The Living Situation

Henry had lived in the historic townhouse for many years now. How many exactly, he didn't trouble to count. Despite residing much of that time with housemates, it was a perfectly pleasant situation.

Until Randall.

Of all of the roommates Henry had endured, Randall stood apart.

Henry was a gentle soul. He kept to himself, made efforts to communicate, and had only a few rules. He even spent most of his time residing in the basement, leaving Randall more space and freedom. The basement was Henry's own paradise.

He sat in his armchair surveying that paradise. Around him sat a collection of his favorite things: antiques, photographs, and an old gramophone that he proudly kept in working condition. It scratched out a near-forgotten tune, the sound warbled and imperfect just the way he liked it.

Leaning back in his chair, Henry closed his eyes and let the music fill the room. He thought of simpler times, of what things were like when the music was first pressed into the recording. All there was to do now was choose from a few favored books for the evening.

His peace, however, was short-lived.

A thump boomed through the house with such intensity it caused the music to skip. The harsh scratching of the needle made Henry's eyes snap open. His hands gripped tightly to the arms of his beloved reading chair.

Surely there was a reasonable explanation.

He carefully lifted the needle of the gramophone, stopping the crackling symphony lest another rattle cause it damage. Then standing from his seat, he made his way across the basement.

His sanctuary had an old woven rug that pulled the space neatly together and hid the grey, concrete floor. The moment he stepped off the edge, he entered neutral territory.

Henry climbed the steep basement stairs quickly. As he reached the top, he paused. Multiple pairs of heavy footsteps bled through the heavy wooden door from the other side, accompanied by smaller thumps and long, scraping noises. Someone was dragging things across the floor.

They were the original hardwood floors!

Henry opened the door slowly, careful not to bump anyone on the other side. He had barely stuck his head out before a shoulder shoved the door, swinging it to try and slam shut on him. He nearly stepped back off the top step as he reeled.

Whoever it was must have been in such a hurry they had not seen the door. Henry reopened it quicker this time, slipping through the doorway and into the chaos that had overtaken the main floor.

The house was filling with people.

Henry wove carefully between them, not recognizing a single face he saw. He followed the sporadic scraping noise until he spotted two men dragging each side of a large, plastic tub of ice into the kitchen. He stuck his head inside after them to see the counters laden with packaged trays of food and boxes of canned drinks.

A house party was all well and good, so long as Randall and his guests took care to clean up after themselves and maintain the house. In return, Henry would try to overlook the new scratches in the hall floor.

Where the devil was Randall anyway?

Henry found him upon entering the living room. The majority of the furniture was pushed to the edge of the walls, clearing a wide space in the middle. On the far side, Randall was knelt down by massive black boxes. Closer inspection revealed them as speakers. Their placement in the room directly above the basement further identified them as the reason for the first great thump.

"Randall," Henry tried to call out.

Yet Randall was focused on a tangle of chords. He did not hear him.

Henry waved this off. There was nothing amiss about spending one's Saturday night with company and music. Just because Henry liked a bit of solitude did not mean he would demand it of everyone else. A shared house meant compromise. He would not trouble Randall now, nor would he want to intrude in front of guests so rashly. He decided instead to simply leave him a note.

He wrote the note the way he had left others before, written in non-permanent marker on the top edge of the bathroom mirror. Here it was sure to be seen, without being an intrusion. Yet when Henry looked back at the note, he was less certain. The only temporary marker he had on hand was red and the ink smeared. Paired with Henry's messy handwriting, it had a macabre look to it. Still, he refused any other type of marker, not willing to risk permanent staining of the mirror.

Randall would understand. He would also, in theory, respect the request to keep the music at a reasonable volume.

Satisfied with his work, Henry made his way back downstairs. It was a slower process than his coming up, as more and more people continued to pour into the house. The guests all looked right through him, brushing past him as they stepped carelessly in his path.

It was only one night, he reassured himself. Randall seemed to have no shortage of rowdy friends and had hosted many parties before. Granted, this was the first time he had ever brought in such a daunting sound system. He would certainly keep the event from becoming too much of an imposition.

