The Threads that Hold us Together

The Beginnen

Arthur glared at the flimsy plasterboard wall that separated his student room from Tahlia’s ‒ it was undulating. He forced his attention back to ‘Enchanted Flora: A Guide’ and tried to shut out the roaring crescendo of thrash metal and the faint tinkling of wind chimes.
It didn’t work.
Again, the wall wobbled, sending his already-cracked picture frames tumbling to the floor. He closed the book, pinched the bridge of his nose. He’d already complained about the noise to the housing officer, but all he’d gotten was a sympathetic head tilt and a hearty reassurance that it’d be a good learning experience. Even more preposterous were the two neighbours on the other side of the hall, who claimed not to hear or see anything untoward coming from Tahlia in 4b. Not even when purple smoke curled out from beneath her doorway and ingrained itself in the carpet, giving the hall that swirling pattern that made your eyes groan.
Boom!
His book ‒ and indeed everything not bolted to the floor ‒ suddenly leapt a foot in the air and crashed back down. Arthur, who’d shuffled forwards at the wrong moment, was now slotted between his chair and the table, his coccyx throbbing. "Right!” He shoved the table away. “That's it!"
He staggered into the hallway, knocked twice on Tahlia’s door, and waited.
“Who is it?”
“Arthur.”
“Oh!”
The screech of guitars subsided to the sound of bare feet padding towards the door. He squared his shoulders, determined not to be distracted this time. Two weeks ago, he’d banged on her door, requesting that she keep it down. She'd had a party with students from another dimension, making her apartment a temporary temporal node or lobe or somesuch (which apparently, according to the aforementioned housing officer, was so difficult to prove it wasn't worth trying). Somehow, he’d ended up apologising to her.
The door opened. Tahlia stood there, draped in some light-blue contraption trimmed with beads that drew attention to her every movement, and every curve. Not that he looked.
"Everything alright?" she asked.
"Uh no, you see, I was trying to study and my entire room just, well, jumped."
"Oh! I'm so sorry. Are you OK? I must have got the parameters wrong again." She ran the palm of her hand over the wall ‒ their wall ‒ and clicked her tongue. "I bet it's because it's so damn thin."