Lena the Killer

My friend Lena killed her neighbor.

Technically, he killed himself. But it wouldn't be inaccurate to say she was partially responsible. Lena insists that she is "indirectly" a part in his death, but the rest of us agree that she is at least "tangentially" entangled in the mess.

The neighbor lived in the unit directly below Lena. She and her roommates are a boisterous crew, so her first interactions with this neighbor involved him complaining about the noise and her roommate telling him to cram it.

Besides, it's not like he wasn't noisy, too. He frequently could be heard arguing with his longtime girlfriend. Over time, Lena befriended the girlfriend and encouraged her to leave. The girlfriend had two kids with the man and felt trapped, so Lena suggested that she enroll in school and make a fresh start, advice that the girlfriend took. To make a long story short, the neighbor threatened to kill himself if the girlfriend left, the girlfriend moved out with the kids anyway, and then he hung himself.

So before you condemn Lena, know that she was trying to be a good person by empowering a helpless young woman; she didn't know her meddling would result in a fatality. In fact, she saw him just before he killed himself and didn't notice anything strange. She was having trouble installing new windshield wipers on her sister's car and the neighbor stopped to help. Lena got rude with him because he was going too slowly and they were in a hurry to leave, but she swears she would have been friendlier had she known his state of mind.

While explaining the story, Lena interjects, a little too excitedly, "We get his parking space now, so that's awesome!" Immediately sensing our dismay, she adds, "No, but it's terrible, it's really really terrible."

So not only did she "tangentially" kill him, but she's benefiting from his death. Still, that's not to say she got away with murder, since she now believes he is haunting her. Right after her neighbor died, her toilet started making this awful screaming noise. She thinks her neighbor's ghost is coming up through the pipes and is going to attack her through the toilet, so she's been squatting over it in general and avoiding it at night altogether.