He loved the idea of people - in practice it wasn't quite that simple. This wasn't after all the best way to experience them - above him, beneath him, behind and in front of him, to the side of him - in him and fucking with his head. He looked round the sparse furnishings of his flat - yes he liked the idea of people. He thought of himself as fairly congenial - normal in fact. He went shopping on a saturday, the odd drink or two after work - generally he took part in the unspoken laws of city life. Yes - out there he liked people - but here : above him, beneath him, behind and in front of him - he hated them. He hated neighbours. He was living with people he hadn't even chosen - they were separated by walls too thin - bricks too rotten - air waves too eager in their transmission of each and every sound of existance. He'd taken to asking the other residents prior to moving in to script the noises he might expect to hear from his surroundings in a typical week - but they'd looked at him like he was a nutter - the most he ever got was 'the bloke upstairs plays music sometimes' - The only person who'd been keen to participate was a weasly little man who was being chucked out and was only too eager to fuel paranoia or dissolution of interest in taking the flat. No - he'd finally accepted that it was always going to be a gamble - you could never control the ever shifting equilibrium of modern life - it was always going to conspire against him. He couldn't quite remember when his sense of spatial awareness had changed - in fact in general - he just couldn't quite remember anything. HE must have suddenly woken up one day alive to the concept of intrusion - intrusion into his space - his privacy - the precarious fragility of his womb - like security. Suddenly friends had become space thieves for speaking too close to his face - people with differing perceptions of proximity would offend him - when had this change come about? What had changed in him that he felt such an unreasonable anger when noise penetrated his womb like retreat from the world - this place of renewal and nurture so intrinsic to his re - emergence into city life each day. He didn't know - but it was - and right now that's why he hated neighbours : above, beneath, to the sides, in front and behind him. People weren't supposed to live like this - why couldn't he have a nice garden with a nice view and thick enough walls so his life was his own. The real problem was him - HIM UPSTAIRS - once he'd become aware of this he couldn't prevent his mind from locking onto it's subject. His brain would lock onto sound like a tracker - the muted tones of a radio would plague him for hours - his brain for no apparent reason desperate to work out the lyrics to the song. It would consume him for hours sitting rigidly in his armchair - locked without choice to the footsteps across his ceiling to - ing and froing in their menial transit between rooms. At differing never predictable times each night the footsteps would cease - Monday at 10. 52, Tuesday 12. 04, Wednesday at 2. 28 and so on it continued. At this point each night he would dissolve back into himself - suddenly aware of himself for the first time in hours. Sometimes he'd play music just to cover up the intrusion of people living around him - but the mind was clever - the music suddenly didn't give him pleasure - it had taken on a different purpose - not to entertain but merely to divert - the brain didn't take kindly to such cheap diversion tactics, it would rather analyse footsteps on ceilings - it was more challenging. There was a certain volume that the brain needed in order to be interested in this game - a radio had to be barely audible with sudden enticing peaks cajoling it into the challenge of the game. His brain had become good at the game - it could recognise songs on the radio from the faintest drum beat or lyric - and television was even simpler. Now his brain had become less specific in it's analysis - it had begun to analyse the overall picture - at first he hadn't realized what was happening - only that his brain took longer to let go of his subject each night and each night when he returned from work it would lock onto the flat upstairs even without the stimulus of sound. As the hours of trakking lengthened - he seldom returned to a state of self awareness. Finding that the man upstairs didn't work in the daytime it seemed natural that he too should not go into work each morning. He didn't even notice the phone ring or the letter of dismissal that dropped through his mailbox. The days stretched into night back into days - his brain a catalogue of information. Where once the intruding noise had seemed to enter without his permission - with no acknowledgement of his rights as host 'come in noise - pardon noise i can't quite hear you' - now he was the noise and it never left him - it sustained him. It was as if suddenly his brain had found its purpose - he could see now that his job hadn't been taxing enough - his brain needed something more challenging and NOW it had found it - it wasn't letting go. He became a catalogue of detail - his subject went to Safeways on a Saturday after swimming - his girlfriend came round on Wednesday - his favourite radio station was central - he took between 3 and 4 minutes to shit - between 10 and 11 to come - and he awoke between 8 and 8. 30 each morning. He had the envisaged floor plan tacked up in the bedroom where he would analyse it during the dead hours of his subject's sleep - on this he had marked the respective times of habitation similar to the percentage possession diagrams you got during TV soccer games - his subject spent most time in the bedroom closely followed by the kitchen - it was most probable it was an open plan kitchen/lounge - dinner wouldn't take much preparation - between 10 and 15 minutes - and he seemed a bit of a vain sort spending up to 45 minutes choosing what to wear each day (signified by repetitive patterns of footsteps between two locations with intermitent drawer opening and closing). Gradually his own movements mirrored his subjects' - urinating, eating, sleeping and coming at the same time. One day the noise doubled and intensified - things were being moved and packed into crates and bags - his mind darted - alert and hungry for each sound - drinking them in and analysing them into a new picture - his subject was leaving. He felt a heaviness fall over his being, he couldn't imagine life without his subject. The noise stopped and with a final slam of the door it was gone. For days he sat motionless in a chair unable to do anything - months of mirroring his subject's movements and actions had left him with no initiative for even the most basic of functions. He sat waiting inert and yet alert - waiting for movement from upstairs. Finally a key turned in the front door and he suddenly found himself on his feet his brain hungry to renew the game - Mrs. Jackson a retired widow of 84 settled into her new flat that afternoon unaware of the game that had started once more in the flat beneath her.

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