Frankie & Formaldehyde

Chapter Eleven: A Nice Neighbourhood

There was a saccharine sweetness to the neighbourhood that made Chuck's stomach lurch. He'd been a city kid himself, raised in the heart of downtown and part of its central life. Of course, it was a stretch calling it a city when it barely made the criteria to be a town, but the concept of suburban living hadn't caught on in the region of New Hope until the mid-sixties. That was when copycat blocks of houses were placed like carefully constructed Lego on rectangular patches of land, the streets constructed to be self-contained microcosms of perfection.

There were the usual small injections of discord, the little, ugly orange gnome placed centrally in one garden, an unkempt garage an unsightly eyesore for the neighbour across the lane. But these were small insurgences, their individual stamp obliterated by the overall monochrome scheme of the original planners. Chuck had always known the character of his town changed when these subdivisions moved in. A cold, invading sterility that none of them could fight.

His steps echoed as he walked down the centre of the neighbourhood street, confident no car was going to run him down. The eerie stillness belied a lack of life, but Chuck wasn't so sure. He could have sworn he'd seen a curtain fall to his right, the tiny shadow of fear in the periphery of the large picture window to his left.

Setting his jaw into its usual bulldog scowl, he headed for the house on his right, his knock heavy on the thin plywood door. He could hear some whispered murmurs behind it, so he whipped out his S.I.R. badge and hammered again. "This is S.I.R. Chuck Dickerson, Rogue Division. A word, please. I wouldn't want to have to break down this door."

The lock meekly turned in the latch and the door was opened, revealing a slight, timid young woman in a blue nightgown. Her two year old son clutched at her knees behind her, his brown eyes wide as he looked up at the monolith that was Chuck. "Y-Yes?" the woman asked.

"I just have some questions about your neighbours."

"I couldn't tell you anything, I don't know them."

He glanced over her shoulder into the dark confines of her home. Square shadows littered the interior. "I see you've just moved in."

"Moving out," she corrected him. She gave him a meek shrug as her son hugged her knees tighter. "We all are."

"Getting tired of the quiet life of a small town?" Chuck asked. "Seems everyone around here is keen on the city these days."

"It's not like we had a choice."

Chuck frowned. This was news to him. "How so?"

"Osmosis," the young woman whispered. She glanced behind him as though fearful someone would overhear. "They gave us our eviction notices through the bank about a month ago. It's put my family in a real bind. We put all of our savings into buying this house."

"They can't just evict you without compensation," Chuck said.

"They did. We tried to fight it, but the bank wouldn't do anything about it. It's like everything now—You can't trust the ink on a piece of paper anymore." She hugged her tiny son's shoulders tight. "We've got no choice but to go back to the city. It's going to be expensive and I don't know how we're going to survive. We came here because we thought the cost of living would be cheaper. A stupid dream, I guess."

"That bank," Chuck said, thinking. "It wouldn't happen to be Monarch Banking, would it?"

Her meek demeanour suddenly strengthened. "That crook of a bank manager left us with nothing. He conveniently 'lost' our mortgage agreement, and wouldn't acknowledge our copy. Look, I know who you work for. If you're here to collect more, you'll have to start stripping us of skin. We've got nothing."