Upstairs Downstairs

When I lived in Brooklyn, I had a weird guy living in the apartment upstairs from me. He looked weird and he WAS weird. He had a nightly ritual of pacing between the kitchen and the bedroom before he went down for the night. I likened his behavior to that of a dog who has to circle his dog bed several times before finally climbing into it and going to sleep. Prior to that, when I lived in New Jersey, I lived briefly below a couple involved in a domestic abuse situation. I don't even think the man lived there, but he was there enough that I suspected he was beating the woman who did live there. The first weekend after she moved in, she and her boyfriend fought violently. I could hear her sobbing. I complained to the management about the situation and it would stop for a few weeks before starting up again. Thankfully, I was on a six-month lease at the time, so I didn't have to endure this situation for a long time before I moved to Brooklyn, but riding out those last months wasn't easy. The woman also had children in the apartment so these kids, no doubt, had to witness their mom getting her ass kicked on a regular basis. Sad. I probably should have called the police on my neighbor, but I didn't because I feared for my own safety. I would see the abusive boyfriend sitting in the parking lot of the complex in his car waiting, I assume, for the woman who lived above me to return home. (I guess he didn't actually have a set of keys to the place.) I didn't want this guy coming after me if I called the cops on him. Hell, I lived there alone! After I moved, I read there had been a shooting at the complex and a woman was killed by her boyfriend and I wondered if the murdered woman was my upstairs neighbor.

My current upstairs neighbors don't have a pacing ritual and they don't seem to abusive towards one another, but they're still weird and annoying. The male and female couple (I'm not really sure what they're relationship is--friends, lovers, whatever) just give me the creeps. My interactions with them have been brief and uncomfortable. One time I heard someone trying and failing to unlock the front door and when I opened the front door, I found the woman who lives upstairs standing there. She claimed she'd mistaken my apartment for her own. Really? Whenever I see Frick and Frack (my nicknames for them), I avoid them like the plague. There's something off-putting about them. They look sickly, like they don't get enough sunlight, and they just creep me out.