Neighborhood watch, p.1
Neighborhood Watch, page 1
Also by David Jester
This Is How You Die
The Clinic
Forever After
An Idiot in Love
An Idiot in Marriage
Copyright © 2023 by David Jester
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Cover design by Yiota Giannakopoulou
Cover image credit Pixabay
Print ISBN: 978-1-5107-3123-3
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-5107-3124-0
Printed in the United States of America
Good fences make good neighbors.
—Robert Frost
CONTENTS
Prologue
Part 1
1
2
3
Her
4
5
6
Neckbeard
7
Neckbeard
8
9
10
11
12
13
The Queen of Instagram
14
Part 2
Her
15
16
17
18
19
Wannabe
20
Wannabe
21
22
23
Sunshine
24
Part 3
25
Smoker
26
Her
The Pig
27
28
29
30
31
I
32
Smoker
Her And I
Part 4
33
34
35
36
37
Epilogue
PROLOGUE
“I’ve come to kill you.”
He laughed, waved his hand dismissively. He had a way of laughing from his nose, a short, sharp exhalation that threatened to expel the mucus from within. It was humorless, sarcastic. It was also smug and irritating—made all the smugger and more irritating by the holier-than-thou smile it preceded.
“Good one. What do you really want?” He looked me up and down. Confused. Alarmed. But not entirely sure why. “I’m—I’m kinda busy right now,” he stuttered.
“I told you.” I repeated slowly, “I am here to kill you.”
He rolled his eyes and slammed the door. I heard him mumble to himself on the other side, cycling through a list of expletives before sighing and walking away, the floorboards creaking with every step.
That didn’t go as planned.
I knocked again—another sigh, another barrage of expletives. The door swung open and once again I was greeted by the forty-four-year-old Oscar Wilde wannabe, complete with silk nightgown, expensive slippers, and judgmental stare.
He thought of himself as being above everyone else, even though everything he did was for show and everything he said was a lie. He considered himself to be better educated, even though he’d dropped out of school age sixteen to pursue a career in chain-smoking and sexually transmitted diseases. He considered himself more cultured, even though his idea of sophistication was watching Frasier and smoking cigars. He was a mid-forties social worker and failed writer who spent his days penning poetry that nobody read, writing a blog that few knew existed, and spouting nonsense to a negligible Facebook following.
He had a job, but he thought it was beneath him. He was a social worker with no social skills, a man who lived to put others down and only went to work every day so he could wallow in their misery, remind them that he was better than them, and subject them to his abhorrent poetry when they were too stoned, drunk, polite, or repressed to stop him.
He was the epitome of a failure, a nobody, but he was too narcissistic to realize it. Friends were few and far between, frustrated with his patronizing tone; girlfriends left when he asked to be treated like a king. His time was spent locked up in a high-rise apartment, drinking cheap bourbon, getting high, and yearning for the day that his slapdash, puerile poetry would be read by millions, and not just a smattering of emo kids online.
“Look, I don’t know what you want—”
I grabbed him by the neck and pushed him into his apartment, delighting in the feel of his throat in my hand, the way his eyes filled with horror as his fingertips clawed desperately for release. He was weak, feeble, pathetic, and unable to resist. He toppled over, slipping out of my grasp and hitting the floor hard.
It was barely 8 p.m. and he was already paralytic—stinking of cheap booze and stale weed, just like his cramped, two-bedroom apartment. His eyes were glassy, a stupidly smug and vacant expression still on his face.
“What is this?” he repeated, the smugness slipping away as I retrieved a machete from underneath my jacket.
“I told you,” I said, leaning in close. “I’m going to kill you. Now—on your feet.”
“Please don’t do this.” He dragged himself upright, moaning and groaning with each movement. “What is this? Why are you doing this? Please. You know me. I don’t deserve this.”
“I do know you, and you do deserve this. That’s why I’m here.”
He was on his knees now, desperation mixing with the confusion and horror in his eyes. “Please, don’t—”
“No more talking!” I thrust the steel blade at him, resting its razor-sharp edge on his forehead, watching a pinprick wound drip down his face like a solitary tear. “On the balcony, now!”
“What do you want?”
I grabbed him by the collar with my free hand, dragged him toward me, and then pressed the blade tight against his throat. “Let’s not start that again, eh?”
I shoved him away, he staggered, stumbled, and then righted himself, edging closer to the balcony. The sliding door was already open, the cool air wafting inside. A bong rested on a stool next to the open door, smoke billowing out of the top. There was a bag of weed next to it, a scattering of blue pills around it, and a small baggie filled with white powder. He’d been throwing a party, although he seemed to be the only guest. The apartment stank of solitude. It reeked of a day lost in the abyss of intoxication—smoke, alcohol, stale food, body odor.
