Chapter 1: Wall Thumping and Wet Dreams
The thud was the worst part.
Not the low, thrumming bass from the club three blocks over.Not the sporadic shriek of laughter from the couple upstairs. The thud was different. It came through the wall shared with apartment 3B like a slow, deliberate heartbeat. A deep, resonant impact that made the framed map of historical Yorkshire on Viv’s bedroom wall tremble against its nail.Thud.
Viv lay rigid in her dark bedroom, the duvet pulled to her chin.Her jaw ached from clenching. She’d moved here for the silence. The old stone library where she worked was a cathedral of quiet, broken only by the soft sigh of turning pages and the whisper of her own pencil. This apartment, with its parchment-thin walls, was a different kind of archive. One that catalogued every stray cough, every televised argument, every thud.Thud.
It was followed by a scrape, metal on wood. Then a low, guttural sound that was less a moan and more a growl, strangled and deep.Viv’s neighbor, Poppy.The sculptor. The one with the wild hair and the way of looking right through you in the hallway, like you were an interesting smudge on the glass.Viv knew the basics. By day, the woman in 3B welded. You could hear the angry hiss of the torch, the sporadic, violent hammering.By night, she… well, Viv had assumed she partied. The music was sporadic, usually something with a driving, tribal rhythm. The laughter was sharp, frequent, and often accompanied by the clink of bottles in the recycling chute the next morning.But this.This was new. This was a monthly ritual, it seemed. Always around the full moon, which Viv found laughably melodramatic.Another thud, sharper.Something cracked.Viv flinched.
Her annoyance was a physical thing, a tight coil in her stomach.She paid good money for this place. She deserved peace. She deserved not to have her bedroom wall used as what sounded like a backboard for some frenetic, violent game.
Then the moan came again, longer this time, raw and unmistakably female.It didn’t sound like pleasure. It sounded like pain, or a rage so profound it had no other outlet. A shiver skittered down Viv’s spine, landing somewhere low in her abdomen.And that’s when she felt it. A hot, shameful pulse between her thighs.She screwed her eyes shut, mortified. It was the adrenaline, the anger, the unwanted intrusion.It had to be. But her mind, treacherous and suddenly vivid, supplied an image: Not Poppy alone in her chaos, but Poppy here.In this bed. Those broad shoulders, the hands that could wield a heavy mallet, gripping Viv’s hips instead, holding her down with that same terrifying, thrilling force. The thought was so stark, so absurdly specific, it stole the air from her lungs.She let out a shaky, ragged breath.
The sounds next door ceased.Abruptly.Totally.The silence was louder than the thuds. It was a vacuum.Viv held her breath, listening to the frantic hammer of her own heart. Had she… had she made a sound?A new sound came through the wall.Not a thud. A slow, deliberate drag.A chair leg across floorboards. Then, faint but unmistakable, the soft click of her own bedroom doorknob turning.It was impossible. The doors were solid, locked.But the sound was right there.Viv froze, her blood turning to ice.
A voice came through the wall. It was low, husky, and vibrated in the plaster as if the speaker was leaning right against it. “You’re loud, too.”
Viv’s throat closed.She couldn’t speak.
“Your breath,” the voice—Poppy’s voice—continued.It was calm, almost contemplative.“It hitches. On the inhale.I can hear your heartbeat from here.It’s… fast.”
This was insane. No one had hearing that good.Viv found her voice, a dry rasp.“Stop. Talking through my wall.”
A soft, humorless chuckle.“You were listening.You’re always listening. I hear the pause in your page-turning. The creak of your floor when you edge closer to the vent.”
“I’m not—” Viv began, her face burning.
“You were thinking,” Poppy interrupted, her tone shifting, becoming something darker, more intimate.“Just now. Weren’t you?Your pulse spiked. I could taste it in the air.”
A cold terror, threaded with something electrifying, gripped Viv.This was beyond a noise complaint. This was unhinged. She threw the duvet off and stood on shaking legs, facing the blank, cream-colored wall as if it were a foe.
“You need to stop,” Viv said, forcing steel into her whisper.“Or I’ll call the landlord. Or the police.”
For a long moment, there was only silence. Then, Poppy spoke again, her voice now edged with a weary, ancient sadness that didn’t match her age.
“They never help,” she said, the words barely audible.“They just make messes. You should just… put your pillow over your head.Read one of your little books. Forget you hear anything.”
The dismissal stung, cutting through the fear. Viv’s curiosity, that painful, insatiable engine that drove her to trace lineage through dusty parish records and decipher faded ink, roared to life. This wasn’t just a noisy neighbor.This was a mystery. A living, breathing one, hammering on the other side of a wall.
“What are you doing in there, Poppy?” Viv asked, the question leaving her lips before she could cage it.The silence this time was different.Charged. Viv could almost feel the weight of a stare through the plaster.
When Poppy finally answered, her voice was a rough stone dragged over velvet.“Nothing for a quiet archivist. Go to sleep, Vivienne Cross.”
The use of her full name sent another jolt through her. Of course Poppy knew it.Viv had ordered a nameplate for her mailbox.
She heard movement again next door, the heavy, tired tread of footsteps moving away from the wall.The conversation was over. The thudding did not resume.
Viv stood in the center of her room, surrounded by her silent, orderly shelves of books.The map of Yorkshire still quivered on its nail. The air felt thin, scoured clean by the strange exchange.She didn’t put the pillow over her head. She didn’t pick up a book.
She sat on the edge of her bed, listening to the new, profound silence, and wondered what kind of beast she had just invited to acknowledge her.