SHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH!
The loud shuffling noise came from directly above my bed. She’s up again. Must be eleven; she always gets up at eleven. A quick glance over at the clock—Yup. Eleven. Old mare is like clockwork.
SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH!
Almost there, keep going. The shuffling noise traveled across the ceiling throughout my entire apartment, finally coming to a stop at the opposite end. A door closed and there were five consecutive minutes of silence. Not quite enough time to fall asleep before the toilet flushed and—
SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH!
—she was on her way back to bed. I could only imagine there were grooves in her floor from where her walker dragged. The tennis balls probably didn’t have any fuzz left on them. Not that I knew her walker had tennis balls on them. I’d never seen her before.
But I knew that it was an elderly mare living in apartment forty-two; the apartment right above mine—and that’s only because I had to ask the landlord about the scuffling noises I heard every day and night. He’d laughed and said I wasn’t the first tenant to complain about the mare in apartment forty-two.
I thought about going up there once, just to introduce myself, but I didn’t really want to. With my luck, she’s one of those old, stuck-up mares that don’t think too kindly of the younger generations. She’s probably rich, too; staying alive just out of spite to deny her children their inheritance.
The shuffling noise grew louder as the mare returned to her bedroom, and I covered my head with my pillow. She was right above me, with no idea how much grief she caused me every night. Were there cheaper housing in Manehattan, I would have moved.
Though I couldn’t hear it, I knew the mare was climbing back into her elegant bed, wearing her frilly night robe. That thought sat uncomfortably with me most nights. I mean, maybe she was a model back in the day, but still. The floor squeaked a little as the mare shifted beneath the covers, shaking the bed.
All right, get comfortable so I can sleep!
When the squeaking finally stopped, I lifted the pillow off of my head and held it against my chest. Everything was quiet; just how I liked it. I hugged the pillow a little tighter and turned onto my side. I hope she dies soon so I don’t have to put up with this any more.
It was a terrible thing for me to think, but it was honestly how I felt. She probably feels the same way. No one visits her, or at least not from what I’ve heard. It must be boring, even monotonous at that age—same routine day in and day out. I bet she’s pushing a hundred. It would be nice if she could just go in her sleep.
SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH!
The all too familiar noise jerked me to my senses. Five already? It had seemed like I’d only just fallen asleep when the walker began singing out its only song. My pillow had disappeared during the night, leaving me with nothing to cover my ears with. I didn’t want to get up, but I knew once the mare’s day began, my chances of peace were minimal.
I traced her shuffling to the bathroom and tried not to listen as I relieved my own bladder. Now she’s going to sit there for ten minutes—five of which is probably spent just trying to get up. Her toilet probably has special grips on the sides just so she can get up on her own.
By the time the toilet flushed and the shuffling resumed, I was already sitting down to my breakfast. I watched the ceiling as the noise grew nearer, knowing that the worst of the noise was about to begin. It was the same thing every morning. Once to the sink to fill the kettle—
SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH!
There were a few moments of silence as she stood at the sink, likely spent trying to maneuver the kettle under the tap. A hiss from within my wall and a drop in my water pressure told me she managed to turn on the faucet. She’s probably blind as a bat and does everything by feel. Probably deaf, too.
I took a bite of my apple and oat breakfast bar and waited for the hissing to stop. Now she’s going to place the kettle in the little basket on her walker, and grab her only tea cup before shuffling to the stove. She could have had multiple teacups, but all I could picture was an old porcelain cup with brown rings inside it. Maybe a little dish along with it that she kept the previous day’s teabag in.
“They’re good for six cups. Saves money,” I could imagine her explaining.
The hissing stopped and the shuffling resumed, just as it always did. While the water boils, she’s going to make three trips from her cupboard to her table. She can get everything she needs in one trip, but she always forgets something. That or she knows how much it irritates me.
My breakfast was done, but I sat at the table still listening to the mare above me. The kettle began to whistle and the shuffling made its way back to where I knew the stove was. She has to be an earth pony. A unicorn, even in old age, would have used magic to simplify her tasks. And of course, earth ponies live longer than pegasi.
One final shuffle back to the kitchen table and finally all noise stopped from apartment forty-two. She’s sitting there eating now, making disgusting chewing and smacking noises. Little burps and coughs, too. What’s she eating? Prunes? Stale bran flakes? Something soft. She probably doesn’t have any real teeth left.
