Authors note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, events and incidents are the products of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Weekend Bully
Introduction:
Everyone has a hero, especially when they are younger. Someone they admire and wish they could emulate for their strength, skills, talent or sometimes just for their simple courage in the face of adversity. Likewise, most people have someone in their life that is so important to them, that they will do anything to protect that person.
For Cadey, her father met both of those criteria.
Mark Andrews, Cadey's father, was no-one special, except to his eighteen-year-old daughter. Middling height, middling intelligence. As run of the mill an individual as you could find. Quiet, unassuming, polite, kind. The sort of description people gave for a person who hasn't really made an impact on their life.
If you asked Mark about regrets in his life, you could expect him to give a small shake of his head while answering 'none'. Even the fact that his marriage had failed wasn't an issue in his mind as he'd managed to get a daughter from it, the sun in his drab world. Mark's ex-wife was called Linda although Mark would only ruefully refer to her as 'the Ex' on the few occasions that she'd come up in conversation. Cadey on the other hand most often called her mother 'a thundering cunt'.
Linda was a woman who had high hopes and expectations in life, none of which were likely to be provided by her unassuming husband. Disappointed that she wasn't ever going to see a Beverly Hills type lifestyle in her future, she took her disappointment out on Mark pretty much every day of their marriage. Verbally most of the time, sometimes with just a snide, belittling comment, other times in a torrent of curses, wailing and tears. Occasionally, when she'd imbibed too much Chardonnay, Linda would add some slaps and kicks to underline her disappointment with her lot in life.
Mark took it all. It wasn't that he was made of stone, immune to the cutting edge of her shrew-like-tongue. He took it because leaving Linda would mean leaving Cadey and that wasn't something he was prepared to contemplate. Finally, peace came to their little corner of the world when Linda started an affair with a used car salesman from East Texas. In a whirlwind romance that couldn't move fast enough for Mark and Cadey, Linda moved out, becoming soon after the ex-Mrs. Andrews.
That had been four years before and life had become simpler and better for the father and daughter after that. They lived in a home that Mark had inherited from his parents, a nice shore property about an hour's drive from the city. The town they lived in was small enough, a mere three thousand inhabitants during the week that swelled to over six thousand on the weekends. The reason being that many of the wealthier people living in the city would retreat to the shore on the weekends, relaxing in their second homes.
Cadey used to love the influx of people on the weekends when she was a child, the weekend crowd bringing new kids to the beach, games to be played, fleeting friendships to be made. As she grew older, she began to resent the 'invasion' as she saw it, the quiet of main street falling away as rude, entitled weekenders crowded the restaurants and cafés, littering the sidewalks with never a thought towards civic pride.
Not that her father had to endure the weekend crowds. He worked in an office job Monday to Friday, his unassuming nature keeping him from securing promotions so that as the cost-of-living increased year on year, he found it harder to make ends meet while trying to save towards Cadey attending college. To supplement his income, Mark took a job as a night security guard, patrolling the very office building he worked in during the week. It was taxing on him, sleep during the day becoming a necessity, not a luxury.
In their quiet little town, that shouldn't have been a problem and it wasn't, until Jermaine moved in next door.
Chapter One:
Mark groaned audibly as he clambered out of the car. His back ached even though his commute was a mere twenty minutes from his home. 'Getting old' he said to himself although he was just past forty. It wasn't age, it was just tiredness that was getting to him. He pushed a fist into the small of his back, seeking a moment of relief from stiff tired muscles before locking the car and walking towards the house.
Going through the front door, the stillness inside telling him Cadey wasn't at home. Most likely she'd gone out to pick up some groceries, ready to make Mark something to eat for his night shift that night. She was good that way, always thinking of him. She got that from him. He thanked God on a daily basis that the only things she'd inherited from his ex was her good looks and her strength of will. True, Cadey had a sliver of his ex's temper as well but together with his own good nature the young woman wasn't the harpy that her mother was.
Mark pulled open the patio doors at the rear of the house, stepping outside to enjoy the view of the ocean for a minute, the majesty of it never failing to bring him a little peace. That peace lasted all of ten seconds when he spotted his neighbor, Jermaine standing at the low picket fence that separated their properties. The black man was pissing, right over the fence and onto a small rose bush in Mark's garden. He groaned to himself, spotting that Jermaine was well aware of his presence meaning that Mark couldn't just say nothing.
He walked over slowly, not wanting to arrive before the other man was finished. Watching him piss on his property was bad enough without adding a close-up view of the man's large cock being shaken clear of the last drops of urine. Jermaine had been a nightmare neighbor ever since he'd bought the place next door a year before. Thankfully he was one of the 'weekenders' so his disruptive presence was only for a few days each week. A low shudder passed through Mark at the thought of Jermaine living there 365 days a year.
It had started over music. Jermaine playing hip hop, rap, jazz... whatever took his fancy from the moment he woke in the morning until well past midnight each night. Loud enough that every lyric was clearly audible in Marks home.
Working night shift, he'd needed to sleep during the day. Mark had politely gone around, introduced himself and explained his predicament. At first it seemed Jermaine was totally reasonable about it all, nodding along to Mark's story before bidding him a cheerful 'good day'. As Mark had walked away, the music behind him had swelled in volume. He'd suffered through it for two full weekends before making a complaint to the police.
Mark wasn't sure what pull Jermaine had, but since the majority of 'weekenders' tended to be wealthy, he could only assume the black man had money on his side. Nothing came of Marks complaint that time, or the following one. It was only when Jermaine had played 'Police Dog Blues' by Blind Blake over and over one Saturday morning that Mark realized that not only had his complaints failed, Jermaine was well aware of them.
After that, Mark had opted to deal with the situation the way he had dealt with his Ex. Suffer in silence. So, he ignored the car parked badly, blocking his own driveway, the litter that found its way into his property, the dog mess from the Rottweiler Jermaine owned, always on his side of the fence. He even grew deaf to the snide comments and hooting laughs whenever the black man would catch sight of him. Ear plugs and black out blinds meant he slept and working and sleeping as much as he did kept the 'bullying' to a minimum.
"How's your day going neighbor?" Jermaine's scornful greeting wasn't lost on Mark.
"Good, good. Thanks for asking. Listen, did you really need to piss outside like that?" Mark gestured to the rose bush, leaves dripping urine.
"Shit Mark, you know how it is. You get to our age and when you gotta go, you gotta go," Jermaine replied. Mark knew that Jermaine was in his fifties, at least ten years older than himself. Through some deal with the devil, the black man looked the same age as Mark did. Fitter besides. A lot fitter. It had to be the devil's work in Mark's opinion because every time he saw Jermaine, the tall bearded black man had a cigar chomped between his lips and a glass of scotch in his hand. Clean living wasn't his secret to youth and vitality.
"I'm only forty," Mark replied automatically correcting Jermaine, wishing he hadn't even as he said it.
"Sheee-iit... really? Fuck, too bad neighbor," Jermaine answered with an almost pitying look on his face.
