Midnight Laughter

Roy Johnson was a working class English man, one who hated his job because it paid so little, while he was simultaneously treated like dirt. His job was in a depressing little factory, one where the staff were rude, mean and short tempered. The lighting here was dim and dingy, an ugly urine yellow colour seemed to emit from every flickering lightbulb and the place stunk the same way it looked. The building was ancient and mouldy with decay, dust covered almost every surface all around him and nobody bothered to brush or mop the floors. So not even the ground he walked on was nice and smooth, instead it was grotesque, sticky and stained black and brown like the insides of an abandoned toilet bowl. The whole place was a dump and in great need of renovation. Roy was supposed to get paid minimum wage, but the company was so incompetent (perhaps on purpose) when it came to reporting work hours, the poor man still got underpaid from time to time. When he first began his hellish job here, he used to demand his payments be amended. They would reluctantly pay him back what he was owed eventually, but it would always happen and get confusing every month or two. The bosses would demand more of him if he tried to get his fair pay too and most of the staff simply didn't bother to go through all that annoying hassle, just to make a few extra pounds a month. It simply wasn't worth the effort or grief of going through all of that work politics and angering the toxic upper management, the underlings here learnt to just take this financial abuse and keep to themselves, it was better to be alone and unnoticed than cause a fuss. Roy hated working here just like everyone did, yet he was a man with very little work experience and his social skills were terrible also, so this god awful job was his only real choice in life. He was trapped and getting ripped off too, the factory was a living hell to work in. The building looked like a 1970s prison from outside, with its rusty metal walls and broken brick walls, that had huge gaping holes in them. There was this huge metal fence that stretched all around the complex, with razor sharp barb wire on top of them. This only added to the oppressive mood and appearance of this hellhole that Roy called his workplace. The shifts were way too long as well and his job consisted of doing the exact same task for 10-12 hours a day at nauseam. Roy would pack beer bottles into a cardboard box and send them down the conveyor belt. Then he'd do it again and again and again. Sometimes he'd pack beer cans into a cardboard box instead, then send them down the conveyor belt again and again. It was tedious and boring, not to mention exhausting. Every now and then, a boss half his age would march up and down the aisles screaming at anyone who looked too tired or worked too slowly. Roy was no exception to this humiliation, as a 'boy' (at least compared to Roy's age) named Mickey was the most notorious and arrogant of the bosses here. His childish name matched his punchable, young baby face. The kid just finished university at 19 and got his first job here, before his twentieth birthday. The little mouse didn't know a damn thing about real hard work! Not a god damn thing! He was a whiny little shit! With the voice of a kitten and the screams of a newborn baby. His voice wasn't intimidating, just annoying and stinging to the ear drums. For some reason, Mickey seemed to have a particular hatred for Roy, or so it seemed that way. Roy hated to admit, that the thoughts of murder always entered his mind when that 'child' was on shift, acting tough and smarter than everyone else. Roy had seen at least a hundred 'real men' get fired, after roaring at Mickey, the posh kid would run crying (literally) to his own bosses and the brave workers who dared to rage against that little brat were immediately discharged from service. Roy needed this job, more than anything, otherwise he'd be homeless by next winter and that seemed a far worse fate than packing beer boxes for hours on end. So he'd resist his urge to strangle the tiny man, allowing his so-called 'boss' to belittle and punish him for the pettiest of reasons. Mickey constantly changed his rules and work techniques on the flip of a dime, saying the beer bottles needed packing first, only to come back demanding the beer cans be packed instead. It was clear to everyone, that Mickey was as clueless as the boss before him. The company kept hiring dumb kids straight out of 'higher education' to order around the 'less educated' workers. Yet what the clowns running the show failed to understand, time and time again, was that somethings couldn't be learnt from behind a computer screen or by studying a spreadsheet. Packing boxes required speed, strength and endurance. There weren't any 'unique' or 'clever' methods behind such a task, all that was required was good hard manual labour. A little brat like Mickey telling forty to fifty year old hard, working class men with decades of experience how to 'properly pack a box in the most efficient and secure fashion' was completely unnecessary, at least according to Roy. If anything, Mickey slowed down production rates dramatically by stepping in and interfering every five seconds.

