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writinginthetwilight · 2 months

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Knock, knock.

Neighbour! Eddie Munson x Neighbour! Reader

Chapter Warnings: 18+ for smut in later parts if you are under 18 you do not belong here, be gone. AFAB reader. Stress. Strong language. Nightmares. Sleep paralysis. Horror-esk/creepy vibes.. Hopefully. See Masterlist for full list of warnings.

Authors note. Thank you for all the love on the first part of this fic. This story is feeding my creepy brain and I'm truly loving it, all my love to @bettyfrommars @allthingsjoeq and @somnambulic-thing for writing the original prompt that birthed this weird little world I'm making and them all being so supportive of it.

6. You move into a new apartment and soon discover that you share a wall with a very noisy neighbor. Loud laughter, talking, and music are a constant companion. When you decide to go over and knock on their door to confront them in person, you find that the apartment is unoccupied and has been for months.

Reblogs and comments are much appreciated. Love you bye.

Part 2: Whispers from a shadow in the walls.

The building was too quiet.

The rain tapping lazily at your window and the muted hush of early morning traffic on the wet street below did little to distract you from it.

There's something tangible to the silence, one that can only be felt at this time of day, like your consciousness is disturbing it.

Headphones are quickly vetoed, the lack of awareness in your surroundings they created leaving you skittish in the still unfamiliar space.

So you work softly around the unpacked boxes, slowly searching your way through them until you find your old squat plastic CD player, adorned in peeling band stickers and Sharpie drawings. It's a relic from your youth.

A sigh of relief leaves you when it hums to life, filling the space with the low murmurs of a local early morning show, the silence crawling away to the recesses of where it came.

You lean against the kitchen cabinets, linoleum floor cold against your bare feet as you breathe for what feels like the first time since you woke.

You'd ripped yourself from a dream that left you drenched in sweat like you were purging a fever and eyeing the closed bathroom door like it was the gate to hell.

Footsteps had rung out from it, whispers reverberating out through a gap that crept open just enough to see through from where you were trapped in bed. Shadows morphed into faceless entities that watched you. Unable to look away, neither did they.

So when you had checked the time after falling out of bed to turn on the light and it showed 5 am, you had decided that the risk of falling back into that far outweighed the extra few hours of sleep.

There was little to do with your life in boxes, the disarray making you itch.

The stains on the walls for the most part had been superficial, easily removed with dish soap and rags, but it was made increasingly obvious the more you scrubbed at your bedroom walls, green fibres clinging to it and ruining another scrub pad, that the ‘no previous smokers’ on the lease was another lie.

So you cleaned.

The walls were more solid, so were the bathrooms, obviously part of what was once the original layout, they hold the telltale sticky yellow nicotine stains that had once crawled up your late grandmother's living room walls.

You take another picture to send off to the lease agency as daylight starts to creep in through the broken blinds. Another bargaining chip in your case against the ‘neutral paint colours only’. The tin of dark blue calls to you from the corner.

Soon my love.

Once the sun's fully risen you make the most of the limited gas left in your rental, badly navigating unfamiliar streets for necessities before rushing home to let the removal men ferry the last of your belongings up.

Items that had laid in storage since the day you bought them dust-covered and unloved now in a place where you could enjoy them, the green couch that sat still covered in plastic because it was too garish, the bed frame stuffed back in its packaging because it creaked too much. Your black desk showed too much dust.

Tvs, lamps, rugs and bookshelves.

Were all unneeded in a house which was never really yours.

But it didn't matter, it was all here now.

You're knee deep in baffling instructions surrounded by screws and wooden slats when you hear it. The distinct sound of somebody in the next room.

You arm yourself with one of the bed slats and creep through ready to try and disarm the intruder when you're met with an empty space.

The clear sound of footsteps and muffled voices rounds you, making you turn in place before they recede into nothing and all is quiet again.

You pad forward, makeshift weapon still raised and round the kitchen quickly only to see half unpacked boxes of utensils.

You allow yourself to sag a little, silently scolding yourself at what you were expecting to do with a plank of wood when music comes from behind you making you jerk backwards, the wooden slat flies from your grasp crashing into a pile of boxes.

You rush pointlessly towards them in an attempt to stop them falling and the music pauses as they crash to the floor loudly. You eye the room as you crouch to scoop up your belongings but just as you relax it's flaring up again.

It sounds tinny, far away and you rise cautiously like you might startle it out of existence, eyes trailing to where the music might emanate but it seems to travel unnaturally from no one source.

It gets clearer as you approach the far wall and when you press your ear against it you can hear humming which turns to the mimicking sounds of a guitar solo in time with the music. The voice gets closer before it rings out behind you, distant like before and it mingles with the sound of music and footsteps.

It's disorienting and your eyes trail around before they're drawn up to the scar. You quickly climb the back of the couch precariously balancing as you stretch up to it fingertips grazing the rough edges.

Found it. The sound trails through what you assume must be a space between the floors and you wonder if he has a scar like yours on his side too.

You camber down and make your way to your room. The sounds are still audible but muted and you thank whatever residential overlord that they didn't knock down the walls in here too.

You had lived in dorms, shared houses with noisy flatmates and a house that creaked because it had ‘character’.

You push in your headphones, deciding that you don't want to be that neighbour who nags on the first day.

Bleary eyes open as light casts over you, the couch below is soft if not still a little musty from the dust that made its way under its plastic wrap.

You will get used to it.

You don't remember falling asleep, you only sat down for a second, but the early morning must have caught up with you. The music has stopped and you let yourself bathe in the silence for a moment staring at the scar on the ceiling above.