I wiped the crumbs off my table before wandering into my living room. The sun should have been rising past my apartment window, but all I saw was darkness. To my dismay, storm clouds had settled over Manehattan, dumping torrents of rain into the city streets. Looks like I won’t be going outside today.
SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH!
What now?! I glared up at the ceiling, visualizing the mare on the other side. She was grinning down at her floor, simultaneously visualizing me and taking great pleasure in my anguish. The walker dragged across the length of the apartment, pausing at one end before returning to the kitchen.
Now stay there! I stared at the spot the shuffling had stopped, daring the mare to move again. She’s probably laughing.
A half hour went by before the shuffling resumed. I’d been lying on my couch, staring at the inside of my eyelids, trying to think of another activity outside my apartment. I was living off of a dwindling savings account until I found another job, leaving me hesitant to spend what few bits I could spare. So it seems my fate is to waste away here, listening to—
SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH!
That.
Back and forth, back and forth she shuffled until her breakfast had been cleaned up. Maybe she did it for the exercise and not to spite me. She had to keep active or her muscles would stop working entirely.
She probably belongs in a nursing home or one of those communities for elderly mares and stallions like they show commercials for. I bet her children (probably a daughter that looks like she did in her youth and a son she rarely sees) showed up with pamphlets for places like “Shady Oaks” and “Golden Meadows”. Oh, but she won’t have any of that, not while she can still take care of herself.
Only rarely did I hear any actual hoof steps from apartment forty-two. In the two years I’d lived in apartment thirty-two, I can recall only a few occasions where I heard other ponies above me. That’s not to say there weren't more visitors than that. (I did go out and look for work most every day (picking up a few bits where I could).)
As I lay on the couch, I briefly thought about visiting her myself. “Oh hey, I’m the stallion that lives in the apartment below you. How are you? Me? Oh, I’m fine except your walker drives me crazy!”
She’d call the cops the second I even knocked on her door. Probably think she was being robbed or that I was one of those crazy ‘Luna’s Witnesses’ wanting to talk about the moon.
I rolled off the couch and grabbed the previous day’s newspaper from the waste bin. There were still crossword puzzles I could do to keep myself occupied. Just as I opened to the comic section, the mare in apartment forty-two trudged into her own living room. Bits of dust sprinkled down on me as her walker passed immediately overhead.
Now what are you going to do? It would be great if you could sit still for five solid minutes!
The shuffling moved to a spot at the corner of the room where I knew she must have a chair. I could just picture her, trying to back her rear into a lumpy, old armchair that accented her apartment perfectly. It’d be dark red with a hoof-sewn afghan blanket draped across the back of it.
Next, came shorter, lighter shuffling noises, likely caused from her trying to get all the way into the chair. I didn’t want to get that old; where just sitting down became a chore. And what’s there to do at that age anyway? Now that she’s sitting (for the time being), she’s probably just going to stare at the wall.
Maybe she knits; that’s a quiet activity. She probably knitted the afghan on the back of her chair—probably has a bunch more folded up in a closet with bags of yarn. But I ‘knew’ she was pretty much blind, just like I ‘knew’ she must be riddled with arthritis. She hasn’t been able to knit in twenty years.
I kept my ear toward the ceiling, listening for a clue as to what she might be doing. From what I could tell, she was just sitting there. (Making those disgusting old pony sounds; clearing her throat, sniffling, burping.) The silence was nice, actually, and I walked back to my couch. No sooner had I sat down, I heard—
SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH!
—as she’d decided she’d sat long enough. I was used to it happening, on account of how often she did that to me, but it still bugged me. Whatever reason she had for getting up might have been good for all I knew.
Maybe she had legitimately forgotten something? Yeah, right. Her hips are gone, so is her sight, her hearing, and her looks, but I bet the one thing she still has is her mind. That’s probably the only reason her kids don’t force her into a home.
I didn’t even bother tracing the mare’s path as she maneuvered her apartment above me. She never moved too far before returning back to the chair. I assumed the old armchair hurt her back. When she sat back down, it was only another ten minutes before she was up again, shuffling around aimlessly.