"Wait hold it there!" His squealing would interrupt Roy constantly, "that's not how you're supposed to pack that box, here let me show you..." Then Mickey would slowly, painfully, pack the box at the same time it would take Roy to pack at least ten. Then Mickey would slowly lower himself down saying, "lift with your legs, not your back!" and take even longer, struggling to lift the cardboard box onto the conveyor belt, while fifty more boxes all around them would've already been sent to the delivery vans. So all in all, it took this pathetic manager the time to pack and send off one single box, the same time it would take any other staff member 20-30 boxes to pack and send off. Mickey was laughably awful at this job, but his position gave him the unearned authority to tell everyone in the factory that they were wrong for being fast and efficient. If Mickey honestly packed and sent off boxes at that rate, in the same ranking as Roy, he wouldn't last a single day. The hypocrisy was downright criminal and rage inducing, but Roy had the patience of a saint and bit his lip so hard it often bled whenever this little, clueless punk told him how to do the job he'd been doing perhaps longer than his boss had even been alive. Mickey was just another idiot who had no business being anybody's boss. Yet for some reason, Roy hated Mickey more than anyone who ever ordered him around before, he was honestly, truly sick to death of being treated this way! His co-workers weren't much better either, most of them never spoke, they only growled, grunted or yelled obscenities too gross to repeat. Roy had very few friends like Bob and Dave, who on rare occasions would talk about football or the weather, yet never for very long. It was a depressing place, one where the bosses were all stuck up pricks and the lower ranking staff wanted nothing more than to blow their own brains out with a 44 Magnum revolver, Roy included.

The only solace (at least for a short while) was when Roy Johnson returned home to his ugly little apartment in room 201, he would enjoy a nice hot meal, shower and then finally get to read a nice cosy murder mystery book before bed. This, for the longest time, was his favourite activity after a long stressful day at that hideous factory. He often fantasised about becoming one of the many murderers he read about in these detective novels. Killing those who wronged him (Mickey would be his first target, no doubt!) and hiding the bodies. Instead of writing his own murder mystery manuscript (that might've been a good read due to his frustrations and wild imagination) he often thought of starting his own serial killer career! Reading for hours about all these different and creative killers, they all gave him sick desires of revenge and cruelty towards humanity! He knew he was supposed to fear the mad killers in these crime books, not worship them, but he simply couldn't help but feel connected to the bad guys rather than the well spoken detectives. Sometimes Roy wouldn't even pay full attention to what he was reading, as visions of his own dark desires filled his mind instead. He relished in such despicable thoughts, where only he could think of such evil and never be judged for it. Then one night, as the hour almost struck midnight, when he was deeply invested into the well written plot of a particularly thrilling novel, a loud, rude and deafening laugh boomed from directly below him! It was the voice of a woman. Not a young, attractive lady with a cute charming accent, but a cackle of a witch like something from a horror movie. It was a disturbing sound, one that wasn't exactly frightening, but certainly infuriating to listen to. Roy hadn't even realised that someone had even moved into room 101 just below his very feet until that annoying night, when the mysterious witch laughed again and again. He hated that this stranger sounded so damn happy, as if mocking his misery, but to disrupt his only true passion and pleasure of the day, reading a good book, that was what was really upsetting poor working class Roy Johnson the most. Even if Roy hadn't been reading, to hear such loud and unforgiving laughter at this ungodly time, only five or six hours before work was downright insulting! Roy tried to focus on his reading that night, reading silently in his mind was impossible to keep track of the story, as the laughter downstairs kept distracting his concentration from the excellent story. So he began reading out loud, in an attempt to drown out the witch's voice.

"Detective Norton crept through the dark woods, what he saw was-"

HAHAHAHAHA!