Disorientation sets in, time is a mystery, and you shift to retrieve your phone which digs into your side from where it's slipped out of your pocket. The lifeless black screen stares back at you and you let it drop to your chest as you stretch out.

You double take a glance to the room as soon as you turn, sitting quickly to take it in.

The space is filled much more than seems possible, your furniture fused at odd angles with items you don't recognise, posters and pictures overlapping, like a bad AI generation where nothing quite looks right.

Light catches everything from angles with no source and it sprawls to the wall in front of you dancing over the plaster like its fabric caught in a breeze.

A sense of panic rises in you, the hair on your neck standing on end and you slowly turn to look behind you, scrambling to a stand at the sight of the darkness that shrouds the opposing side of the room, barely a yard from where you had been sleeping.

It seems to hum as you take a tentative step forward.

You have no doubt that if you were to step into it, it would swallow you, there's no gradualness to it, just a cliff edge into nothing. Your ears catch the only sound that echoes unnaturally around you and it drags you away from the abyss.

A drip.

You follow it, dodging items until you find your kitchen where black liquid is pooling on your countertops, spreading with every moment and soaking into the carpet beneath. You look up to the scar above it which weeps down feeding the puddle slowly.

This isn't real. You just need to wake up.

You try to peer out the windows but it seems the abyss lies there too, matte black with no reflection.

Your bedroom is oddly unchanged as you squeeze past a bookshelf that has become one with a suitcase. Everything as you left it. Your hand hovers over the handle of the bathroom door but you think better of it.

Whatever is in there can stay there.

The wall of light still flutters and you press your hand to it, it's plient and gives a little against your touch and you go to step through.

“Hello?”

The voice sounds solid and real and your drawn forward.

The sensation of rushing to the surface of water overcomes you, blood pounding in your ears and you wake eyes wide and gasping, a small yelp leaving you as you crash to the floor below you.

There's ringing in your ears but everything is exactly as it should be.

No abyss.

No lights.

No amorphys drip.

No disembodied voices.

A curse comes from the other side of the wall, then mumbles echo from above you.

The rest of the week passes quickly, your new neighbour's presence hadn't gotten under your skin all that much, granted you'd never had a neighbour that sounded like they were living in your fucking apartment but it was fine.

Well almost none.

Fine.

Ear plugs, headphones and you assumed his odd work schedule meant moments of peace came relatively often.

The apartment got painted.

Dinners were made.

Nightmares were kept to a minimum, it probably wasn't safe the amount of string lights that now adorned your bathroom but all in all, you got settled.

Carved out a space for yourself.

But then you started work.

The first night you come home late, overwhelmed by paperwork and HR ‘welcoming packages’ that were basically instruction manuals on how many ways they could fire you.

You collapsed with exhaustion face down into your comforter, body spent with the anxiety of first impressions and grappling with the ins and outs of office life. Wriggling out of rigid clothes that had suffocated you all day, you prayed for an interrupted sleep.

Only to be woken a few hours later at 3 am as loud laughter came from behind your bedroom wall as your new neighbour spoke loudly and animated on the phone for almost an hour.

It set the tone for the rest of the week.

You weren't an asshole, you weren't, but even without the thin walls and gaping peephole that left you involuntarily privy to the musing of another human being's life.

Music was constant but there was also the TV or singing, at the top of his lungs, talking to himself, always moving footsteps back and forth, back and forth, belonging crashing to the floor, cursing when said items fall.

He was just fucking loud, and Friday was the day that it broke you.

The day was a cluster fuck from the go, you forgot your lunch, got your period at work, forgot the password to your laptop and got locked out, had an unannounced team building afternoon and by the end of it, you just wanted to crawl into sweats, eat chips and drown your sorrows in cheap wine.

It all started surprisingly well, there wasn't the usual screech of guitar and one man karaoke show rattling your walls when you came in.

It only lasted an hour before you heard him come in, just enough time to relax and it wasn't just him, it was a group of them.

You deflate at the sound of their laughter and hate yourself for it, because who gets angry at the sound of laughter? You plug your headphones in but before long the laughter gets loud, dispersed with yelling, cheers and heckling audible over the sound that's being directly fed into your ears.

You're trying to keep a lid on it, but even moving to the bedroom, a sanctuary where the world is usually a little more your own doesn't seem to work as the sound travels in from outside the door.

And why should you have to hide yourself away? This was your home too and if you wanted to watch TV without headphones plugged into your Xbox pad then why was that an issue?

But you don't need to make a scene.

You make it to 11pm.

When the sound of them leaving is only followed by the start of his music you snap.

In all your crumpled band shirt and sweatpant glory you match out hammering on his door.

There's no music and you start to fidget when he doesn't answer, eyes searching the empty hallway, you assume he's got the message without you cursing him out.

But you're barely in the door when it starts again.

You rip the drawer of your desk open hastily scrawling a polite shut the fuck up note through gritted teeth.

Shoved it under the door, another knock that goes unanswered.

The musics gone.

It doesn't start up again and you crawl into bed smugly for the first uninterrupted night's sleep you've had in a week.

When you wake a note sits halfway sticking out under the door.

Hey sorry!

Didn't mean to be loud.

If we could keep this between us that would be cool.

I'll keep it down.

Eddie. No 5.

You instantly regret the email to the landlord asking about a way to close up the gaps in the ceiling due to being able to hear no 5’s entire life.

You stress about it all day, a good night's rest and a day sat vegetating in front of the TV making the whole ordeal feel like it got blown way out of proportion. By the time your phone lights up with a reply, you've come up with a way to cover your tracks so you don't get the poor guy evicted.

But it doesn't really matter.

Because the landlord's reply makes you run cold.

Nobody lives there

Next.