An open letter to my upstairs, girlfriend-beating neighbor

Dear Worthless, Girlfriend-Beating Neighbor,

I know your type. Your the nice guy to everyone in public. You smile at children and tell your family you love them every time you go to hang up the phone. You love dogs, especially the big ones who give you that dopey look and you can't help but laugh and pat them a little too hard on the head so that their eyes squint each time your hand drops. You look harmless enough, having the 90s skater look down to your meticulously faded checkerboard Vans. To top the ensemble off, your glasses say "adorable nerd"--maybe you're stuck in this college town, but you landed a good enough job in the university's IT department, so when you tell people that you're a computers guy, they're impressed. They feel humbled by your presence.

But I said I know your type.

I know that when you come home to your third floor, one bedroom apartment, you sit and you wait for your pixie girlfriend to climb the stairs and if she's not there on time, you wonder who she was fucking this afternoon that made her late getting home. You slap the phone out of her hand and your downstairs neighbor can hear it splinter against the wall just above her desk in her bedroom. You tell your girlfriend that she made you do it--it IS all her fault that you're such a monster. You know that she made you do it because she knew she had to hide all the phonecalls to her other lover. You'd find out eventually, but now you can't. The phone is shattered. There's no getting it back.

The bus was running late, she says. I'm sorry, she tells you. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'M SOR--her voice cracks just after the thump rattles your downstairs neighbor's ceiling. She screams. A scream that not even a horror movie can fake. A scream unlike most people have ever heard in their lives. And the screams don't stop. Terrified screams. Screams that I have heard before because I have made them before.

I'm letting you know that I will call the police every. single. time. But that's not what I want to do. I want to put you in a place where you will never be allowed to interact with anyone. I want to shield the world from you and make it impossible for you to even look at anyone with the hatred that I hear raining from my ceiling. I want you to physically be as alone as you make your girlfriend feel. As you want your girlfriend to be. I know your type--you need to be her everything.

And when she doesn't want to press charges and she's too scared to leave, I will still call the police. Every. single. time. It's not for you. It's for her.

Hating you every time I breathe,
Me