Once back to the quiet of the basement he cranked the gramophone, letting the static crackle and low music pleasantly resume. He ran his fingers along the spines of his favorite books, all neatly in a row atop an old trunk of his. He plucked one from the row and returned to his chair.

Again he relaxed, relishing in a perfect evening, from the warble of the music to the familiar words on worn, yellowed pages.

Unfortunately for Henry, he had not made it three pages into his story before the speakers above him roared to life. The music (if the vibrating noise could generously be labelled as such) bellowed like thunder. The bass hammered nails into Henry's temples. The stampeding footsteps accompanying it only worsened the chaos.  

Henry closed his eyes and recalled every detail he could from those first pages of his book. His focus was drawn in enough to continue. He read the next page.

The music grew louder.

Henry read the page again.

There were shouts and cheers bleeding down through the floor.

Henry read the page again.

Dust floated down onto the page, shaken free from the ceiling above. The same plaster dust crept down the walls, widening cracks and causing the house to grumble and groan. The row of books on the trunk tipped over, falling like dominoes and sending three tumbling to the rug.

Henry snapped shut the book in his hand, setting it aside to once again leave his sanctum. He took the stairs two at a time, flying up them at great speed. He opened the heavy door. It was pushed shut, slamming in his face. He opened it once more, throwing it wider with a bit more force.

There was a reasonable way to solve this.

He went directly into the living room, squeezing his way through a crowd that now filled the house, wall to wall. He spotted his roommate standing behind the speakers, laboring over a computer and a panel of bright, flashing buttons. He smashed the buttons in some semblance of rhythm, which in turn seemed to change the obscenely bright flashing lights swirling within the speakers themselves.

"Randall!"

No one heard Henry. He worked his way closer, around the edge of the clomping, clumsy dancing in the center of the room.

"Randall! Could you lower the volume a bit?!" 

It was useless.

Randall had one ear covered by a headset he wore in a crooked manner. His attention stayed on the screen before him. He still couldn't hear Henry.

Why did he never pay attention to the notes?

Henry was well and truly peeved. He finished closing the space between himself and the offending speakers, finding the dial for the master volume and swiftly turning it. The music lowered, loud enough to be heard but no longer shaking the poor old house.

Randall stopped his awkward bobbing to the song and smashing of buttons. His brow furrowed in confusion. A quick inspection of the sound system resulted in him giving a quick shrug. He turned the volume dial back up, even higher than before.

Henry grumbled, stepping around behind the setup, leaning into Randall's space in a way he certainly did not prefer. He smashed one of the bright buttons himself, pausing the music fully.

Randall shuddered at the proximity, but said nothing. He resumed the music as quickly as it was paused.

"You cannot ignore me forever!" Henry's protest was a poor challenger to the sounds of the party.

He went a step further, pulling the loaded down powerstrip from the wall. The computer, the board of buttons, the speakers all went dark and silent. A rumble of confused questions rose from the partygoers.

Satisfied that his message had at last been heard, Henry started back toward his basement and his book.

Randall simply plugged the power strip back in, saying not a word about it.

Before Henry reached the door at the top of the stairs, the music had returned.

He had tried. He had really tried! If Randall was this content to ignore him, so be it.

He threw open the door, rushed back down the stairs, and pulled open the breaker panel at the bottom. With one flip of a switch, the whole house went dark.

Shouts of alarm erupted from above, coupled with boos of protest and feet stamping around blindly. But all of it was better than the teeth-rattling excuse for music.

Now the only music that remained was Henry's lovely old gramophone. He gave it another crank, relishing in the sounds pouring from the brass horn. He settled into his armchair and picked up his book. Sure, the house was darker now, but Henry saw very well in the dark.

He opened the book, brushed the ceiling dust off the page, and read it once more.

Footsteps echoed from the creaking, wooden stairs.

"I'm fixing it, alright!" Randall's voice shouted from too close.

Henry had forgotten to close the door.

Certainly Randall wouldn't dare come down into Henry's basement. That was the most important of the house rules. The basement didn't belong to him.

Yet Randall's steps continued, trodding slowly down the steps in the dark. A bright light cut sharply into the basement, the beam turning this way and that like a drunken lighthouse.

