paintedcave

© Gerry Gomez

Polite Necessity

by Kathryn Lubahn

Emily loved the night. This was the time when peoples’ minds stopped chattering. When they stopped their to-do list making. When their judgments ceased. God, she hated noisy minds filled with cacophony.

Some people had dead minds, some quiet minds, but the couple who moved in next door had amplifiers in their heads. They broadcast their thoughts as if they were psychically deaf and could only hear the TV and each other with the volume on max. They’d moved in weeks ago and she couldn’t work or sleep. They were driving her crazy.

She needed the quiet, pooling nights in order for her to write. And the rent wasn’t going to be paid unless she got them to just shut up. She needed to be able to think her own thoughts and hear only the sound of ink filling paper.

All she needed was one quiet, productive night and her article would be done. But their minds were droning on. So, she carefully pulled out the sleeping pills and methodically crushed them up. Whispering incantations of silence, she folded them into the cake mix with a touch of bourbon to balance out the chocolate.

Two cooling, perfect cupcakes sat side-by-side on the upgraded kitchen counter with their destiny to grant her the soundproofing she needed for the night. She carefully frosted them with a delicate, curried, orange-glaze, one at a time while the thoughts from next door pounded all around her. Ugly thoughts, stupid thoughts, repetitive thoughts seeping, crawling, crowding her until her head ached.

Cupcakes placed on a welcoming plate, she knocked next door. “Hello, welcome to our neighborhood, my name is Leah. I love to bake and have brought you some of my cupcakes.”

One hour later while sipping chamomile tea, Emily picked up her pen in dead silence.

Bio
Kathryn Lubahn is a continuing student in business at SBCC with a BA in English from Stetson University and Multimedia and Professional Creative Writing Certificates from SBCC. She, an astrologer and writer, is currently developing an Astrological Feng Shui Blog for her family business—Islands of Infinity Feng Shui Fine Arts.