Thin Walls (cont'd)

<< back

He farted with great fanfare and with wild abandon. Sometimes it was a high pitched, fluttering whine that lingered before lilting up at the end like a question mark, sounding like nothing so much as the mating call of some odd and (thankfully) extinct bird. Sometimes it was an old fashioned Bronx cheer, sputtering along strongly for a good long moment before trailing off smoothly; other times it was an antique locomotive engine letting off steam, whooshing out and hissing angrily. Occasionally it idled: a souped-up motorcycle at a stoplight. The worst was when it started as a low muttering growl in the distance, then crescendoed steeply to roll like a mighty thunder across the landscape, finally to recede and end with a short — pffft—.

Well, all misery must at some point come to an end, and eventually the one-man orchestra in room 28 ran out of orifices with which to create sounds. He drifted off with only the occasional sniffle, cough, or fart to mark his journey into sleep. He didn't even bother to start snoring again. It was wonderful. It was glorious. I could stand such occasional noises. I could stand the muffled zoom of the odd car out late on rue de Rivoli a block away. I could stand infrequent drip-drip that my room's sink makes every night no matter how hard I twist the faucets shut. I could even stand the oddly regular creaking of bedsprings that was emanating from the wall on the other side of my bed, coming from room 26.

Oh, no.

And so, the woman in room 26 began her long, slow, loud, and none-too-shy-about-it ascent to orgasm. It was not to be her last of the evening. Her lover must be a stallion. It is a shame I shall have to kill him in the morning.

Copyright © 1999 by Reid Bramblett. All rights reserved.