Over the course of five hours, she got up a total of twenty-six times; that’s more than the number of words I managed to fill into my crossword puzzle. I just couldn’t concentrate with the constant ‘SHHRRRRRSSSSHHHH-ing’ over my head. I threw the newspaper back into the trash and followed the shuffling into the kitchen.
I’m not sure what sounds worse; the walker against hard wood flooring, or the walker against linoleum.
Honestly, it all sounded the same; just a horrible dragging noise, interrupted only for her to catch up to it. She didn’t have the energy or strength to push it while walking. I think if I had to listen to that instead, I would have gone crazy.
As she puttered above me making her lunch, I stared into my barren pantry. There was an unopened box of vegetable pasta, and a dusty can of beets. (I didn’t even like beets.) I was living worse than a college colt. But was I living worse than the mare in apartment forty-two?
Asparagus from a can to go with her afternoon tea. She’ll take out three stalks and put plastic wrap around the top to make the can last a whole week. Maybe have a few off-brand vanilla cookies for dessert. Then she’ll sit there, thinking about her deceased husband, or a happier time from her youth, or nothing at all.
I tried to get my mind off of the mare and think of my lunch instead. The thought of pizza crept into my head as I looked into the pantry, and my stomach growled. Hanging on a hook from the pantry door was my raincoat, further tempting me to head down to Linguine’s for a slice. My decision was finally made when the mare above started scuffling around again.
Even if I have to dig a half eaten slice of pizza out of the garbage, it will be worth the peace of mind to be out of the apartment. I tossed on the raincoat and was pleased to hear the jingling of bits coming from one of the pockets. It was meant to be. I threw open my apartment door and stepped out into the hall.
Getting out of my apartment for lunch would have been better if my mind had accompanied me. As I sat in my booth at the dirty little pizza shop, waiting for my two slices of mushroom pizza to be re-re-heated, my mind was still stuck thinking about the mare in apartment forty-two. I could see her, all old and gray, shaking as she struggled to push her walker around her apartment.
She would trudge past a mantel where pictures of her children’s children sat in little frames. The smiling faces were nothing but blurs to her, even through her prescription glasses. Next, she would trudge towards her arm chair, making sure not to bump into the coffee table—the one with a glass dish of hard candies she kept out, even though she never ate any. Then, she would sit down and just stare straight forward.
A pretty, young mare about my age brought my pizza out to me, and I thanked her before she went back to the kitchen. My eyes followed her as she walked, and she took notice. Rather than glare like most mares did, she smiled. When she disappeared behind the counter, I stared down at my meal.
A few shriveled slices of mushroom decorated the top, and an orange trail of grease leaked from the bottom onto the plate. Fortunately, it was better than it looked, and I took my time eating it. As I chewed on the crust of my first slice, my mind returned to the mare in apartment forty-two.
She’s going to be laying down for her afternoon nap soon. Right now, she’s probably sitting in that big chair, nodding off. I’m surprised she’s never fallen out of it. Then again, maybe she has.
While I stared out the window, watching the rain trail down the glass, I saw something in the reflection. I turned to see the mare that had brought me my pizza, standing in front of my table.
“Was everything alright?” she asked with a smile.
I looked down at my untouched, second slice of pizza. “Still working on it, but yeah, it’s very good,” I replied. It wasn’t great, but you don’t tell pretty mares that.
She stayed standing at the edge of my table, as if she expected me to say something else. When all I did was continue to stare at her blankly, she looked around until her eyes stopped on the window I’d been looking out. “Raining pretty hard, isn’t it?” she asked casually.
“Yup,” I replied. I was terrible at making small talk. The mare looked around, trying to find something else to talk about, and so did I. “Has it been slow today?” I asked, bringing up the emptiness of the restaurant.
“Yeah, you’re the first customer, like, all day!” she said. She slid into the booth with me, and before I knew it, we’d talked for two hours. We mostly talked about petty things, and I had a hard time not talking about the one prominent thing on my mind; the mare in apartment forty-two.
Linguine, the owner of the pizza place, popped out of the kitchen and looked into the dining area. “Hey, we’re closing early!” he shouted to the mare. “Your friend want any pizza?”
Did I want it? Not particularly. However, when you’re offered six free pizzas and a pretty mare offers to help you back to your apartment with them, you don’t say no. The mare followed me through the rain, carrying a single pizza box as we trekked back to the apartment complex. She wasn’t too impressed with the building, but she followed me regardless.
