Noise
Complaint
Katherine
Rochholz
Copyright
2018 All Rights Reserved
Flash
Fiction
It was a lovely Saturday morning
after a rain storm and on the horizon was a rainbow that seemed to cause the
cactus needles to glint in the sun. I was on my way to my office, I had rented
it after my books went viral and I had started my family. I was there daily,
much like an actual job, and home on the weekends; but since my wife and
children were in Florida sending me pictures of my wife’s parents and palm trees,
I planned to sit at the office all day.
The office building was a nice
place. There was a dentist office below the second floor offices, where mine
was, on the same floor as me, there was a quiet little artist, a farmer (who
always tried to give me samples of beets), and then there was the other artist.
He was annoying with loud music and whatever metalworking art he did. But all should
be gone today, leaving me with a quiet building. I came in with my latte and
palled on getting a lot of work done.
Two hours later I heard the studio
door down the hall slam and the loud music start. I groaned and got up,
sticking my head out of my office and yelled, “RICHARDS! Turn it down!” All I
got back was a laugh. I sighed but went back into my office to get some more
work done. I wanted to finish the last two chapters to send to my editor before
I got sucked into a conversation with my agent about my next book tour.
I went alright, though I still
wished he turned the music down, until the first explosion. I sighed and tried
to ignore him, it seemed to work better sometimes than yelling. But by the
third explosion, I was furious. I got up and went and banged on the man’s door.
I stood there ranting and raving and
then the man had the audacity to laugh. He turned his back on me and I grabbed
his mallet and brought it down on his head. There was only a moment of panic
before I sued his next explosion to hide what I had done. After all, his art
was dangerous, and an accident happened, and the police found him when I went
back and called them… For a noise complaint.
Six months later, I smiled as I
signed my latest best seller: Artistic Murder. It was about a serial killer who killed
artists and used their art to hide the bodies as well as their crimes.
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