Shock and Awe

He rings the doorbell. No answer.
He gets out his phone.
"Open the fuckin' door!!"
There's a pause.
"I'm outside!! Open the fuckin door!!"
It opens. He goes in.
I can barely hear the shouting from number two. It's drowned out by the noise in the street.
I sit on my doorstep in the baking sun and watch as drunken students pour out of houses and flood the streets and entries. They're drinking illegally. They don't care.
The girls next door come out the front. They're smoking and chatting. One of them notices me.
"Shit!!"
She lets it slip. They pretend to ignore me. Their fellas come out and join them, drinking beers and smashing bottles in the street.
A neighbour walks by. He stops.
My kids have to play in this street! Clean that glass up!"
A hostile silence then a girl says,
"Clean it up. I don't want his kids getting hurt."
He kicks the fragments of glass into the road.
They can't avoid it any longer.
"We're your new neighbours"
I nod to them.
One of the guys starts playing loud music and passing the speakers through the open windows.
They're avoiding my gaze as I stare at them. One of the girls breaks.
"Do you want us to turn that down?"
"That would be a good idea"
She shouts through the window. The din lessens.
I go for a piss and am caught in mid stream by a friend calling from the front door.
I rush down to her. She's been phoning non stop. I haven't heard it ringing. As we go for a walk through the warzone she says to the girls,
"It's good to see you're considerate to your neighbours."
It doesn't seem to touch them.
The avenues are crowded with drunks, the pavements so full that we have to walk on the road.
The police drive by. They wave to us. All that's going on seems not to exist for them. By the evening they've made their point. They're nowhere to be seen as a long night of shouting, screaming, house alarms and broken glass goes on and on till morning.
The two days of the festival make it clear that the long peace of summer has ended. The tone has been set for the coming academic year.
You might consider these events an invasion. You'd be wrong. This was a raid. The invasion comes in October.
Fuck help us all.