Song Challenge: Hella Late

Write and record a song about this.

I spotted the paper just as the wind nudged it against a rusted chain-link fence. At first, I wasn’t going to bother with it—just another piece of trash blowing along the sidewalk. But something about the jagged, ripped edges and the bold red writing made me pause. I bent down and plucked it up, smoothing it out against my thigh.

The first words jumped out at me, loud and annoyed, like someone yelling from a porch:

“PLEASE FROM NOW ON, DO YOUR BEST TO CALL US BEFORE STOPPING BY. ESPECIALLY WHEN IT’S HELLA LATE. CALL FIRST! PLZ & THKS!”

I couldn’t help but smile at the frustration practically dripping off the page. Whoever wrote this was done. Done with late-night visitors. Done with surprise drop-ins. Done with whoever had been ignoring the unspoken rules of social courtesy.

I folded the paper and slipped it into my jacket pocket, my mind already spinning. Who wrote it? And more importantly, who was it meant for?


As I walked, I imagined the scene. It was probably someone who lived close by—maybe the little green house at the corner with the sagging porch and the flickering porch light. The place always looked a bit rundown, but not in a way that said neglect—more like exhaustion. The kind of house where the people inside were too tired from life to care about peeling paint or crooked shutters.

I pictured the writer: someone standing at their kitchen counter, slamming the red marker down after writing “HELLA LATE” with such force that it nearly tore the paper. Maybe it was a parent, woken up one too many times by a knock at the door just as they’d finally gotten the baby to sleep. Or maybe it was an older woman with curlers in her hair and a yappy dog that barked at every midnight visitor.


And then there was the visitor. Who shows up “hella late” enough to make someone write a note like this? My first guess was some clueless friend who thought they were still in their 20s, where popping over unannounced at 11 PM was normal. Or maybe it was a neighbor who always “needed to borrow something” but never returned it. Could it have been a family member—someone with a knack for drama—showing up with a suitcase and a laundry list of problems at the worst possible hours?

There was also a part of me that wondered if it was someone darker. A mooching ex who didn’t take a hint? A door-to-door salesperson who thought knocking at 10 PM was a good idea? Whoever it was, they must have pushed the writer to their breaking point for the note to exist at all.


The note itself, though, had clearly been discarded. That’s what threw me. If the writer taped it to their door or left it on a porch, how did it end up here, fluttering against a fence down the block? I pictured the late-night visitor reading it, then laughing to themselves as they tore it down, crumpled it, and tossed it aside. Maybe they didn’t care about the frustration they caused. Maybe they thought it was funny.

Or maybe the wind just took it. Maybe the writer left it taped up overnight, and a gust came through and yanked it away before it ever got read. That felt sadder, somehow—the thought that they’d taken the time to spell out their frustration only for no one to see it.


As I got closer to home, I started wondering if I should do anything with the note. Should I return it? What would I even do—go knocking on random doors and ask, “Hey, did you write this?” No, I decided. Whoever wrote it had either solved their problem or learned to live with it by now.

Instead, I slipped it into a drawer when I got home. It felt like a little piece of someone else’s life, something small but human, like finding a diary entry in a bottle. I didn’t know the whole story, but I felt like I’d been let in on something private, a glimpse of exasperation that I could almost hear in my own head.

And every now and then, when I stumble across it again, I wonder if the visitor ever called first. Or if they’re still stopping by “hella late,” ringing the bell like nothing ever happened.


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I feel vaguely confident that this song, created entirely out of other peoples’ loops (in the spirit of the competition) is the only one like it in this collection.Fluffy Porcupine

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