The book fell from Henry's grasp, slipping to the ground with a soft thud. The sound drew the light to it instantly.

"What the hell?" Randall gasped out. He ran his light over the rug, the book, the chair, at last settling it on the gramophone as it played its tune. His mouth hung open. His breath came in shorter, sharper intervals.

"Did you find it?" a stranger's voice called down from above.

"Yeah, uh, hang on!"

Randall shook his head. He took slow steps forward, reaching out toward the gramophone as though it would startle away or bite him at too sudden a motion. He lifted the needle. The music stopped.

Turning around, he resumed his earlier search. As he found the breaker, he quickly jerked the switch the opposite way.

The house buzzed with power, light and sound tearing through it. Cheers and hollering echoed from the celebration above. Again, the revelers were happy.

Henry was not.

His eyes were fixed on the silent gramophone, which no one but Henry was ever permitted to touch. He imagined he could feel the cold of the basement creeping in. Or perhaps it was something else entirely that chilled him. Looking at Randall, he saw a nervous smile stretch across his roommate's face.

Randall cast a quick look back over to Henry's favorite spot. He then started up the stairs.

Henry was faster. He whipped across the room and up, sliding past Randall. He stopped when he reached the ground floor, grabbing hold of that heavy wooden door.

"I have tried with you.” Henry seethed, the last threads of peace and patience snapping. "You will not ignore me any longer."

Ignoring him is precisely what Randall did. He continued up toward the top.

Henry threw the door shut, slamming the weight of it in Randall's face. The crack of the wood colliding with its frame was a gunshot, reverberating so loud it resounded over the speakers.

"You've got to be kidding me!" Randall shouted from beyond the door.

He started to open it, but Henry stood in the way. Even as Henry tried to force the door closed, Randall managed to push it further. Henry slid across the hardwood floors, pushed along with it.

With a shout of pure aggravation, he threw himself shoulder first into the door. It slammed shut once more. This time, however, the sound was not singular. Another loud noise came from beyond it, like a hefty sack of rocks thrown down those creaking stairs.

Henry froze.

He no longer heard the music around him or felt the bass rattling through the house. His world narrowed to the door. He opened it slowly, peering slowly around the edge.

Randall laid at the bottom of the stairs, still and silent.

"Darn it all," he huffed, hurrying down yet again.

Randall's body was still. His head laid against the concrete floor at so strange an angle, a slight pool of red starting to grow beneath it.

It would almost certainly stain, near impossible to scrub out of the floor. Henry lamented having to use a rug to cover this new stain too. At least the blood was not likely to get on Henry's nice, antique rug.

As silver linings went, it was thin. The cons far outweighed the pros. This would make it far more difficult to get new roommates to move in and maintain the house. Hardly anyone wanted to live in a house where a man had died, much less two.

At least he wouldn't have to live with Randall anymore. Sure, the poor man had died. But death wasn't so bad.

Henry had done it decades ago.

He hardly remembered the feeling. Only that it was cold and a bit uncomfortable.

The party continued upstairs, though it would end soon enough. Someone would surely come looking for Randall, which would put a damper on the whole event.

In the meantime, Henry stepped over Randall and went back to his chair. He reached over and reverently reset his music. Instead of the soothing sound, he heard a shout of horrified alarm.

"Who are you?!"

Henry looked up, surprised to see none other than Randall standing before him, wide eyes looking directly at him for the first time.

Hadn't Randall just been...

"Oh, you can't be serious." Henry looked from Randall over to Randall's body, still laid at the bottom of the stairs.

Randall's eyes followed him. He began to scream anew, a string of questions and breathless curses spilling out endlessly. He even ventured to step closer, looking down at his own face.

"This can't be real," he gasped out. "This is some kind of joke or...oh, my god. Oh my god!"

Truth be told, this felt louder than the stereo.

Henry braced his arm on his chair, leaning his chin into his hand. It was now certain that Randall could hear him. The days of ignoring one another were behind them, but their days as roommates would number many, many more.

Henry let out a sigh from the memory of his lungs.

"I should have known better.”