Stop That Banging!

“Why do you keep banging like that?”

I looked up. My boyfriend, Paul, was at the kitchen table, clicking away at his laptop.

“Like what?” I asked.

“What?” He looked up, shoving his glasses onto his forehead and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

“You said, “why do you keep banging like that?”. I’m not banging. I’m just folding clothes.” I walked over to the closet in the hallway and hung his sweatshirt up.

“I didn’t say anything. I’ve got to get this done before tomorrow, I should have been doing it yesterday, but someone-” He rolled his eyes toward me. “-really needed to go get ice cream. And go to the mall.”

“Hmmmm, and someone-” I rolled my eyes back at him. “-really didn’t have to come, but convinced himself with the words, “Fuck this shit, I want some cookies and cream.”. It must have been the upstairs neighbor. That guy’s a douche.”

“A douche who can hear you call him a douche if he can hear you folding clothes and think you’re banging.” He pulled his glasses down his nose. “So quit banging and let me finish this, or you’re sleeping alone tonight.”

I shut up, and finished folding the laundry, walking quietly between the sofa and the bedroom, and forgot about the voice. It must have just been the douche upstairs, after all.

A few days later, Paul was in class, and I was reading a textbook on the sofa, arm flopped off the sofa and onto the floor. I tapped a finger gently against the floor as I read.

“Stop banging!”

“I’m not banging! Shut up!” I yelled up at the ceiling. I continued reading and tapping.

“I’m trying to sleep! Quit the damn banging!”

“Are you on drugs? I’m not fucking banging, asshole!”  I rolled over onto my back, holding the book up with both hands. 

A bit later, I heard footsteps thumping up the stairs and the lock turn in the apartment upstairs.

“What’s he bitching about banging? Shit man, he’s like a herd of elephants.” I grumbled to myself. I thought for a minute.  Had I heard him leave? He must have, since he’d been yelling before, and now he was tromping up the stairs. He didn’t have a roommate, the last one had left over a month ago, in a screaming fight that had been in turns both humorous and frightening. Paul and I had wavered between making popcorn and calling the cops for 2 hours before the roommate left in a final shriek of curses and trailed by a whiskey bottle flung from the top of the stairs.

I saw it was getting late and got up to start dinner.

“This is your last god dam warning! Keep banging and I’m gonna come up there!”

I opened my mouth to yell back a slew of obscenities, when my mind replayed the comment. “Up there”? Paul and I lived on the first floor of a two story house. There was a 3 foot crawlspace under the house, but there wasn’t even a proper basement.

I bent down and tapped my finger against the floor. I paused, and something slammed against the floor under my feet. I screamed and skittered away, retreating into the kitchen. The pounding continued, following me, making books jump off the shelves in the living room, and the dishes in the cabinets clatter against each other.

“Hey, quit that fucking noise!”

This time it really was the guy upstairs, stomping his foot against the floor to emphasize his point.  I turned my head up, was about to start screaming again, when something grabbed my foot. I looked down. A hand, palest white with greenish veins pulsing beneath the surface, was wrapped around my ankle. I tried to pull away and it clamped down tighter. It was coming right out of the floorboards, there was no hole in the floor, and this was no see-through movie ghost, but it passed right through the wood like smoke. I began to scream.

The hand pulled down, and my foot passed through the boards with no resistance. It was like stepping into a deep puddle of ice water. I lurched forward, then backward, trying to tear my foot away from that grasping hand, but it only pulled down harder. My shin began to slide through the floor. I braced my other foot against the floor and pulled as hard as I could, then put my hands down on the floor and began to push with my arms, too. The hand let go of my foot, and I pulled it back a little, it came slowly, like pulling your foot out of deep, thick mud.

Then hands closed over my wrists, both of them, and began pulling. For a moment, a face seemed to be pushing at the wood between my palms, a old, angry, mean face, then I went into full panic, wrenching at my hands and leg, twisting and bucking like a beast caught in a trap. But my arms sank deeper, and in a few moments my face was pressed against the floor.

“I’m sorry!” I gasped. “I’m sorry!” Then my face sank under the floorboards.

I’ve been asleep for a while now. I know Paul moved out, the racket of the movers was almost unbearable, but I resisted the urge to tell them to shut the hell up for a while. I liked Paul a lot, and didn’t want to have to go up there and yell at him. But theses new people, ug. They have a dog. A little yapping thing that scurries around all day, slamming it’s nasty little feet against the floors, screeching it’s nasty little head off every time a fucking leaf blows past the window. I might have to reach up there and pull it down here, so it can sleep. It can sleep right here, between me and the old man. It might be nice for a little company. The old man talks in his sleep sometimes, giggling about things he did while he was alive, none of them nice, most of them ending with a child buried in the woods somewhere in Pennsylvania. I could roll over and pull the dog to my chest, and put my face in its fur. Sure it was a little yapper up there, but down here, there was just sleep and the old man muttering to himself.  Company would be nice.

Slowly, my hand heavy with sleep, I place my palm against the underside of the floorboards and wait for the dog to pass within grabbing distance.

End

*I got hit by a car when I was 8. My back has been messed up ever since. Sometimes, when it's acting up, it actually helps to sleep on the floor. One night as I was lying on the floor of my room, something banged hard against the floor under me. It turns out it was the cats fighting under the house, but holy crap did it scare me!