Nightshift Requiem

Another nightshift at this high-end dump of a hotel that is the Conrad. Six hours staring down vacant foyers with sickening fluorescents flickering overhead. And enough swill beers to manage the tedium and anaesthetise the small beastie crawling inside my cranium.

The shrink had told me that I should knacker off this nightshift job and take a load off on the sauce. "It's exacerbating your mental health problems, the underlying anxiety and depression," the numpty had said. He also wanted me to go see a "psychologist" to sort out my anger issues. The prick even scribbled down some prescriptions for me to take the edge off, some tranquilizers or whatever. Bullshit. Booze is the only medicine I need. Shrinkage and pills are for pussies.

By night's end my head pounds like hammers on an industrial site.

"You utter muppet!" I snarl at the fossilised idiot creeping over the road up ahead. The headlights barely cutting through the pre-dawn gloaming.

"Do you not even know how to steer a wheel?" The fury in me floods over like the sewage behind my flat.

Finally I pull into the building's car park. Thank fuck. I made it home in one piece. Straight into bed, a refuge of scratched-up sheets and oblivion.

My skull hits the pillow and suddenly it starts up: that thud-thump-scratch racket from above. The bovine freak is at it again. Dragging crap around at the witching hour. I burrow further under the blankets, trying to suffocate myself. But the horrible din just won't let up. It's like this psycho wants to collapse the whole building down on top of us. "STOP IT YOU CUNT!" it bursts out of me.

Up the stairs I lumber, and start pounding on her door with both fists clenched, yelling "OPEN THE DOOR NOW!"

She finally shambles to the door.

When the door cracks open it reveals the hideous vision. She's there, illuminated in a pale light that makes her look even uglier and more bloated than ever. Swollen eyes, mascara runny like snot down her face. An elephant with make-up.

"Don't you go to work?" I blurt out, my words slathered in contempt.

"It's none of your business!" she screeches back, her voice shrill and nasty, and slams the door shut.

I hammer away though. "You're fired from your job again, aren't you?" My chest is heaving. "Just laze about at home now, making a ruckus. What are you doing? Sliding sofas and chairs across the floor like a munted lunatic?"

"I'm calling the coppers!" she shouts through the wood.

Pathetic threat, like I give a shit. "Is this your new way of wanking, you depraved, morbid cow?"

"You are insane," she roars back. "You should be locked up in a lunatic asylum!"

I should be locked up? Hilarious, coming from the batshit crazy herself.

Another three minutes battering away at the door and my knuckles are howling for respite.

Finally giving in, I drag myself downstairs. There's that wrinkly geriatric gopher again on the landing.

"Hey neighbour!" His chirpy greeting slices through me. My fist connects with the rotten carcass of his jaw. I wince. The pain feels like hammering an anvil into my own throbbing knuckles.

He crumbles under the weight of my punch, his face blood-soaked as he whimpers like a beaten puppy "Oiii".

"Fuck you," I growl.

Back in my flat, the coffee tastes like bitter bile. No reprieve, no solace for shattered sleep.

This building has become a cesspit where human trash breeds and multiplies. Time to make an exit before this festering hive of misery consumes what little is left inside of me.