MarryJudy
Judy woke up to vocaloid porn, fucking her ears through trashy drywall. Again. A mechanical female voice gasped, screeched “OH YASS BABY” through blown out speakers, the low hum of a robotic male voice grunting musically in the background. She’d once held her phone to the wall, scraping the entire web for matching soundbytes. Within an hour, it’d accumulated over a thousand videos of turquoise, yellow anime characters pegging each other with a cartoonish gusto, in positions that were inaccessible to even the most flexible gymnast. Judy’s phone glowed. 1:07 P.M.. Monday. Twelve missed calls from Megumi. Three from last night, nine from the past week. News of her “incident” had found its way into Megumi’s ear too. Judy would much rather die than talk to her about it, much less see her in person.
The sound of moaning soared to new highs as the video neared its climax. Blood pressure building at the forehead. Judy bit her lip, shoulders tensed. The last time she’d done this, she’d almost broken her hand, but it wasn’t like she could stop it either — it was reflex now. Slammed a clenched fist into hardwood. White, loud pain bloomed from her hand. There it was. No broken bones this time either. Judy glared at the wall that separated her from her neighbor.
The drywall was the same age as the Tokyo apartment complex. The Japanese knew how to love old things, cherish them, but the wall — it had reached the limits of its material. Hairline cracks snaked through it like microfractures in an old glass cup. The paint, a tired eggshell beige, clung unevenly over the surface, settling into the shallow grooves instead of hiding them. If sunlight lit the wall at the right angle, Judy could almost make out faint outlines in the other room.
Judy stood. Room tilting. Feet slipped, kicking down a tower of literary smut. “Taken by the Billionaire's Stepbrother” volumes one through ten flew into a minefield of Pinot Noir bottles and Sasahi beer cans. Glass and tin clattering in the apartment. Incessant moaning still slipping through cracks in the wall. Megumi would be mortified at her room. Heat climbed into her throat. Into the pillow. Judy screamed.
“This bitch. I’ll kill her. Does she not go to fucking work?”
Mary’s eyes were double monitors, screensaver mode. Nobody home. She’d been in “the zone” for hours now, eyes jacked into the screen. The metallic clatter of tin and glass on cheap hardwood brought her back. Back to the flesh. Empty. Hollow. It was in need of another hit, another sensation. Her right index finger began to twitch.
“Hey chat, look. Somebody’s up early.”
A dopamine flashbang erupted from her cortex, overloading sensory input with numbing pleasure. Junk data. Digital nothingness. Right index finger stilled. The room, flooded with the debris of human living. Old things, month-old takeout boxes and empty Lirnoff bottles. Dead things, the head of a plastic Miku figurine coated with cigarette ash sticking out of a pile of clothes, ruined forever by sweat stains. It had all been things that faceless strangers liked, gave her money for, and she’d used the money to dive deeper, until it was too deep, and she spun out of control, crashed. Banned. On every platform. She wasn’t sure for what. Flashing tits on stream because someone had asked for it, using a lighter to singe her leg hair follicles shut because she needed to do it, or maybe it was the slurs. The crowd had loved slurs, and it was too easy to just say them.
Each and every decision she made was an act of suicide, mandated by the twitch. The twitch had two rules. One, everything must feel like something. Two, everything must kill you. When even obeying the twitch couldn’t fill it all, and her heart was about to implode, she aired her dirty laundry to thousands of ears. The same story every time. People knew to expect it. Everybody in her life thought she was crazy, nobody had ever loved her, and the one friend in her life that she made in high school told her she was a psychopath. Eliza had told her that her mother was dying. Mary reached for grief, found nothing, and the reaching was visible. Three days later she was sobbing in her room, unable to explain why, but it was too late.
Mary’s eyes fluttered shut, and it all vanished from view.
Mary’s eyes reopened. The sound of a toilet flushing exploded, an abused speaker’s final death scream. A shower head buffered, sputtered, vomitted a jagged stream onto tile. An unsteady din. When one sound ended, another began. Mary’s face hit pillow. Hard.
“I’m going to kill myself. I’m going to kill myself. I’m going to kill myself.”
Judy smirked, hairdryer in hand, having taken every step in her power to be loud as fuck, reveling in imagined revenge on the faceless loser that had ruined her morning. Some perverted degenerate. Still at home on a Monday afternoon. Megumi would’ve reminded her that she was no different. Mood soured, she sank her front teeth into her lips, trembling, tasting blood. Megumi was right, as always. But the heat, it was howling into her ear, and she was just going to do what it told her.
Judy stared down the metal front door separating her from the world, ready to confront her neighbor. Exact divine punishment. She steeled herself, recounting every disturbance, slight or large she’d felt since forever. Three sharp knocks sounded on the door.