In the distance, a bonfire raged, the scent of burning wood polluting the air, filtering into the apartment, and conquering some of those unclean smells.
He turned to look at me—his face a picture of horror, tears in his eyes. “What’s this about?” he asked. “I didn’t do anything to you. I tried to—”
“—Shut up and keep walking.”
“Do you want to make me look like a fool, is that it?”
“Do. As. I. Say.”
He swallowed thickly, nodded, and then edged toward the balcony. His gown billowed as he stepped outside, exposing pale, hairy, and surprisingly thin legs. He picked up the bong, turned slowly toward me, and held it out as a peace offering. “Why don’t we just sit, chill, and enjoy a smoke?”
I laughed and he joined me, seemingly clinging to the hope that this was still some kind of joke or drug-fueled dream.
For a moment, the horror faded. His tear-filled eyes almost sparkled in the light. His face creased with a hopeful smile.
“Why don’t you shut the fuck up and do as I say?” I ventured.
“Please, don’t—”
“Turn around.”
“Please—”
“Turn. Around.”
“I don’t want to.”
He regarded me for a moment. A cursory glance. Up and down. I could see he was weighing up his options, deciding if he could take me, charge me, knock me down, and escape.
I stepped closer and gestured with the knife to call his bluff. That was enough to convince him. He slowly turned around, his exposed legs trembling, his voice shaking.
“Climb onto the balcony,” I told him, the knife still ready to attack.
“Don’t make me do this.”
“You have two options: You either take one step forward, or you get a machete in the back of your skull. Your choice.”
He was whimpering desperately, but he did as I said. He climbed onto the railing, only the lip of the steel structure protecting him from the edge and the drop. He leaned forward to look down and then sharply pulled back.
“Come on now,” he said, his voice shaking. “I’ll give you anything. Drugs, money. I have a hooker coming later if you’re into that sort of thing.” He faced me and forced a smile, but it retreated from his face when it wasn’t reciprocated. “Just please, stop this.”
“Did I tell you to turn around?”
He turned back to the edge and the sheer drop below, his short, sharp exhales leaving a thick, smokelike vapor in the air.
“Please,” he muttered again. Shaking his head, fighting a fear that strangled his words. “Please, please, please, I—”
He turned to me again, expecting to see me staring right back, a grin on my face. But I was right behind him, my hands free. “What are you doing?”
“I changed my mind,” I said. “I don’t want to kill you after all.”
“Oh, thank God—”
“It’ll be much easier if you kill yourself.”
I shoved him and he toppled over the edge. His arms swung madly, his hands grasped desperately, reaching for solid ground, stability. But he was too slow, too weak, too inebriated to make that connection. He disappeared into the darkness. Moments later, I heard the barely audible but unmistakable thud of his body hitting the concrete entrance several stories below.
I waited, listened, expected—hoped. There were no further sounds. No panic, no screams, no shouts or cries.
He died as he had lived—unnoticed by everyone around him.
A few hours after I left the building, the human detritus of his scattered corpse would be discovered by a neighbor returning home from the pub. It would be dismissed as a prank at first, a mangled mannequin left by mischievous kids. Eventually, they would realize they were looking at the remains of their reclusive neighbor. The police would chalk it up to suicide following a drug-fueled depressive binge. Everything that the forty-four-year-old loser had spent his life acquiring, from his ornamental samurai swords to his pages of crappy poetry, would be discarded, pilfered, junked, or forgotten about.
He’d always wanted to make a big impact on the world, and in a way, he’d done just that.
PART 1
1
She stared at her reflection in the window and cursed every inch of it. A clear night, the weatherman had said. Sweltering sunshine all day—a nice, calm, cool breeze throughout the night. It sounded perfect, but he was talking out of his ass.
She’d had her hair done for the occasion. She hadn’t devoted this much time and effort to her appearance in years. “You look like a princess, dear,” her grandmother had said when she left the house, choosing to walk the short distance to the restaurant.
A princess, she thought to herself, remembering her grandmother’s words and the smile she wore when she said them. Fifteen minutes ago, maybe. But fifteen minutes ago, it had been dry. Fifteen minutes ago, the weatherman was probably looking pretty fucking smug. Then the rain started.
She wasn’t a princess anymore. She looked like she’d just stepped out of the 1980s and was on her way to a Poison concert.
