Neighbour at war

Psycho has left the building. I write in the front room of my home in the desirable postcode of 1011 and look out over the fence to an empty house. Crown Removals came and took him away.

- Steve Braunias

Everyone expected it would be the cops. He was trouble, a rogue elephant gone mad among the Teslas and the Bentleys parked all along the length of the street - they're just the runabouts, their best cars are in garages. We peered through our venetian blinds and saw him make his last stand. Texts were exchanged all along the length of the street. We were witnessing history.

Psycho was an unfortunate name but he lived up to it. Very many streets have a neighbour at war, an unruly resident, a bomb at the end of a short fuse - it's the noise they make that drives the rest of us mad. The point of a neighbourhood is its quiet hours. We come home to rest. The rest of the world is a vast loud engine. Our houses are vows of silence. But the house of Psycho shook the whole damned street, from south (mums who brunch love the acai bowls at the corner cafe) to north (we share a corner with the most-expensive street in New Zealand). He was an engine of unstable rage, his amp turned to 11.