“Maintenance!”
Judy’s lip quivered, and a thesaurus of non-words tumbled out of her mouth in a jumbled whisper. Something was wrong with the shower. Too hot or too cold, like the mood swings of a lonely, disgraced businesswoman who’d chosen a cheap apartment as a tomb.
“Anyone there? Guess not?”
The lock turned, and the door swung open. Judy and the maintenance man met eyes. His name placard said Tom.
“Oh, erm. Sorry, didn’t think you were here. You good for right now?”
Judy couldn’t recount whether she’d nodded, or what, but she must’ve agreed in some way, because Tom was in the restroom fixing the shower. He’d also opened the blinds, after stumbling over some junk in her room. Black, crumbling succulents from Megumi on the windowsill, her work laptop, plastered with bright, official stickers from places she’d worked before, conferences she’d attended, gathering dust. She used to be someone who did things. Megumi would have kept the succulents alive.
Tom left the front door ajar, and a dry, frigid winter draft invaded the room. From inside the apartment, the view of trees, schoolkids, buses passing by seemed like a portal into a different world. Judy saw herself walk towards the door, and close it. Door clicked shut, Judy crouched in front of the door, waiting. Heartbeat steadily coming down from a high pitched tremolo. Clammy hands set against the door, slowly freezing stuck to flimsy aluminum. Judy pricked her ears towards the restroom for any sign that Tom would finish.
Mary shot up out of bed when she heard the knocks. Tiptoed to the door. Peephole. Nothing. The door beside hers clicked. Voices murmuring. A bead of sweat glistened on her forehead, a slideshow of Miku fucking Kagamine Ren with a strap-on in 4K flashing out of order through her brain. Sound complaint? No, it couldn’t be. But if she had to open the door to answer anything. Her right index began to twitch. She looked back.
The blinds were always sealed. Sunlight found its way in anyways — thin slits she navigated by. The only clear pathways were computer to shikifuton, shikifuton to bathroom. Everything else was debris.
She’d get chased out. No question. With nowhere else to go. Mary giggled. The twitch. Static coursing from her finger to her brain. It was maybe her third day awake, static danced up and down her skull, punching out dead zones in her vision, or maybe it was just so dark she couldn’t see, but she couldn’t tell anymore and her body just moved. Mary dove facefirst into trash. Breathing. Whiff of old sweat, mold, cig ash. Retching. Heaving. Standing up straight, looking at goop on the floor. Bile in mouth. A half empty handle of Lirnoff in hand. Chaser. All gone.
Mary bounced from one end of the room to another. Throwing handfuls of debris into the air, creating new piles. Bumping into the wall, chatting into the void. The wall sighed every time Mary made contact. Old fractures lengthened, new fractures formed, and paint dust drifted off of it in puffs of beige smoke. Empty bytes flooded her nerves, overwriting sensory details faster than they could be felt. Judy’s door opened, and click shut as Tom left. Mary didn’t hear it.
Judy paced between the freshly formed indents on the wall, heat building in her hands. Pitched a book at the wall. Then another one.
Mary was giddy. It was over. Finally. The landlord would kick the door open. Put her in one of the plastic bags, clear the whole place out. The booze was turning her legs into chopsticks, wobbly clumsy stilts. Hit her leg with a handle to stop the shaking. Didn’t work. Mary shrugged. Wouldn’t need them soon.
Judy screamed. Mary looked at the wall. Jumped. Felt nothing, a sensation of freefall, a distant crash, then bright warmth. Foreign sensations. When she opened her eyes, the dead zones had receded. But it wasn’t her room anymore. It was well-lit, messy, but not dirty. Yet. A lady stood in front of her in guava pajamas, and Mary’s mouth was filled with plaster dust. Only her head and neck had made it through. Mary laughed. Tears streamed from her eyes. Judy held her head in her hands.
“SHUT THE FUCK UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP!”
Judy watched herself reach for her laptop. Don’t. It flew at Mary’s face, barely missing it, dismantled on impact, scattering pieces across the floor. Heat singing in ear, her body crossed the room to pick up one of Megumi’s succulents. They were dead anyways. The pot exploded centimeters away from Mary’s face, ceramic slicing her cheeks open. A scream. The books didn’t miss. A yelp accenting every hit. Something in her chest closed like a door, and she found her face centimeters from Mary’s. Gripping her crying skull, prying swollen eyes open until they focused on her.
“I have a knife in the kitchen, I’ll fucking kill you if you keep crying.”
Sniffling and hiccuping. Then a smile.
