Neighbors Texting by Jeff Hill

“FYI – I killed her. Whatever you do, don’t tell the neighbors. They already know we’re drug dealers. Let’s not make it any worse.”

That was the text that I received from my neighbor at three o’clock in the morning after a loud crash woke me, and most likely the entire building, as well.

An overwhelming sense of dread filled the air and mixed with the pungent smells coming through the ventilation shaft shared with apartment 309. It’s not uncommon to hear loud noises every now and then, even at odd hours in the morning because, after all, they are drug dealers.

Before I can look over to see my girlfriend still soundly asleep (she can, and has, slept through louder, thanks to her last tour with the Peace Corps), I hear a frantic knock on the front door. I get up, put on some pants, and stumble over shoes and belts and bags (none of which are mine, even though I pay the rent). As I reach for the doorknob, I think back to myself to a time before I lived here. To a time when I lived with my crazy Aunt Sara, to be precise. Living with that woman scarred me beyond repair on so many deep levels, but sadly, she has always been my inner voice. My conscience of sorts in any and all potentially dangerous situations.

“Never answer a door after ten at night,” she’d always said, smelling of gin and tonic and expensive perfume. “Nothing good happens after normal folks are in bed.”

But this was a different scenario entirely. I already knew it was going to be bad, but I also owned a baseball bat and possessed a survival skill set that rivaled Liam Neeson in Taken. At least, in my mind. That, and I hated these guys with a passion and was just waiting for one of them to screw up and step inside my apartment uninvited. So I was going to just open the door and unleash hell when suddenly, I felt a trembling hand on my shoulder.

Turning around, I saw Chelsea in her med school sweatshirt, visibly shaken by my brashness and the text message I had received, which was shining a light on both of us as she raised it to my face.

“Don’t,” she said. “Just… don’t.”

I sat the baseball bat down against the hallway wall and leaned in close to check the peephole first, making sure they weren’t armed or anything. Then it came to me. Or rather, she came to me. Aunt Sara.

“They want you to look in the peephole. That’s where they’re aiming the gun.”

I jolted back suddenly, fearing the worst. Then I looked at Chelsea and she was dialing the cops on my cell phone. “Chill out,” she whispered to me. “Take your alpha male down a notch and let the professionals deal with this.”

Another series of knocks at the door. No words, just knocks. Pounds, actually. Screw this, I thought, leaning toward the door and checking the peephole.

I didn’t get shot, if that’s what you’re wondering. But something else happened, something that hasn’t happened since the accident that made Chelsea drop out of med school and join the Corps.

I was scared.

Looking out the peephole, I saw who could have been anyone, but I knew it was the neighbors. Or, at least, I hoped it was them. They were druggies, but they were harmless, right? I had to be sleep-deprived. I couldn’t have possibly seen what I had just seen. There’s no way that they were standing there, in the middle of the hallway, holding machetes and wearing full clown makeup. That’s the stuff that only happens in the movies.

At least that’s what I told myself as I opened up the door.

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Jeff Hill is a moderately reformed frat boy turned writer who left teaching after 10 years to split his time between Nebraska and New York and focus on his writing career. His work has appeared in dozens of publications and his mom has a binder full of copies for any doubters. He is currently pitching his novel Dead Facebook Friends to agents in New York and Los Angeles. Jeff is a graduate student at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, a regular participant of the Sarah Lawrence College Summer Seminar for Writers, and a past faculty member of the Writer’s Hotel. He can be found on both Twitter and Patreon as jeffhillwriter.