Day 517: 5 Minute Freewrite: Thursday - Prompt: hammer
The hammering alone was enough to make her go stark raving mad. It began at 8:10 am every single day like clockwork. She had learned to be up before then so that the first jarring clangs alternating with flashes of light were not what woke her. A nice peaceful cup of coffee at 7:30, and by 8:10 she was braced and ready for the onslaught of sound that would inevitably, seven days a week, assault her ears for six hours or more.
After the clanging and flashing and a blissful 20 minutes of silence came the buzzing. It sounded like 2 million bees in her head, swarming around her for hours and hours, pulsing in and out but always always always present. By early afternoon, she would have to pace in her basement to regain her sanity.
The day would wind down with some nice relaxing pings of popping sounds, rhythmic, kind of pleasant after all the outrageous and offensive buzzings, poundings and flashes of light she had to endure every single day.
So of course she decided the best thing to do would be to sell her lovely 1830's brownstone cottage at the edge of a state forest with a healthy swimming pond out back and plenty of south sun for her garden, and move to somewhere that would not drive her crazy.
Finally, contract signed! She would soon be able to breathe again! Sleep till noon if she liked again! Read on the patio during the afternoons again!
Out she goes for a farewell walk and what does she see?
A for sale sign in front of the sculptor's house!
This is my entry to @mariannewest freewrite challenge
https://steempeak.com/freewrite/@mariannewest/day-517-5-minute-freewrite-thursday-prompt-hammer.
I am familiar with a nonstop torment of sound, but it's all in my head. The story was inspired by a conversation I had yesterday with a neighbor to a house I was thinking about buying. I knew how it would end as soon as I started writing, so I just had to describe a torment of sound and a perfect house. Fun!
Sounds like me! Damn tinnitus. Drives me insane sometimes have to wear headphones a lot.
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I have it too. It comes up often in my freewrites and I wrote a zapfic about it.
Love the twist.
I know how she feels. I've lived three years over an arcade of shops, all of which have been renovated since I moved in. Sometimes it feels like I'm in hell. In fact, there are days when I can't quite convince myself I'm not!
Will it end, the renovating? I wonder if I could get used to it, as I have gotten used to my tinnitus. I don't think so. sounds awful!
That, too, would drive me crazy!! I am very very very noise adverse. 😬
I understand that! I don't even like background music. It distracts me.
For a moment I thought you were writing about people renovating next door... as that's been my problem for the past few weeks! Great ending!
Thank you! Yeah neighbors can be a problem.
That would be a terrible thing! We have a lot of loud noises around us as well...
How nice she knew earlier and she wouldn't need to sell hers.😂
Classic example of literary irony - so famously illustrated in London's To Build a Fire, and The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry. I love/hate irony most of all in Romeo and Juliet: he kills himself because she is dead, but ironically she was not dead... sigh
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