Thin Walls
Angela struggled to sleep for the third night in a row in her damp smelling, uncomfortably hot, and much too small apartment. The building had the price to match its slumlord stylings and it wasn’t like Angela could afford any better.
Sometimes she wondered if it had ever been as bad at home as it was now, living on her own, free from the overwhelming control of her narcissist adoptive mother. But those thoughts only came on nights like this, nights where the obscene screams from the apartment next door pierced the walls like paper and kept her up, guaranteeing that she would face the next day of work with an energy drink in hand, thankfully the only requirement to work at her local Starbucks was a pulse and the ability to fake a smile. She could do that with the best of them.
The screams turned to low moans, and Angela sighed with frustration, it was the worst part of her torment, that her bad nights were always the direct result of someone else having the apparent time of their life. From next door the woman’s voice crept through, a begging whimper of a sound.
“Oh! Oh! Just like that! Please!” She drew out the words like a porn star only with half the creativity and Angela’s neighbour never seemed reluctant to oblige the requests of his latest conquest.
She had met him a few times before, bumping into him often when she would forgo an attempt at sleep for a cigarette on the roof—he would be leaving his own apartment next door, his current girl toy visible through the quickly closed crack of the door, splayed out with messy hair and the same dazed contentedness on their face as a drug addict shooting up for the first time after a stint in rehab. Her neighbours name was Matt. She hated him.
More often then not since he moved in he would join her on the roof for a smoke, she’d bum cigarettes off him and feel the tiniest victory that at least she claimed a price for the insomnia he inflicted. Sometimes they would talk, and when they didn’t Angela studied his face.
He wasn’t anything special to look at, a face maybe a little squarer than average, that kind of boy-next-door you’d root for in the movies, the one who sacrifices himself for the girl in the second act, right as she realizes he had always loved her. To Angela’s annoyance it wasn’t a face she could immediately hate. Not that she didn’t imagine it as she beat her pillow from time to time. So looking like he did It was surprising then that the woman he brought seemed to outclass his potential, they were anything but girl-next-door beauty, tall and slim, always wearing a bit too much makeup, leaving Angela to wonder if they were sex workers though they slept over which would indicate otherwise. To put it more plainly they were what she wasn’t. She was plain, five foot three but without the bubbly personality that might have others call her a firecracker, brown hair that at least managed to be manageable and straight though she cut it at her shoulders cause she couldn’t deal with the effort of it being any longer, and her face was unremarkable—she could be the heroine of a young adult novel, she had Bella Swan energy, her standout feature were her two green eyes that might dazzle someone if she didn’t find the thought of talking to people who weren’t on the internet to be frightening and not worth the risk. She would never find herself on the other side of the wall, and she ached at that thought.
The murmurs had finally disappeared into muffled noises and Angela found herself straining to hear what was happening. She realised the girl next door must have her faced buried in her pillow she hadn’t stopped moanjng she only meant to try and bury the worst of it. Angela’s skin prickled as if a gentle wind was blowing across her beneath the covers, she knew what came next and it was her favorite part. The part where Matt spoke, his quiet non-descript voice with that unplaceable Hollywood accent of his would begin to recite... A mantra? It was hard for her to catch the words he never raised his voice and so only a few words slipped through at a time but they made Angela’s skin rise and melted away her frustration, instead her hand delved lower and matched his cadence drawing lines across her skin tracing constellations in the sensitive bumps until her fingers brushed the edges of her underwear.
Her conscious mind lost itself in the folds of his speech and though at first she had no idea what he was saying slowly with a word caught here and a syllable there her subconscious fed Matt’s messages into her brain to twist and pull. There were subtle differences with each girl but none the less she now operated on a different level connected to Matt oblivious in the room next door. Her lips soundlessly repeated everything he said.
“There we go, yes you feel good don’t you?” He couldn’t see Angela nod her head in agreement.
“Here’s where we’re going to go. You just need to listen, follow the sound of my voice, it’s a trail that will take you where you want to go. Where you need to go. And I’ll got with you.” For such a soft-spoken guy he was assertive now. “Follow the trail, enjoy the sensations.”
A pause and then a moan. What was he doing through that wall? Angela’s own fingers dipped beneath the fabric of her underwear lifting it just enough to allow her hand to brush against her intimates. She was along for the ride now, if she wasn’t going to sleep she was going to take advantage of the sensations that came from listening to her neighbour’s odd rituals.
“It’s a forest but you’re on the trail, following it and following my voice. You know where its going, it’s where you wanted to go, why you came to see me. To feel that sensation, that destination you’ve always heard about but never quite reached.”
Her fingers burned hot as they reached her entrance, now damp and well-trained. Well-trained? We’re those some of Matt’s words? They fit right, just like her fingers fit right inside her sinking deeper to find her clit swollen and in need.
“You’re falling away from yourself my voice is all you hear your body is all you feel, no worries, no judgement just the sensations of touch enveloping you—getting tense, your toes curling, your fingers digging into the sheets, you know its coming, you hold it back by choice now you want it to last.”
Angela found her fingers pumping in and out of herself, at some point she had pulled her panties down completely so that she could catch up and match the feelings that permeated from the other room. For that woman it might be her first time having Matt lead her, shaking away her thoughts so she wasn’t an obstacle to her only climax, for Angela it might as well happen every night she could shake away her own mind like taking off a coat. His words were pleasure she couldn’t associate them with anything else! But there could be no release even as she desperately pawed at herself for relief. Not until he said so.
“And a little more. You feel it coming from your toes to your hwad, every nerve dancing to my voice. A little more. You’re incadescent, you are need itself it burns in you. One more moment. My hand is an instrument of pleasure and your body is singing with it. And release!”
“Ahhhhh! Oh my god! Fuck! Yes. Fuck!” Her screams barely hid Angela’s and now it was her time to bury her head in her pillow her teeth clenching together as her whole body convulsed pleasure shooting from inside of her to every place she could feel like electricity trying to get out. She screamed. She moaned and finally she pulled her pillow into her and squeezed it tightly letting all of her strength leave her, till everything was quiet, and she was alone. And then her body became heavy and her body detached from her in exhaustion and in the night her exact memories of the event of being under Matt’s spell would fade.
The morning would come too quickly and Angela would only remember the frustration, the exhaustion, and with a little embarrassment the excitement of the night before. As she downed the first energy drink that would get her through to another sleepless night beside those thin walls.