularly egregious tonight. It was a rhythmic, aggressive shouting over a beat so heavy it made the water in his glass tremble.
He felt a strange, unsettling detachment, as if he were watching himself from a great distance. He saw a man at the end of his rope. A man whose carefully constructed world had been dismantled, piece by piece. The pressure from the label, the disappointment of his father, the relentless, screaming E-flat in his own head, and now this. This final, unbearable, percussive insult.
He had tried reason. He had tried threats. He had tried to ignore it. Words had failed. Logic had failed.
He stood up. He was not thinking. He was moving. He walked with a calm, deliberate purpose to the small utility closet where the building's maintenance staff had left a few items for him. An old, heavy-duty broom with a thick, wooden handle stood in the corner.
He took it. The wood was solid and heavy in his hands. It felt real. It felt powerful.
He walked to the shared wall, the wall that separated his grey, silent prison from his neighbor's vibrant, chaotic hell. He looked at the smooth, grey paint. He thought of the garish colors of the cardboard paintings. He thought of the thumping bass, the shouting voices, the rattles, the hisses. He thought of the screaming in his own head.
He needed to make a sound.
Not a beautiful sound. Not a chord or a melody. He needed to make a noise. A sound of pure, unfiltered rage. A sound that would speak the language the barbarian in 4B would understand.
He raised the broom, gripping the handle with both hands.
And he slammed it against the wall.
THUD.
The sound was shocking. It was loud, ugly, and deeply satisfying. It was his. He had taken the chaos from next door and answered it with his own.
He did it again.
THUD.
A feeling of immense, terrible power surged through him. He was no longer a passive victim. He was fighting back.
He raised the broom again, a wild, desperate look in his eyes, and began to pound out a slow, heavy, furious rhythm against the wall.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
It was the ugliest music he had ever made. And it was the only thing that made any sense.