This is an excerpt from my recently published novel The Falling Circle, available for Kindle on Amazon.coom

https://www.amazon.com/Falling-Circle-Jeffrey-Matucha-ebook/dp/B07K7NVKBW/

    Clink, clink!
    Preston’s head stirred. He heard the muffled mumblings of someone in the hallway.
    Clink, clink! Thump!
    What th’ fuck?
    The voices would rise and pitch, getting louder and then quieter.
    Clink, clink! Preston raised his head.
    Thump! Clink, clink!
    Goddamit, who the fuck is doing that?
    Someone was talking, while thumping on the walls and apparently clinking two bottles together.
     A peal of laughter.
     He recognized one of the laughs. It was Gust. Preston groped around for his watch. It was almost 3 in the morning.
    He stood up, then reared back his fist and punched the wall.
    “Ow! What th’ fuck?” said someone in the hallway.
    Apparently someone had been leaning against the wall. Preston almost felt as if he could feel the guy’s head on the other side of the wall when he punched it. He was surprised the guy had felt it. Apparently Preston didn’t know his own strength. That, or the walls were a lot flimsier than he had originally surmised.

    Such off-key interruptions were not uncommon around Throb Long. Almost every adverse and annoying interruption that ever occurred in Preston’s newly adopted abode had something to do with Gust. Gust seemed to have a non-stop compunction to drag by an assortment of complete strangers at very odd hours in order to make a wide variety of annoying and sudden noises.
    Many was the time that Gust would be wandering around with some strange gutter punk, rivethead, or general burnout trailing right behind her. Throb Long was fairly unusual, in that no one living there ever seemed to have guests over very often, except for Gust. Not only did she frequently have guests over, but Preston rarely ever saw her bring over the same person twice.
    He had to wonder what Tam thought about the whole thing, but then again Gust seemed to be very careful about not bringing anyone over when Tam could find out about it or be annoyed by the intrusions. She only brought people by during the day or late at night, when Tam was either with clients or asleep. She also deferred to Tam by making almost all of her annoying late night noises in the Throb Long hallway where they would wake up everyone in the house except Tam.
    And, of course, Gust’s escapades were usually late at night. She spent most of her daytime hours sleeping, sometimes in Mark and Saber’s room. Mark and Saber seemed to have adopted her and they also always ended up defending Gust, at least whenever Preston griped about her.
    “What about all that fucking noise she makes?”
    “What noise?” asked Saber.
    “In the middle of the night when she brings over those pathetic assholes.”
    “I never hear here making any noise at night.”
    “Yeah you do. You told her and her stupid friend to shut the fuck up the other night.”
    “I don’t remember that.”
     “I do.”
     “Well, Gust’s young yet,” said Saber. “You should let her have some fun.”
     “I don’t care if she has fun or not, I need to get some sleep sometimes.”
     “Lighten up Preston.”
     “Rrrrg!”
    Indeed, Mark and Saber’s seemingly irrational affection for the disruption continued to perplex Preston. He could see no reason for it.
 
    Gust was apparently aware that her strongest advocates were Mark and Saber, and she also apparently enjoyed reveling in the idea.
     “They let me watch once,” smirked Gust.
     “Watch what? Saturday morning cartoons?”
    “You know what I mean.”
     “Get a life,” sneered Preston.
    “Get a life? Look who’s talkin’.”
     “Okay, get a room then.”
     “All right, we’ll get a room, and Mark and Saber can watch.”
     “Ew! No!”
     Gust dived at Preston and wrapped her arms around him, humping his leg and sticking her tongue out at him while panting like a hyperactive dog.
     “Get offa me! Dammit!”
    He tried to shove her off of him, but she just wrapped her arms tighter around his leg. Tam eventually came into the kitchen when Gust started barking like a dog and broke up the facetious melee.

    Preston quite often pondered how Saber could always be on all of the time, how he could always be sarcastic and always posing and poking fun for people nearly all of his waking hours. But for some reason he never wondered why Gust was always on. For him, Gust was naturally obnoxious. She was the living incarnation of aggravation.
    Perhaps it had something to do with her lifestyle, or whatever it was that she was covering up with all of that over-the-top obnoxious behavior. Preston had no idea what her underlying motivations could have been, but he knew it had to be something pretty out there. Whatever it was, it had a lot of adolescent angst behind it.
    In the meantime, if there were any strange punks hanging about, any randomly shouted obscenities, unexplained noises heard, sudden outbursts detected, or untraceable thumping, hacking, clanking, clomping, stomping, scraping, raking, tapping, slurping, screeching or whacking noises to be heard, you could be nearly one hundred percent sure that Gust was behind it somehow.

https://www.amazon.com/Falling-Circle-Jeffrey-Matucha-ebook/dp/B07K7NVKBW/