She lived in a flat, just a short bus ride from work and close to the shops.
Under normal circumstances, you would say it was pretty much ideal. It would be, if it weren’t for the really nasty guy who was one story up and directly above her. He spent every evening until late practicing on his French horn. Very often his notes were flat and that really grated on the ears. She bought earplugs, but that didn’t work, the vibrations were always there. In the end, it got too much for her. She called on him one evening and being as polite as she could possibly be, she asked if he could drop the volume a bit, as she was having trouble getting off to sleep. He stood smirking for a bit, then was extremely rude, using filthy language and laughed as he slammed the door in her face. After that, he played louder!
Quite naturally, this made her very angry. Despite the fact that she was just about flat broke, she bought a lottery ticket in the hope that it could make her life a little easier. Remarkably, it was drawn the next day and she won an amount just short of a million!
On the following day she handed in her notice at work and advised the landlord she was leaving at the end of the week and settled up. She went out and bought a new suitcase and an airline ticket. She also worked out her plan. There were three stages to it; the break in, the junk yard and the drop off. She would have to go flat out to get it all done in the short time she had before her flight.
The first part was easy. When the troublemaker was out, she broke in and took his wind instrument. The second part involved taking a taxi out of town to an auto wrecker’s yard where she arranged to have the instrument placed under the crusher. The guy wasn’t keen at first, but when she told him it was for an art project she was working on, he became quite enthusiastic. There was a flat fee, cash of course, for jobs that didn’t go through the books. She was happy to pay it. When it came out it was still recognisable as a French horn, despite it being no thicker than her smallest finger at any point. She was delighted with the result.
On the final day, she was on her way to the airport when she had the taxi driver stop at her old building, just long enough for her to leave a parcel on the front door step. It was the reshaped horn, wrapped in brown paper with its owner’s flat number written on it. It goes without saying, that the instrument inside the parcel was no longer playable.
It was truly flat.