Page 1 of Daddy’s Naive Little Neighbour

CHAPTER ONE

Bethany

If I don’t manage to kill this motherfucker in the next three minutes, I won’t be able to live with myself.

It’s just him and me. The desert village is otherwise deserted, and I creep between the buildings with my trusty glock loaded and ready, a round chambered and my finger ghosting the trigger. The rest of my team are dead, and their silence over my headset is heavy and dense. More than anything, I don’t want to let them down.

My mouth is dry and my whole body is tense, and I move through the world in what feels like slow motion, my eyes darting between every bit of cover in my field of view, hunting for the man I need to kill.

It’s pure chance that lets me catch a glimpse of him, moving between buildings on the other side of the courtyard in the center of the village. It’s all open ground, no cover, but it’s the fastest route between him and I, and I know this is going to be my only chance. I have a few precious seconds to spare as he moves through the building he’s just darted into, and I drop down into the courtyard and sprint across it. I can hear my breathing as I run across the sunblasted stone, past a dried up and damaged old fountain, and then I’m in the shade of the building, pressed tight against the exterior wall. I don’t know if he’s seen me. It’s so close to over.

I have no choice but to move. I’m running out of time. I know he’s in the building behind me, and it’s just a matter of who sees who first. I move along the wall until I find an entrance, and the inside is dim and dark, such a change from even the shade of the outside, that my eyes take a few precious moments to adjust. I see his shadow before I see him, crossing the wall of the stairwell to my left, and that’s all I need. I’m moving before I’m even conscious of it, aiming before I have anything to aim at, and when he starts to descend the stairs, slow and cautious, I wait for the headshot before I squeeze the trigger button, slick against the sweat on my hands—

And my dead teammates yell our triumph in my ears as the match ends, game over, and our team wins. They’re so loud I have to knock my headset off, but I’m yelling too, bounced up on the couch in the corner of my bedroom, still in my pajamas at half-past three in the afternoon, with an open bag of chips on the floor, a half full energy drink camouflaged among the other empty cans collecting on my TV stand.

“SUCK. MY. DICK!” I howl into the mic, grabbing my crotch and the complete and total lack of a dick there, as I taunt the losing team, to the riotous laughter of my teammates. Xx96Deathany69xX strikes again.

Then there’s an unfortunately familiar pounding on my bedroom door, and I freeze in the middle of my bouncing, as the door swings open and my mother fills it, absolutely glowering at me, “Bethany Ann,” she starts, hissing at me in a furious whisper, as though to make up for the volume of my voice. Her finger points across the room to my open bedroom window, and she continues, “We have a new neighbour and you are screaming. He’s going to find out that you’re an unemployed hooligan instead of our sweet daughter home from college for the summer, and I will not suffer that embarrassment.”

I drop back onto my butt on the couch, annoyed but not abashed, and hastily exit out of voice chat with my team, and quit the game. “Sorry.”

“Are you?” she asks, scathing. “Honestly. Why can’t you be more like Meghan? Her mother was telling me she got a special academic placement in Oxford. In England.”

Even if I’m annoyed with her, I don’t have the heart to tell her that what actually happened is that Meghan moved overseas after fucking one of her professors to live full time as his freaky sex doll and that in our (very infrequent, these days) video chats, I barely recognize her anymore. “Sorry, mom.”

I’ve given up trying to make excuses. She cares more about what the new neighbour thinks than she cares about the fact that I’m doing the only thing that makes me happy anymore, that the people I game with are the only people I fit in with. I’m lonely and bored this summer, trapped in the endless hell of my parent’s suburban retirement. They moved, after I left for college, and when I came back for the summer, it was to a brand new house. My bedroom is a guest room now, and it’s all inoffensive neutrals and boring, safe decor. I’m just lucky I have a couch and TV to hook my console up to, but I don’t feel welcome here.

All my mom cares about is what the neighbours think, and all my dad cares about is getting another coat of epoxy on his new fishing boat.

“I’ll keep it down,” I tell her, mostly to make her go away. “And I’ll shut my window.”

“You’d better,” she says, more of a threat than anything. And then, just to maintain the illusion that she’s still a loving mother, “Dinner’s at six.”

“Right.”

She leaves, and I slump on the couch, ignoring the assorted notifications from my gaming crew, asking why I bailed or if I’m coming back for another round. Suddenly I don’t feel like it anymore, and I power the console off, and toss my headset into the cushions at the corner of the couch. After a few more minutes of self-pity, I drag myself upright and over to the window, to pull it closed.

As I do, I get my first glimpse of the new neighbour. He’s out front on his driveway, hose in hand, watering the front flower bed. There’s a car parked on the driveway, covered over with canvas, and the garage is open, boxes still stacked neatly inside. The house next door was in pretty rough shape when he bought it, and it must be a project. Maybe he plans to flip it and sell it again once he’s done renovating.

He’s a big guy. I don’t mean like fat, I mean buff, with broad shoulders and a tight t-shirt. I heard my mom say he’s in his fifties and newly divorced, but from where I stand, he doesn’t look that old. His hair is dark and his cheeks are bearded, though I haven’t seen him turn his face towards me yet. He wears a plain gray t-shirt and a pair of khaki shorts against the summer heat, and water from the garden hose has splashed and beaded in the hair on his muscular forearms.

I watch him for a few more moments without really knowing why, before I snap out of it, and slide the window shut.

CHAPTER TWO

Marshall

My neighbours seem nice enough, but I’ve heard the mom yelling at her daughter often enough to know that they only seem nice.

I haven’t managed to introduce myself yet, but according to her mother, she’s home from college for the summer, and she’s a sweet girl, just extremely shy.

I’ve seen her once or twice. She’s a pretty girl, in her early twenties, with dyed black hair streaked in a variety of fading rainbow colours. I’m outside almost as often as I can be, but she seems to spend most of her time indoors, judging from the fact that the few times I’ve seen her, she’s been pale as a ghost.

Her mom only ever wants to talk about the latest in neighbourhood gossip. Her dad only ever seems to want to talk about the boat he has parked in the driveway. Neither of them mention their daughter except in passing.

Still, it’s a nice enough neighbourhood, and they’re bearable neighbours. I bought the house beside them on the cheap, on a corner lot, but sold at far less than it’s worth, considering the amount of work that needs to go into it. The whole interior is a time capsule, dated from the sixties, and while the bones of the house are solid, everything needs to be gutted and brought up to date, and up to code. The neighbour was happy to tell me about the way the property value of the place had been steadily on the decline, ever since its elderly owner had started to decline herself. When she passed away, I was happy to buy it from her family, and promised to take good care of it.

I’m an engineer by training and a contractor by trade, and a new arrival to this part of the world. Right now, this house and this job are like a sabbatical for me, a personal project that I can take my time on, according to my own standards and specifications. I owned my own business with a partner back in Idaho, but I sold my half of it to him when my divorce went through, and moved out here to get a fresh start.