The Most Tired Person In The Entire World

He was being driven slowly crazy by the unemployed semi-literates packed like sheep into the apartment above his. There was, like, an inch of cardboard between them, his apartment and theirs, if that. The walls were boxboard. These heavy-footed plodders talked on and on about being artists, being broke, being geniuses. Thunderclaps of devastating laughter between them, hilarious. The sound of things being broken into, broken up, pounded back. Like everybody these days, they yakked on and on about every subject under the sun in an all-knowing, condescending manner, pissy & deploring know-it-alls with not a drop of wisdom in the bucket between them. To know so little about so much. Christ Jesus, we are doomed.

Jackboots, work boots, cowboy boots, biker boots, hiking boots. Size-13 know-it-alls.

It seemed they were moving a pile of rocks from one side of the apartment to the other, over and over again.

The words hard slog.

Their every declamation torture.

The world will end in fraternal laughter.

He felt this payback for his own youth. Back when he lived on the top floor. Karmic retribution for the neighbor downstairs he and his misshapen gang had most certainly pushed to the brink, doing time.

Oh man. Exhalations a’plenty. Heavy shifting.

The sky outside sighing.

Release me.

Meanwhile, the novel went nowhere.