My New Neighbor

The tv blared. John Oliver made fun of society while a laugh track played, and even through that the sound traveled. It made its way through the wooden door, and through a kitchen with black and white checked floors where it bounced off the subway tiles on the walls that probably date back to the 1920s, and have likely heard more than we could ever imagine.The sound then turned a corner, traveling down a dark hallway where it took a right and somehow slipped through yet another heavy wooden door and into my room where it even got past the scream-crying of the teenage girls on the Showtime series, “Yellowjackets”, and through all that, it made its way into my ear holes where it tickled the tiny hairs within and traveled on through the canal to my eardrum which vibrated against some bones and into my brain where it was translated and interpreted by my auditory cortex, so that I, Holly, the human woman could understand.

It was the unmistakable sound of a calloused hand slapping against so…