"What he saw was..." Roy would groan, "a scarecrow, the killer had been wearing the disguise of a straw ma-"

"That's so scary!" The witch downstairs would howl laughing, as if mocking the epic plot twist of the book! Roy would bite his lip hard again, just like he always did when Mickey was being a pain! He'd sit in bed listening to the witch downstairs laugh and laugh, until finally, at last, she'd stop. Roy would finally smile and begin reading again, only for the cackling witch downstairs to suddenly roar fits of laughter, as if watching the greatest comedian on earth.

"Nothing is that funny!" Roy would retort, before giving up on reading and trying to sleep instead. Every time he was about to dose off, the annoying hag downstairs would begin laughing again, sometimes slapping her knee in hysterics, which sounded much louder and distracting than her god awful voice. He'd eventually get sleep at 3am, only to wake up three hours later for work at 6am, feeling worse than he ever felt that morning in years.

Of course, when Roy went into work the day after suffering through that loud and terrifying night of witch laughs, he was a zombie in the factory. Roy could barely pack a single box in the time it would take him to do five normally. He slumped his shoulders around all day and into the night, looking depressed and beat up, with bags under his eyes so long and purple, many thought the sad, exhausted man had gotten into a fight the previous night and bruised his eyes. Mickey was particularly unimpressed with Roy that day, the arrogant boy was beyond furious with his truly lackluster performance and lousy attitude. Roy often felt sick too, he'd drank multiple cups of coffee throughout his long and painful shift to stay awake, which made his stomach flip and turn, his bladder kept filling too and so Roy kept needing to take bathroom breaks every five or ten minutes. Eventually Mickey followed him into the toilets to confront him.

"You doing blow?!" Mickey's squeaky voice asked.

"What?" Roy asked with a dull, dim witted look across his face. Mickey mistook Roy's tiredness for sarcasm and took offence.

"Don't take that attitude with me, mister!" Mickey whined, his baby-like voice was stinging Roy's ears.

"I... I don't know what you mean... Boss." Roy cringed, for he hated himself for calling that pipsqueak his 'boss'. Mickey huffed deeply, a look of menace crossed the young boy's face, but Roy only found it amusing, not intimidating. In Roy's tired state, he actually chuckled, directly in Mickey's face, which was something Roy usually had the sense never to do. The sleepless man had become so tired, he found himself in a delirious state of confusion and hilarity, as Mickey's face came in and out of focus like a camera that couldn't control its depth of field. Roy blinked his eyes shut and then hideously wide, while knocking back and forth in a sleepy daze, as if on the verge of fainting at any moment.

"You been drinking?!" Mickey accused.

"Yeah..." Roy nodded, "lots and lots... Of coffee, now I keep needing to piss all the time, for fuck sake!" He drooled, spit literally drooping down his mouth.

"Roy?!" Mickey gasped, as it appeared as though the old man was about to have a stroke! Roy's face was so exhausted, half of it appeared to be melting, "jesus Christ, I think you're having a stroke!"

"You do care..." Roy smiled dumbly, before almost falling head first onto the ground, only for Mickey to grab him instead. Roy was surprised to see this caring side to his usually foul mouthed boss.

"What's wrong with you?!" Mickey winced, looking truly concerned.

"Not much sleep..." Roy admitted, "new neighbour... She's a witch. Why you suddenly care, aye? You're normally a massive prick!"

"You normally keep your mouth shut!" Mickey replied begrudgingly, "clearly you haven't had enough sleep this morning..."

"Clever... Boy..." Roy yawned.

"I'm sending you home!" Mickey growled.

"Oh come on, boss... I need the cash." Roy begged, feeling humiliated.

"You're unfit to work!" Mickey snapped, "so go home, you useless drunk! I'll let you off this one time, but come in again like this tomorrow and you're finished! You understand?"

"I ain't drunk!" Roy sneered, "I'm just tired..."

"Too tired, perhaps." Mickey replied in the snobbiest voice Roy had ever heard, "go home!"

