217 Babel Street | Apartment 19
Heston pressed his ear against the wall. They were playing that music again, some goddamn saxophone frenzy going on in there. The wallpaper throbbed with the beat. See, it was bad enough having a stinking corpse in the room, now he had to be serenaded at all times of the night by a crazy fuck next door. Not that he’d ever seen his neighbour, of course. Heston never went out onto the corridor unless it was completely devoid of all human life.
His feet itched, his hair was sticky with Marmite. Sometimes the patches of fur stood out on his body like a map of the country he was born in.
What kind of music was that, anyway? Was it jazz? It sounded a little like jazz, like jazz that was being strangled at birth. Or was it rock-n-roll? It was sometimes boisterous, sometimes sad, and something the notes seem to fall softly like snow floating down on a summer's day. It didn't make sense. Was it avant-garde, cubistic, heavy metal, turbo-folk music? Most definitely, and yet sometimes it sounded with such a deep slow melody it was enough to make Heston forget he was a sorry pockmarked wretch upon this sorry pockmarked earth.
And the more the music played, the more the fur grew on his skin. Heston howled. He beat his fist against the wall. He slipped on a black banana skin and landed on his arse.
The corpse stared at him with jelly-like eyes.
The music played on.