Neighborhood Watch by David Jester

Author:David Jester
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781510731240
Publisher: Skyhorse
Published: 2023-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

WANNABE

“I’m in a band,” he said, a broad grin on his face. “We play progressive metal, sorta like Tool, only with more—I don’t know—meat, more—” He clenched his fists and made a throwing motion followed by an impassioned grunt. “You know what I mean?”

Absolutely fucking not.

I shook my head in disbelief, barely able to suppress a grin as I hunched over my Red Bull and listened to the aspiring rock star chat up an impressionable, vacuous redhead behind me.

“Totally,” Red replied eventually, giving him the answer he had hoped for.

“So, this band of yours, Tool, are you in town right now?” she asked, completely missing the point.

I had underestimated the extent of her stupidity.

“I’m not—”Wannabe began, before pausing and adding, “yeah, we’re playing across town tomorrow night. Big show. Thousands watching.”

I watched his reflection through a mirror behind the bar, his lips curled like the sadistic smile of The Joker as he realized he’d just convinced an attractive young girl that he was a legendary rock star.

If I wasn’t so desperate not to draw attention to myself, I would have vomited on the bar. He was the epitome of sleaze, the master of cringe. She was the third girl to have entered the bar since I had been there, and he had tried the same trick on every one of them. I stayed at the back, collar up, hat down, sunglasses on—trying to avoid giving anyone a description they could relay to the police. I watched him cycle through the same bullshit with all of them.

“That’s so cool.”

“Yeah, but I’m kinda used to it by now. Just one of those things.”

Red’s mouth was agape, a simple look for a simple woman. “So, what do you do?”

“I play a little, I sing a little. And I write all our songs. Maybe I could even dedicate one to you?”

He didn’t sing and the songs he wrote were barely worthy of a campfire singalong, let alone a chart-topping success. He played the bass in a local cover band, one made up of high-school dropouts and unemployed rejects. The closest any of them had gotten to rock superstardom was beating Beginner level on Guitar Hero.

He worked part-time behind the bar and spent his days cleaning tables, scrubbing toilets, and begging the bar manager to let him busk on the weekends. Whenever he was on his break, he would let his long hair down, roll up his sleeves to expose his tattoos, and then perve on every newcomer with long legs and a vagina.

Wannabe was used to failure. His life had been a procession of misery and rejection. His mother walked out on him when he was ten and both his education and his aspirations had failed him. He hadn’t paid attention at school and spent most of his time snorting speed and smoking dope. All sense had been willingly emptied out of his head, only for the education system to unleash him on the world at seventeen with barely a brain cell worth salvaging. Wannabe seemed to embrace failure and take rejection in his stride.

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