Judy saw her hands. Blood. Chills traveling down her spine. Let her head go. Chin thudding against wall, widening the hole. The heat was gone. When it left, it always left her overheated. Intestines melting, forehead red with high fever, breathing hot. Judy threw open a window. Before it left, it always broke something, or everything. Mouth open in a silent scream, she brought her forehead to the glass pane. Fast. Hard. She saw black, then white, cries of pain escaping her mouth, hot tears dripping. She stumbled into the kitchen on instinct. Picked it out of the drawer. Megumi’s knife. Japanese steel. A gift. Vision abnormally clear now. The cold winter sunlight gave it a silver, alluring glint. A sound from the wall—Mary, throat open, almost laughing. Judy held the knife in her hands, considering it. Carefully. Like a business proposition. Everything made sense now. She saw the fountain of red that it would draw from her body if she plunged it in into her jugular. Judy’s eyes hardened.
Three succinct raps sounded on the door. Trance broken, a cold sweat started on the back of Judy’s neck.
“Police. Open up. We’ve heard that there were some concerning sounds coming from this apartment.”
Judy turned back. Mary’s face was serene now. Eyes closed. A faint smile dancing on her lips. Judy opened the door. Megumi held out yellow plastic water gun in front of her.
“Hands up! Drop the weapon! Now!”
Judy blinked at the knife in her right hand, wondering why it was still there. She dropped it and it bounced off the tile, narrowly missing her bare toes. She raised her hands, feeling the blood in her body freeze over. Megumi peered at Judy. Then into the room.
“What the fuck?”
“I was going to kill myself.” Barely a whisper.
Megumi’s eyes met Judy’s, but was looking past them, locked onto a middle distance only she could see. Megumi pushed past. Picked up something off the floor, put it into trash. Judy and Mary watched. Books stacked, pushed to a corner. Bottles put in cardboard boxes. Judy shut the door. Winter sunlight flooded the apartment, shading the books, the wall, Mary’s face, everything in a harsh tinge.
Megumi stopped cleaning. Sat down with a sob, crying. Judy perched next to her, unsure of what to say. Mary’s stomach grumbled. Loud. Megumi peered from behind wet hair.
“Come over. Eat.”
“Could you help me? I can’t get out.”
Megumi eased Mary’s face through the hole. Her white-red face disappeared into black. Soon, three raps on the door. Megumi went to get the door. Judy a foot behind Megumi, looking like she was about to puke.
Mary. Cheeks dusted with plaster like it was foundation, blood-red rouge streaked across her forehead, oiled, matted long curls like black ramen noodles, long lost their bounce. Megumi sniffed, and narrowed her eyes.
“You need a shower.”
Mary’s face reddened, becoming aware of the flesh again. She looked down at her hands. Coal mine hands from cigarette ash. She brought her undershirt up to her nose.
“I—”
“Take off your clothes, get in the shower. Please.”
Mary stripped naked in the entrance, walked into the bathroom, two pairs of widened eyes following her. Megumi raised an eyebrow at Judy. Judy shrugged. The rush of water.
“Who is she?”
“My neighbor. I don’t know.”
Megumi pulled ingredients out of the fridge and set a pot to boil. Judy watched. Ten minutes. Megumi’s brow furrowed.
“I only hear water in there.”
Megumi threw open the door. Mary hadn’t bothered to lock it. She lay spread eagle in the middle of the shower stall. Eyes closed, hot water hitting her stomach.
“Fuck.”
Megumi rushed to her side, swept up her head, resting it on her knees, put two fingers on her jugular, waiting for a pulse. Mary woke up, sneezed.
“Whoops, the shampoo smelled so nice, and the water was so warm too, and so…”
“You need to sleep?”
Mary nodded. Judy appeared with pajamas and a towel. Mary shivered as the silky, clean pajamas brushed against her bare skin. The warmth, the scent of lavender. Everything was melting. Judy’s pillow knocked her out cold. Judy stood over her.
“I, erm — sorry. I’m sorry — fuck. Please.”
Mary snored, drooling from her mouth wide open. Megumi shook her head.
“Judy Nakamura, what is wrong with you?”
“I can’t do anything right. I can’t fix myself. I’ll be like this forever, till the day I die.”
Megumi sighed.
“Okay.”
Megumi squeezed Judy in her arms, whispering into her ear. Judy shook, wept.
Megumi took the pot of boiling water off the stove. No ingredients had made it in.
“I’m tired. Where do we sleep?”
Judy and Megumi fell asleep on the couch.
Last edited 1/19/2026 – if i edit it again it’ll probs be to flesh out Judy, feel like I need to have Judy more rooted in reality.