"Fine!" Roy groaned, before leaving work three hours earlier than normal. Everyone stopped and stared at the zombie man leaving the factory. Roy looked truly undead, pale and sick. It was like the witch in apartment 101 downstairs, had put a curse on him.

Roy almost crashed his car driving back home, he actually dosed off behind the wheel and a loud horn from an incoming lorry in the opposite lane (which he had crossed onto!) awoke him rudely and narrowly avoided crashing into the poor, tired factory worker.

"Oh my god!" Roy sprung to action and readjusted his steering, driving back onto this correct lane. Other cars and motorbikes in the rush hour traffic beeped at him too. Some even wound down their car windows and yelled slurs in anger. Roy felt so embarrassed, perhaps more so than he did in front of Mickey just an hour ago at work that day. He blamed that stupid witch! The one who kept him awake all night laughing and ruined his book too, if she continued laughing like that much longer, he'd have to do something about it soon! He couldn't even remember the rest of the drive home, as it became a blur of near crashes, swearing drivers and a disturbing melody of horns, as Roy drove like a toddler on his way back home. He thought it was everyone else who were bad drivers though, too tired to realise he couldn't even control the car properly without swerving all over the road like a drunk driver! Fortunately he made it back home without a scratch on him, the same could not be said for his car that looked brand new that morning, but not so much after. He'd see the damage the next morning before work and scream! Yet, as he crept back into his apartment building after that awful work day, he dragged himself upstairs and entered his room 201. Roy only took his shoes off and fell unconscious upon the bed.

He had a nightmare about a witch, one with green skin and a black pointy hat. The evil woman was howling like a werewolf, cackling so loudly her laughs sounded like screams. Roy was running around a dark forest, trying to escape the pursuing monster that chased him like a cat after the rat. She was even flying on a broom, a sight truly unsettling to witness! He still felt ill and that certainly tortured his mind, making him see the distress his body was feeling. The world around him began to crumple and shake, despite never experiencing an earthquake in great Britain, that's what was happening within Roy's mind that very night. The trees around him were struck suddenly by lightning, setting on fire before his very eyes! The earth he walked on actually vanished from under his feet and he fell into a black void, as if entering the cosmos of space! Yet the witch laughter roared all around him, like the loudest music concert he had ever been to, stinging his ears like a million hornet stings! Eventually he'd scream and awake, thrashing around in bed, as the laughter still roared within his waking moment. It took him a few seconds to realise it was that witch downstairs, still laughing at midnight like the night before! Roy was far too startled and sick to dare run downstairs and complain. He instead ran into his toilet and used it, before finally returning to bed, sleeping again despite the loud laughter downstairs. More nightmares consumed his sleep that night though, ones where everyone mocked him in work, ones where Mickey giggled wickedly as he got fired into a glorious blaze of orange flames, burning to a crisp!

The next day, Roy wasn't exhausted like yesterday, but the constant nightmares had left him full of stress, anxiety and paranoia. He was afraid of everyone in work, keeping his head down and avoiding conflict. Mickey was a monster to him that day, perhaps no worse than he usually was, but the extra terror which raced through Roy's mind seemed to make everything seem way more terrifying than usual. Mickey's high pitched voice sounded deep and demonic that day. He even seemed much taller, as Roy shriveled down into a hunchback pose that day too. Mickey seemed to relish Roy's misery, picking on him far more than usual and making frequent threats to fire him for underperforming. In that paranoid state, Roy honestly couldn't tell if the young boss was joking or not. It was a terrible shift, perhaps even worse than the one he had yesterday, that day he simply didn't give a shit, but today he feared the absolute worst; that he could genuinely lose his job. Lose everything, all because of the bitch downstairs who wouldn't stop laughing every single night! It was driving him insane, from an exhausted sick zombie to the scared little man he had become on this day. The cackling witch had to be stopped, it wasn't even a question anymore. It was a fact, the laughing had to cease! So after that long, dull and painful shift of constant misery and belittlement, Roy Johnson dragged himself out of the depressing factory and into his equally depressing car; which was an old banger full of rust, perhaps even older than he was. It might've been a fancy, retro show car if it didn't look so post Apocalyptic. Roy got in the old Muscle car and ignited the engine, it struggled like it always did and took a good five minutes before it was in motion. For a second then, Roy worried his car wasn't going to work! Thankfully he was on his way home, however driving seemed a lot more stressful than normal too. Traffic appeared around every street corner and the drivers all seemed angrier than usual, beeping and slurring at each other (rolling down their windows just to throw insults). Roy himself got beeped at, seven or eight times, but it felt like a hundred or more because he was so flustered and ultimately exhausted. It felt like that witch was in the back seat of his car the whole drive home, laughing mockingly at his misfortune.