I opened my apartment and took the pizza box from the mare. I expected her to wave goodbye and then turn tail, but she just stood in my doorway, waiting. (For the sake of the story, I’m going to omit the finer details of what transpired between the mare and I next. It’s really not relevant.)
As we lay there on my bed, I let out a sigh of content. The mare, whose name I’ve completely forgotten, did the same. I was relaxed, relieved, and most importantly my mind was finally away from the mare that lived above me. That is, until—
SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH!
It was four o’ clock. Her nap was over.
I winced at the sound and turned to the mare in my bed. “I think we woke my neighbor,” I said, gesturing my head toward the ceiling.
The mare smiled and looked at the ceiling. “How can you tell?”
SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH!
“That,” I replied, cringing as the mare above us pushed her walker right overhead.
At first, I thought she was joking, because she tilted her ears toward the ceiling and strained to listen. “What? I don’t hear anything.”
SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH!
The walker was grinding across the floor so loudly I almost had to cover my ears. Still, the mare just looked at the ceiling as if she might see what I was hearing. The smile on her face slowly faded as she looked back at me. “You must have better hearing than me,” she laughed. “What’s it sound like? Are you talking about that—"
SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH!
The rest of her sentence was drowned out by the ungodly scuffling noise overhead. “You can’t hear that?!” I shouted over the noise. The mare looked at me with an eyebrow raised, and then looked around my room in confusion.
“No, seriously, I don’t hear anything,” she said, now slightly agitated. She rolled out from under the covers and stood beside the bed. “So, yeah, this was fun, but I’m gonna go now.” I hopped out of the bed to follow her into the next room, and the shuffling above followed my path.
The old bitch is doing this on purpose! Come on! We weren’t that loud!
Before I could say another word to the mare, she’d already left my apartment and was on her way down the hall. I stuck my head out the doorway and watched as she walked without looking back. She probably thought I was crazy. Once she was out of sight, I gritted my teeth and slammed the door shut.
I expected to hear the mare in apartment forty-two start shuffling toward me. I could just picture her up there; a big grin made of fake teeth as she looked down at the floor. Once my anger faded a little, I asked myself aloud the question that was really bothering me: Why didn’t the Linguine’s mare hear the shuffling?
SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH!
“Hey!” I shouted at the ceiling. I felt like getting a broom and banging on the ceiling like middle-aged stallions always did in those stupid sitcoms. When the shuffling continued, making its way away from me, I decided on a different course of action. I flung my apartment door open and trotted down the hallway.
I climbed the stairs to the top floor and felt the temperature rising. Gah, do they have the heat on or something? Why do old ponies like it so damn hot? This whole floor is probably nothing but old ponies,I thought angrily. When I exited the stairwell, I stood panting in the unfamiliar hallway. Apartment fifty was on my left and I counted down as I passed each door.
What are you going to do when you get there, huh? I asked myself. You’re going to knock on her door and stare at the Manehattan Times comic strips taped there, trying to understand what the old mare found so funny as to warrant hanging them on her door while waiting the five minutes it takes her to actually open the door. When she does open the door, you’ll take one look at her and feel bad, ‘cause she’s just an old mare!
I slowed my pace, but I was still determined to confront the mare. If nothing else, it was time I actually met her.
“Forty-five…Forty-four,” I mumbled as I looked right and left while I walked. When I came to the door of apartment forty-two, I nearly tripped over my hooves. On my way there, I had a mental image of her door, but there’s no way it should have looked exactly like that image.
Right below the brass 42 and peephole were a few Manehattan Times funnies taped to the metal. They were slightly yellowed from hanging there for so long, and I had to ask myself if I’d actually seen the door once before. Maybe I wandered up here drunk once before, thinking it was the third floor?
I looked around, no longer sure that I wanted to be up there. The overwhelming heat that had been surrounding me was suddenly gone and a chill went up my spine. I swallowed the lump in my throat and brought my hoof up to knock on the door.
It was like watching a horror movie, where the main character is about to do something stupid, and no matter how loud you yell at the screen, they can’t hear you. That’s what it was like as I knocked. My brain was shouting for my body not to do it, but it had already committed to the task.
