From the outset, it seemed as though something was…off about the new neighbors. A couple. It was only ever couples who moved into the apartment upstairs. The way that it was structured could, realistically, only accommodate such a permutation. Which is why one might call it something of a “love nest”—even if a totally demented version. Leia had lived in the apartment below said “love nest” for years now. And in those years, she had seen many lodgers come and go up above. For something about that apartment appeared to drive couples to madness. Many of them, more than likely, even breaking up directly because of being cooped up in that strange place.

Leia had only ever gone up there once, when a girl had knocked on her door asking if she could come and take a look at the water heater. Surely Leia must know something about it as a “veteran” of the building. And she did; she was able to fix the issue almost immediately. Though she pretended to take longer so that she could get a good appraisal of the environs. It was the type of apartment that always had a dirty air, no matter what you did, or who lived in it. Some spaces—short of a total gut renovation—were simply doomed like that. And this was one of them. The girl, whose name Leia learned was Monique, chatted idly to her. Mostly about her boyfriend, who was working at the grocery store nearby. That was the thing about this apartment as well: it only attracted low-income couples willing to slum it because they had no choice. The landlord knew that, and took full advantage, exploiting the desperation by doing nothing to improve or even maintain the apartment. Why would he? There was always another couple waiting in line to replace the last. Monique and whoever her boyfriend was proved to be just another couple in the ceaseless queue, making way for the worst duo yet: the tweakers.

Leia never knew their names while they were actually living there. And, to her surprise and annoyance, they had the most longevity in that apartment out of anyone. Despite patently never going to work. But, as Leia would find out, when the news reports and online theories started circulating, the girl’s father sent them money once a month. Money that only she was responsible enough to mete out in part toward the minimal rent payment. The rest, of course, went to meth and snacks. If Leia were to guess, she would wager that the man was the driving force behind their drug habit. And yes, this was because she was a blonde white girl dating an Algerian. In other words, a Muslim. While drugs of an illicit nature were haram in the Muslim world, that didn’t stop somebody like Tweaker #1 from falling down the rabbit hole. Especially when they were no longer living in a Muslim country.

As far as Leia could tell, the blonde white girl a.k.a. Tweaker #2 was involved in a relationship with Tweaker #1 for two reasons only: 1) the novelty of being with someone “ethnic” and 2) the probability that, based on his height and build, he probably had an extremely large dick. A dick the likes of which no white boy had ever revealed to her. But Daddy, being unable to lose his baby girl entirely, still saw fit to send some money her way so she wouldn’t go completely down the tubes, as the saying goes. Regardless, she still did. She just happened to have a secure place to live while doing it.

Leia wouldn’t have minded their junkie tendencies so much, were it not for the fact that she could hear every aspect of the tweaker-related goings-on upstairs. After a long (or long enough to an addict) period of going without the drugs that fortified them—but mainly Tweaker #1—the tension upstairs would mount. Tweaker #1 was constantly chasing after her, his booming, thudding footsteps shaking the entire ceiling above Leia. No insulation whatsoever padding the sound (thanks, again, to that cheapskate landlord). Often, Leia considered knocking on the door and explaining that she could her everything. Not just their fights, but their makeup sex as well. Filled with the same kind of screaming, to be honest. The only difference was that there were no angry footsteps to go along with it.

In the end, she would always decide against knocking. They were in their twenties and on drugs, they weren’t going to give a fuck. Not about anything beyond their own pleasure. But in between all that pleasure, there was clearly a lot of pain. Characterized by the shouting, the crying, the constant sounds indicating a tussle. A war. Leia still maintained that, in part, it was due to the curse of that apartment. It turned couples against each other. It was not a love nest, but a love bomb. Detonating relationships with its cramped, drug addict-aesthetic’d environs. Yet, for as many times as Leia could have sworn the two must be breaking up any day now, therefore, must be leaving, they continued to stay. And stay and stay. Of course the worst, most annoying couple that had ever been up there would. That was just Cruel Fate Logic.

As one year turned into three, Leia started to wonder why neither of them had OD’d yet. Were they even viable drug addicts or not? She supposed, though, that when you have a steady income to support the habit, it becomes manageable, “functional.” So long as Tweaker #1 at least continued to sexually satisfy Tweaker #2 in between the endless arguments. That way, he could forever count on her supplying them with their fix. So that’s what went on. The same daily pattern, the same tumultuous spectrum of emotions swinging back and forth like an erratic pendulum.

It was driving Leia absolutely batty. But she loathed confrontation so much that she would rather suffer in silence (amid their cacophonous sounds) than bother with explaining her irritation. All anyone hears when you say something like that is “curmudgeonly old woman.” Even though Leia wasn’t even yet forty, she knew how twenty-somethings saw everyone else outside of their decade. So she waited and hoped. Praying that someday, any day now, they would move out. Just as all the other couples had because the apartment was too unbearable. In that third year, however, she was starting to reconcile the idea that maybe she would end up moving out before they did.

However, to her simultaneous delight and sense of “oh my,” she learned that the uncharacteristic silence she had been hearing ever since one particularly loud thud about three days ago was, in fact, a result of the loudest of the tweakers—Tweaker #2—being murdered by none other than Tweaker #1. Naturally, he didn’t “mean” to kill her, which was helpful as a distinction during the trial, it just “sort of happened” when he got too violent one night and tossed her around in a way that led to an insurmountable head injury.

Which is how the apartment ended up being branded as “cursed.” Except, rather than deterring “undesirables” from flocking to it, it only attracted them all the more. The landlord, predictably, took full advantage of the publicity that followed, renting the apartment out on Airbnb and billing it as some kind of “spooky experience” for lovers of true crime. Thus, although Leia had initially believed that, though tragic, etc. that a person had to die in order for her to get some peace and quiet, ultimately, all that death did was attract more noise. And started to make the erstwhile tweakers upstairs seem positively charming. Compared to the revolving door of current ones, that is.