"I'll get you, foul witch!" He grumbled to himself, narrowing avoiding a collision with an incoming car, which to no surprise, beeped their horn at him too. At this point, Roy was too fed up to beep back. The long drive home was simply torturous, perhaps even more nerve wracking than work because here he was in real danger of ending up in an automobile accident. It did not matter how carefully or slow he drove, that didn't stop the other idiots behind him from racing down the streets at two hundred miles an hour! Miraculously, after hours of traffic both slow and chaotic, Roy Johnston managed to get home! The apartment building he lived in, which was ugly and modern, yet somehow decaying; appeared as a beacon of light at the end of a very long and dark tunnel of misery and stress that day. He actually forgot all about the laughing witch by the time he got home, taking the elevator up to the second floor and opening his apartment door to finally sit down upon his green sofa. He sat there for a good long while, almost sleeping, before finally getting up and undressed in his bedroom. Then he changed into a comfy tracksuit and cooked a pepperoni pizza in the kitchen. This was heaven, at last. He'd eat, watch TV until 10pm then wash his teeth before bed. It was a good end to an otherwise awful day. Then he suddenly remembered why he was so angry on the car ride home, it wasn't the god awful traffic (as Manchester was always too busy) it was that bloody witch downstairs, who began her nightly ritual of laughing all over again, just as Roy finished reading his book and was trying to sleep.

"No!" He roared, punching his pillow, "not again! Not this time, no sir!" He jumped out of bed, put on his tracksuit again and matched downstairs. However, as he stepped closer and closer towards room 101, the sounds of laughter had some darkness behind them. Like they weren't really funny laughter, or perhaps not even laughter at all, but cries. Cries and screams of pain, like someone being relentlessly tickled against their will. Roy remembered what this woman said the first time he heard her, 'that's so scary!' he thought she was laughing, at a silly joke or at a terrible horror movie (which was obviously not scary). Yet now he had his doubts, maybe they were always screams of mercy. That she saw something truly scary, something so scary, you'd probably scream 'that's so scary!' and with that thought, Roy too was suddenly scared. Scared of the scary thing, whatever it was, that lay waiting behind the doors of room 101. Roy took a deep long breath and listened closely.

"That's too scary!" The woman laughed/screamed or possibly cried. She was hysterical, but maybe not in a good way. Was it possible that she was just watching a horror movie, one so absurd it made her giggle, yet so gory it made her scream or weep from fright? Perhaps all three, like some sort of 1980s slasher film where the villain made dark humoured quips, but the characters were very likeable so the watcher cried and screamed when the good guys lost?

'It could be...' Roy thought. He convinced himself it wasn't something worse, not a torture behind closed doors or a sex act gone horribly wrong, but a woman who liked horror movies a little too much and over reacted to every damn scene! Suddenly his anger returned and Roy was moments away from banging on the mad woman's door, but his thoughts turned to his former thoughts of something truly dark and evil set beyond that very door. He almost turned away before breathing long and hard.

"No." He said aloud, "this madness has to stop. No matter how bad it is." So Roy, with the greatest reluctance decided to knock upon the door to room 101. Suddenly, the screaming/laughing/crying stopped, as if a television's volume was suddenly switched to mute.

