Next Door

2

For a week he f****d my sleep with loud noise. At first I thought it would be motivation for me to tidy up the house, but after two full days, after every square meter of the house had been cleaned, I was trying to fall asleep exhausted and the music coming from the wall next to me was causing terrible headaches that went from my temples to the deepest part of my brain. I thought I had gotten used to the music, but this time when I woke up to moans that drowned out the music and knocked on his door, not once did he open the door or answer me.

I had been waiting for my brother to call me since I moved into the house. I couldn't bear to read the lynching messages and unpleasant jokes about me as I walked around with the phone in my hand. It had been almost a month since the incident, but people wouldn't forget and kept on and on. Every day, the number of cruel jokes about me increased, TV channels interviewed me regardless of whether they were true or false, my bandmates shared stories defaming me on i********:, duetted with videos of me being mocked on t****k, and favorited tweets of people who were shitting on me on Twitter.

I dug my sharp nails into my hair and scratched my scalp hard, but it was no use. I was in the real world, I wasn't having nightmares. Every day, the longer I stayed silent, the more I was losing everything I had. It was worth it for my brother, but I wanted him to come to my defense, to tell me that this wasn't the case.

I took the phone out of the pillows I had tucked it into and found my brother's number. My phone had been silent for long hours because I had deleted all social media apps. As I brought the phone to my ear, my throat was dry because I hadn't spoken to anyone in a long time. As I sipped the half-drunk beer, my brother was still silent.

My brother wouldn't turn his back on me. My parents were alcoholics. For as long as I can remember, my brother had always taken care of me and I was happy to be able to give back to him now, but... Until things took a turn for the worse. I felt bad for putting pressure on him again.

I was about to hang up when I heard "Gazel," and I put the phone back to my ear.

"Ecmel, I was so worried about you, are you okay?" I asked as the music and the sounds of people in the background stopped.

He cleared his throat, I heard him take a sip from his cigarette "I'm fine. My mind is always on you. Are you okay?" he asked.

I sighed "I'm fine," I mumbled and after a deep silence I asked "Can you do anything?"

"I'm trying, but they're threatening, I'm afraid it's going to affect you, little baby," I gritted my teeth and curled up in a ball on the couch.

"Don't worry about me."

"How can I not be worried. You're my little brother, but your friends are real sons of bitches. They're trying to sign a new lead singer to replace you, stay in the shadows for a while, little baby, you'll shine after people forget. I gotta go, I'll send you money," he said and hung up on me. I was left with the phone in my lap. There was not a single person left to commiserate with, I had thrown myself into my work - music - so much that there was no one around me except my own band.

I walked and threw myself face down on the bed. I hadn't eaten properly or slept properly for a long time. Every time my stomach growled, the only thing I had in the house was what was left of the twelve beers I had bought at the liquor store on my first and last trip out. My parents were alcoholics, but that had never turned me off alcohol.I wasn't as weak-willed as they were, I had enough willpower to control what I ate and what I did, but I knew I had to eat something proper.

As I sat up and walked to my phone in the living room, the familiar melody filled the room again. My own voice filtered through the wall and reached me, nudging me as if to shame me. In my songs I had always portrayed an image of being headstrong and strong, but it drove me crazy to know that in real life I was not even a quarter of that.

I walked away from the bedroom where we shared a common wall, settled on my couch, took out my phone and downloaded Getir. I had never felt the need to shop online before, I liked to do my own thing, but now I was feeling extremely sick and exhausted. As I was creating a subscription for myself, my song ended and she switched to another song when the music suddenly stopped and she restarted the song she had just listened to.

I was up to my neck in anger, but I knew that this time I would politely ask him to turn the music down. I put the phone down, took a deep breath and walked to my room, put on a pair of biker leggings and a baggy T-shirt and left the house with the house keys. If I stood in front of him in his underwear, maybe his limited brain would decide to act on the excitement of his s****l impulses.

When I got to the door of his room, I waited for the song to end. It was short, I knocked twice politely and then leaned my shoulder against the wall and waited. The doorbell didn't work, as I had learned by repeatedly knocking on his door. I knocked twice again and waited as the new song came on. My patience was wearing thin and the urge to break it down with my fist was growing like an avalanche.

I was getting ready to knock again, harder this time, when the door opened. He was wearing nothing but a gray tracksuit. His arms were strong and his chest and stomach were like an old house with a blanket over it, showing that it used to be muscle. There was a crescent moon that ran from his left breast to his arm and then down his back, and a snake that started with a crescent moon and turned into tree branches and ran from a little above his elbow to his wrist, with birds wrapped around it and around his arm.

"I apologize for my rude behavior the last time," I said with a deep smile on my face. The market taught me that."It's been a week since I moved in next door and believe me, I haven't slept a wink. I just want you to turn the music down a bit," I said as he raised his eyes and looked at the "a bit" sign I made with my thumb and forefinger together.

"If you don't like it, there are plenty of empty apartments, you could move into any of them. There are still thirteen floors left," I wanted to dig my fingernails into his angular face, to leave my nail prints in his newly grown beard.

I laughed, "Will you cover my moving expenses?"

I snapped.

"I'd love to."

"How about soundproofing yourself with the same value instead?" he rolled his eyes at me and reached out to close the door "You listen to shitty music, I can't stand it anymore," he said, ignoring me. "At least change your taste in music," I said as he slammed the door in my face, but I got nothing in response but the door slamming in my face. As the music filled the apartment, I was happy that at least he was listening to something from someone different.

"Marifet"

That was the name of my band. It was a small band I formed in my second year at university with people from my own group of friends. Most of the time we would go down to Taksim, sing a few songs on the street and post them on the internet. When people started to take an interest in the songs I wrote, our ratings would directly increase.We were selling ourselves to small cafes with the help of my brother, sometimes for the price of food that day, sometimes for the price of two beers we had left over after paying for transportation. So that year, in the studio we rented for three days, we prepared a full album and released it on platforms like Spotify, YouTube, Deezer, Apple Music, etc. The beginning was bad of course, but when we shared it on social media by embellishing and exaggerating it, we got a good response and we were able to sell ourselves to a music producer.

For three and a half years, our career started as a band that entertained the audience before the main bands at festivals and never ended as a main band. The company we were working for had their own people who were too good, and we were just out of place next to them. No matter how hard I tried, a boat could only turn in place with one person rowing it. I was very bored with this. I wanted to move forward on my own, but Ecmel didn't think we could do it.

I guess he was really right. With the "Anti" group hating me so much, I couldn't start singing again without the "Marifet" that I had created, that I had scraped with my teeth, forgiving me. I had nothing but singing, I was in the third year of school, which I had barely made it to, if I hadn't frozen, I probably would have been expelled last year. Even if I returned to school at the end of this year, I had lost my scholarship and I couldn't go to school with the money I had left. I couldn't even get my nose out of this house.

In the hallway, I found the concert box among the stacked boxes lined up along the wall. When I put on my annoying rhythm headphones, all the noise was gone, not conducive to sleep, but I could either stay awake, have a nervous breakdown and trash the place, or sleep uncomfortably. I chose the latter.