Monday, September 27, 2004

Living next door to Hell.

Young people have an almost biological destiny to be hopeful.
- Marshall Ganz.

As I write this, it's either too late in the evening or too early in the morning for any sane person to be up and about. The rest of the house is quiet, not least because I live with cardboard cutouts who think ten-thirty is a reasonable time to go to bed. Fair enough, maybe it is, some day in the distant future when your back's giving you trouble and bifocals are your latest fashion statement, but not when you've just broken into your twenties and student life holds you firmly in its grip.

Just before someone else points it out, I'm aware that I've just argued both ends of the paragraph against one another. Oh well... what's life without a little inconsistency? Besides, I left a narrow window of normality between the hardcore party-poopers and the insomniacs, even if I do appear in that second category.

Back to the point. See, I'm learning from this already. Isn't the Internet great?

I sit here, Moody Blues playing softly in the background as I scan the room for inspiration, and from outside comes a blissful silence. It is late, after all, and most people are asleep. Except... The quiet of the night is shattered by an incoherent bellow from the open window. Ah, the neighbours. Everybody needs good neighbours, so TV would have us believe, in which case I can't but help think we've drawn the short straw.

Our student house is a decent one, as they go. No cockroaches, no fungus colony in the bathroom, and when the boiler leaks poisonous gasses we can generally rely on the landlord to come along and fix it before we all succumb. I'm yet to be mugged or offered particularly exotic drugs, and gunfire in the local area is at a minimum. All things considered, it's a pretty good place to live.

If you ignore the gateway to hell that sits beside it, that is.

That's got to be it, I'm beginning to think. Strange smells and clouds of noxious fumes constantly issue forth from its windows and other openings, while at the most unsocial hours soul-chilling sounds can often be heard from within at volumes to make the eardrums bleed. But all this pales into comparison next to the infernal creatures that dwell within.

Filthy, misshapen things that screech inarticulate profanity at one another, they squabble constantly among themselves. Seeming never to leave what passes for a living room in that foul domain except to fuel their vices, the beasts live on the edge of constant conflict, requiring only the smallest thing to tip them into the precipice of 300-decibel hatred. A misplaced lighter, a lack of drugs, someone refusing their perfectly reasonable request to be waited on hand and foot - these and others are the catalysts that begins the cacaphony of insults, accusations and death threats. At any time these fights might break out, for none of the building's twisted inhabitants seem to work. Sleep too seems to be alien to them, for many are the occasions that - woken by a call of nature, or perhaps some diabolical influence - I've risen to hear the same angry voices at four a.m. Specific types of demonic interference might be a welcome interruption to sleep, of course, but Succubi these certainly ain't.

It drove me to the edge of sanity at first; some would say beyond, though they're the sort of deluded idiots who'd tell you there are no Secret Lizard Overlords. These days, however I view my neighbours with a sense of pity. What hollow lives they must lead, empty of purpose and devoid of meaning. No friends ever visit - though the police seem to be on first name terms - and among the tenants of the house there seems to be at best an uneasy truce. Sad almost, to see them go through a parody of existence where nothing remains but anger. They tear at each other's souls through a desperate hunger to feed the void within, while their bodies and minds waste away in kind.

I watch them and I think, this is where one stands when all hope is spent, frittered away on idle fancies and grand plans. It is a currency you can't afford to waste, something that must be invested with care, metaphysical gold. I sit here with the assurance of youth and I know I'll never be like them. You see, I value my dreams.

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