"Shut up..." Said a man's voice from behind the door, followed by a muffled yelp, as if the witch within room 101 was quickly gagged. Roy gasped, expecting absolute horror as the slow, thunderous footsteps of the mysterious stranger were summoned closer and closer to where he stood. Before the door opened, Roy thought he recognised the voice, as it was young and squeaky just like, just like-

"Roy?" Mickey said, standing in the doorway of room 101, it was the horrid boss man from that terrible factory who lived downstairs this whole time.

"M- m- Mickey?!" Roy stuttered, staring in disbelief at his boss, who was dressed all in black leather with a bloody whip in his hand. Roy dared to look between him and the doorway, in there, that horrifying living room; was a table with restraints on each corner of it. Within those restraints were the hands and ankles of a naked woman full of scars, fresh cuts and bruises, fighting to escape her confinement! She was blonde or possibly ginger, it was hard to tell within the darkness of Mickey's grotesque apartment.

"You hate me, right?!" Mickey grinned, looking directly into Roy's terrified eyes.

"Uh- uh... No, I don't. You're a- a good boss, Mickey." Roy lied.

"You're just scared!" Mickey laughed, "but I'll tell you what... If you can keep a secret, I can give you a raise. I know you've been working there far, far longer than me, I got the power to get you a more... respectable position in the company, with a much higher pay. What do you say, aye?!"

"I- I don't know..." Roy shrugged uncomfortably, he could see the bloodied woman's panic in her eyes, she was shaking her head as if to say; 'no, don't take the deal, save me! Save me! Good god, please save me!' but Roy was afraid, a certain sense of frantic terror took over him and all he wanted more than anything was to simply spin on his heels and high tail out of there with his tail tucked between his legs. He hated how much of a coward he was, that his fight or flight response was leaning far more to the latter than former. Despite deep down in his mind, he wanted to be a hero in that moment. Yet realistically he knew he was far too old and small to truly defend himself against Mickey, in any fashion. However, Mickey's offer wasn't quite sweet enough yet.

"How about I get you a new position where we don't see each other anymore? One where our paths never cross, so you can finally sleep at night, while I... Play... During the dark hours. Has Juliet's screaming kept you awake these past two nights?"

Roy only nodded in response.

"So how about a night time position instead, Roy? One where you're finally the boss who gets paid far higher than everyone else. Maybe then, you'll understand where I come from, why I often scream and shout in the workplace. Why I need to eh..." Mickey chuckled, stroking his blood soaked whip, "...release my frustrations in a healthy and positive way."

"Is she... An escort?" Roy asked, looking at the struggling woman, whose screams were muffled under her gag.

"Sure!" Mickey laughed wickedly, his voice was high as a mouse! This was obviously a lie, but to finally get ahead in this company was Roy's wettest dream. So he chose to ignore logic. Chose to ignore the obviously scared and helpless woman on the table, instead convincing himself that she was simply a good, convincing actress who was getting paid to play along with whatever sick, sadistic, sexual desires Mickey wanted to enact. Even though that obviously wasn't the case, Roy didn't want to believe the terrifying truth. Perhaps out of fear, or because his final fantasy of getting respect in the workplace was about to come true; he chose to go along with the lie. He allowed the horror to continue.

"Have the rest of the week off, Roy... I'll tell everyone you've been promoted and start next Monday. I'll see you soon." Mickey winked.

"Ok." Roy grinned an evil grin, "just keep it down you two."

"From now on Roy, the gag stays on. Your next shift starts at 9pm and finishes at 5am, you'll never hear her scream again." Mickey nodded, before closing the door on Roy.

That night, Roy went to the local pub to celebrate and get his mind off things. He drank like a pirate, pint after pint, until he got kicked out by the security there. He didn't let anyone know about Mickey and (by extension) his sinister little secret. Roy was just glad to never hear that God awful laughing/screaming again, then on top of that; he also got a promotion! Likely getting paid anywhere between £20-£30 an hour! He'd be rich! Very rich and respected too. It was a fantasy come true. Then he drunkenly slumped home, as the sun rose, so did his smile, wide and full of glee. At last his nightmares were finally over. Now his dreams could begin.