She growled at the face staring back at her and cursed once more, this time at her luck. Her first blind date ever, her first date in two years. The last man she’d been with had tried to change her. He was a geek, an introvert with extroverted tendencies, a man who was one step away from being both an agoraphobic and a psychopath. Their relationship had been short-lived, three weeks of misery, self-loathing, and constantly hoping that she would discover some kind of redeemable feature.
The straw that broke the camel’s back came in the form of a double bun and bronze bikini—he had insisted she dress up as Princess Leia, telling her he couldn’t get off any other way.
What a charming bastard he was.
That’s never happening again, she thought to herself, hoping that her new date would have a fetish for Chewbacca, thus saving both hers and the weatherman’s blushes.
She allowed herself a laugh at that. Only then did she see the people on the other side of the glass. Only then did her mind seemingly register that for the last minute or two—when she had been so engrossed in her unintentional perm, laughing, cursing, and doing everything except making faces—a handful of diners had been watching her.
One of those diners seemed more interested than the others, staring intently, hopefully, hesitantly. When he realized she was looking at him and no longer at herself, he turned away.
Abi straightened up, wiped the drizzle off her face, and shook it out of her hair. Then she did her best to smile at him and wave at him. Because although she had no idea what her date looked like, she knew that was him.
That was just how her evening was going. Just how her life was going.
Abi kept her head down as she entered the restaurant. She was greeted by a waiter who wore a three-piece suit, with barely a crease out of place. He looked young, fresh. But she knew that by the end of the night that waistcoat would be twisted halfway round his back, that shirt would be soaked with sweat, and he’d be itching to rip everything off and jump into a nice hot bath or a nice cold whiskey.
“Table for one, Madam?”
That was rather presumptuous of him. She thought about asking him whether she looked like a sad, lonely woman who didn’t have friends, wasn’t married, and enjoyed eating alone on Friday night. But she had just been staring at her reflection and she knew that, minus a few cat hairs, she looked exactly like that woman.
“I’m meeting someone,” she said. She was proud of that and waited for what she perceived as a smug expression to change. It didn’t.
“Are they here now?” He gestured around the restaurant, and she mirrored his actions, though she had no idea why. The man who had been staring at her was now pretending not to look. He was using a napkin to polish a knife, a determined expression on his face as he tried, and failed, to look nonchalant.
“His name is Robert Marlow.”
The waiter’s eyes scoured a book in front of him, hidden from view by the lip of the wooden desk. “Ah yes, here he is.”
The host shifted from one grin to another. Each as disingenuous as the last. “If you’d like to come with me, I’ll show you to your table.”
He took her straight to the table, where he instructed her to sit, gave her a menu, and then departed. The man who—until a few moments ago—had probably thought she was a well-dressed vagrant smiled and greeted her.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Robert. Although you probably knew that already.”
Her cheeks flushed with embarrassment as she tried her best to return his smile.
“Of course. And I’m Abi, although you probably knew that as well.”
Abi figured that he also knew she was a little crazy and maybe a little desperate. He’d been staring at her when she had stood outside, no doubt wondering who this crazy woman was, why she was grimacing, and why it looked like she’d been Tasered.
As she sat down and returned his unblinking smile, she knew that she should have stayed home. She had a bad feeling about this one.
If experience had taught her anything, it’s that dating just wasn’t for her, and blind dating was just asking for trouble.
2
Robert was nice, if a little strange. He worked his way through a repertoire of small talk for the first ten minutes, speaking quickly, barely giving Abi time to answer, and moving to a new conversation as soon as the old one finished. She struggled to keep up. When the waiter came to take their orders, they had been discussing a popular crime drama, but as soon as the waiter headed for the kitchen, Robert jumped into a conversation about literature.
He was trying to impress and desperate to make an impact. He had clearly thought long and hard about how to do that. By the time the main course arrived, he had settled on a single conversation, but it was one that nearly sent Abi to sleep. Apparently, he worked in IT—she still wasn’t quite sure what he did and couldn’t recall if he’d told her among all the waffling—and had recently moved to the area because of a new job. He said he had spent weeks commuting, before living out of a hotel and then finally deciding to rent a house nearby. It seemed interesting to him, and if those facts hadn’t been lost in a mess of awkward conversation, questions, and hesitant silences, she might have found it interesting as well.
Abi thought him to be modestly attractive, and she wasn’t deterred by the nervousness. It was something she had sought in previous boyfriends, because she had always associated nervousness with intelligence. Although that probably had a lot to do with her grandmother. “Only smart people get nervous, dear,” the old woman often told her. “Smart people worry they’re going to sound stupid. Stupid people are too busy trying to sound smart.”
She swore like a docker and she could be very crude, but the old woman was incredibly wise and had a way with words.
