Missing Marjorie — a short story

The unforgiving beeping started again. It hailed across Mr Anderson’s backyard from the space behind an abandoned chook pen, presumably from the neighbour’s junk heap. It had been occurring for more than six months, give or take.

He’d given up banging on the neighbour’s door begging them to remedy it. Some evenings saw them ignore his persistent knocks; others saw them doggedly refute that they could hear it. His fondness for the next door neighbours wore thin many years ago anyway but now his nonchalance began to develop into a penetrating odium. Susan — the sheila across the road — was just as unbearable and unpleasant, with her insatiable desire for gossip.

The many years he spent perched upon a bulldozer — before he was shafted for a younger, stalwart version of himself — led him to suspect that tinnitus could be the cause of his nightly nuisance, which seemed a best case scenario, compared to the alternative possibility. ‘Battier than the bats themselves’, Marjorie Anderson used to call him. ‘Doctors, like the cops were all corrupt and not to be trusted;’ he didn’t waste a phone call on either.

Determined to bear witness to this Satanic noise, he searched for a recruit. His friendship circles had become barren and he’d ostracised himself against the rest of the street; Marjorie being the one that was in charge of keeping them…