Neighbours

My neighbours are an interesting bunch. There's the grandmother, who caused a bit of a ruckuss a few months back. We kept hearing a squawking from next door. Mom thought maybe they had a parrot; I thought it was someone possessed by demons. The noise continued for a couple of weeks, and eventually we were able to hear unintelligible muttering mixed with the squawks, confirming my suspicions. She was taken away to the hospitable one night, squawking at the paramedics. She no longer squawked after she returned home. Word through the grapevine is that she has passed away recently.

The children, who must be in their late teens, early 20's, get into violent arguments, threatening to kill one another. I've often seen cars pull up late at night, the son (or father) going out to them briefly. The parents are often heard late into the night, drunkenly partying (our walls are paper-thin).

One night, as I was trying to sleep, another fight broke out. There was screaming and crying, and shortly after, the daughter and a friend went outside. The girl was sobbing/angrily slurring (my window has gaps in the seams which allow noise in even more than the walls) about how she hated her father. Her friend was telling her that she shouldn't put up with this anymore, "hitting her so hard she bled, cleaning up the blood, before hitting her again." Every once in a while, the son would step out to yell at her, she telling him off each time. She drunkenly spewed about how her father "works during the day to make money to do cocaine the rest of the time,'' that he was the one who got her "hooked on heroin." At one point, the father stepped out, yelling at her to come back inside. She refused, saying she was going to "go die in the snow," that her death would be "on his hands." She wandered off, though she seemed to only be walking in circles around the block.

The police arrived shortly after, though all they did was ask a couple questions and leave, seemingly satisfied.