The dull sound of my hoof against the metal door echoed through the empty hall. I wanted to turn and just go back downstairs, but my eyes were glued to the comics on the mare’s door. One showed a dairy cow in a doctor’s office while the doctor looked at it with disinterest. The caption read, “The ringing in your ears—I think I can help.”
It wasn’t funny, and the rest were all like it. Maybe I just didn’t have the sophisticated sense of humor ponies that read the Manehattan Times all possessed. As I stared at the other comics, I could hear the low, distant scraping noise of a walker being pushed across the floor. It was much quieter when it wasn’t coming from above me.
Almost exactly five minutes passed and the shuffling noise stopped on the other side of the door. I looked at the peephole, imagining the mare on the other side looking out at me. I’m probably just a blur to her, I thought.
There was silence as I stood there, waiting for the door to open, and simultaneously hoping that it wouldn’t. A few moments passed, and I decided I couldn’t deal with confronting an elderly mare. My hooves clumsily led me away from the door and back toward the stairs. As I opened the door to the stairwell, I heard the sound of a door opening behind me.
I squeezed into the stairwell, hoping that I hadn’t been spotted. There was a rectangular glass window in the door, and I peeked through it to see that the door to apartment forty-four had opened. A grungy-looking mare balancing two foals wandered into the hall and turned to yell into her apartment.
Manehattan in a nutshell, right there. At least my corner of it.
The mare continued shouting to an unseen pony (probably her drug dealing colt-friend) and one of the foals started crying. At that point, I would have rather dealt with a belligerent old mare than this, so I made my way back to the third floor.
Safe back in my apartment I locked the door and stood completely still, listening to locate the mare above me.
SHHRRRRRSSSSHH!
It came from right overhead, and I tilted my neck back. She’d still been standing at the door. Well, she probably heard the commotion in the hall and went back to check. Or she never moved, bah, whatever.
I was done worrying about her—done thinking about her. Like any other day, I went about moping around my apartment, vaguely aware of the scraping overhead. The hours passed, time disappeared and next thing I knew I was waking up to a horrible pain in my back.
I’d plopped down on the sofa and closed my eyes for what was supposed to be a minute, but when I looked at the clock, it read 10:30. I rolled onto the floor and let out a pained sigh as the knot in my back shifted. Despite having slept for three hours, I was still tired, and I walked into my bedroom.
The rain outside the apartment building had turned into a light drizzle, and I could see it reflecting from the street lights below. I used the dim light to navigate to my bed, and tugged at the blankets with my teeth; it was still a tangled mess from my romp with the Linguine’s mare. As I settled down and put my head against the pillows, I could still smell the lingering scent of her mane conditioner.
Maybe I’ll go see if she’s working tomorrow, try to make something up, I thought while pushing my nose further into the pillow. The scent was melon or something, and it made me feel relaxed. Sleep had almost overtaken me again when the faintest sound caught my ears. I recognized it as the squeaking of the bed located in the apartment above mine.
“It’s eleven already?” I moaned aloud. “Go on. Get up.” The squeaking stopped and I waited for the scuffling to begin. “Come on,” I said impatiently when the only sound I heard was the mist outside turning back into rain.
Maybe she can’t get out of bed.
“Then she can rot there,” I replied to my thoughts. Two years was enough. I’d had enough listening to that damn walker every day. It was almost enough to warrant moving back home. At least there, all the noise came from below my room.
It was well past 11:00 and the mare still hadn’t made her regular bathroom visit. The rain outside was making it difficult to hear anything from the apartment above, and after a while, I felt my eyelids growing heavy. I let sleep take me, but I was jerked out of it after only a few seconds to the familiar noise.
SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH!
“Are you serious?” I asked, glaring upward. “Were you seriously waiting? Can you see me or something?”
SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH! SHHRRRRRSSSSHH!
“I want to go up there and push you,” I hissed, watching the path the sound was making. “I’ll break your freakin’ hip, and you’ll have to go to a home, and—”
THUD!
I stared up at the ceiling, wide-eyed, at the place I’d heard the noise. It had been so loud, so sudden, that it could have only been one thing. The mare in apartment forty-two had fallen.
And I’m the only one who heard it.
Author's Note
If anyone has a suggestion on how to better format this, or write out the phonetic "SHRRSH-ing" noise, please let me know.
