Father Renter Killer E-Book

Thomas Breidenbach

• Herausgeber: novum publishing
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 646

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Tom's marriage is on a knife-edge. He lives with his wife Sandra and their three daughters in a high-rise building in a problem district. It's exhausting, the quality of life is poor and Sandra's mood is getting worse by the day. The saving grace: her own four walls. But they are not so easy to come by ... "Father Tenant Murderer" is a story about family, intrigue, betrayal and deception, but also about devotion, loyalty and perseverance. It is a story about generational conflict and justice, about second chances and how much you can be wrong about a person. But also about love, which sometimes finds its way to you via wrong paths.

Leseprobe

Dedication

For

Alexandra,

who gave me

K. and T.

Prologue

From Wikipedia - The free encyclopedia: "The term ghosting refers to a complete breakdown of contact and communication in an interpersonal relationship (partnership or friendship) without prior notice. Although there may have been dates or a relationship beforehand, all attempts at contact suddenly come to nothing.

Ghosted people are shaken in their self-confidence and develop doubts about their own perception.

Those affected by ghosting can experience a feeling of fundamental insecurity or, under unfavorable circumstances, fall into a deep crisis. They can also carry the fear of sudden and seemingly unprovoked abandonment into subsequent relationships. Trauma and fear of loss can also occur. In particularly severe cases, this can lead to serious psychological damage and even suicidal thoughts. This is because many people feel very hurt even after breaking off a short relationship. People who are left in this way often feel devalued, partly because they weren't even worth a few words to the other person."

1. The Revelation

Tom took a deep breath. "Imagine we're coming home. To our beautiful new house. The children are with your sister. The entrance area is spacious. I will help you out of your coat. A bottle of sparkling wine is waiting in the fridge. There are fresh grapes on the large kitchen island, which stands freely in the room. Everything is bright, the windows are huge, the floor is pleasant oak parquet, the furniture is white. The sun is low and shines far into the rooms. It feels a bit like a beach house. I sit down on one of the bar stools. You come to me, put your arm around my waist and put a grape in my mouth," Tom shared a daydream with his wife. Sandra took a deep breath and held her breath. They were lying in their marital bed and the three children were asleep. It was Sunday evening, around 9 pm. "There's a sweet smell in the house. It smells like you and like home. A beautiful oak staircase leads to the upper floor in the middle of the house. I grab your hand and slowly pull you behind me, up the stairs. When we reach the top, we go into the bathroom. The bathroom is huge. The most beautiful in the whole city! At least! There are candles everywhere, the lights are dimmed, soft pink shines against the white walls. I'll unbutton your pants ..." Tom interrupted abruptly because the beautiful castle in the air was torn down by the banging baby monitor. Johanna sounded the low-flying alarm. The baby was demanding to see its mommy.

"Oh, children are simply the most effective contraceptive ..." Sandra sighed and struggled out of bed.

"It's all covered by the child benefit, darling!"

"You and your stupid remarks," Sandra sighed and quietly left the bedroom. Tom was left alone. Somehow, he had the impression that Sandra was downright relieved about it. It felt like they had not slept together for ages. Tom was crawling on his gums, but Sandra did not seem to miss it. He got a little carried away with this suspicion and became increasingly restless. He waited forever, but the baby's mumbling came from the baby monitor for hours.

"Be fruitful and multiply, they said, those sadists..." he whispered quietly to himself. At some point, he simply fell asleep over it.

The next day, it was a Monday, Tom had a bank appointment in the afternoon. It was about getting a loan to buy a house. The bank advisor was a man in his mid-fifties with a good figure. He reeked of cheap aftershave, nicotine and alcohol fumes. He had practically no hair left on his head and was sweating miserably. After Tom had presented the family's finances and interesting properties, the bank advisor began frantically trying to persuade Tom to buy something cheaper - a ruin, so to speak.

"You can renovate them while you're already living inside," he suggested.

"Refurbish," Tom corrected. "You have to renovate houses like this. No, thank you. That's out of the question for us. We have three small children. Living in a ruin for years is not an option," he continued. Besides, they were already living in a ruin and his craftsmanship could not keep up with his wife's standards anyway. With three small children, there was no room for such frills outside of the parental leave he was currently on. This went back and forth for quite a while until Tom finally stood up, thanked her and said goodbye. He had heard enough. What a humiliation! The bank advisor had clearly had to pull himself together not to laugh aloud at him. Tom had performed a financial striptease and instead of thunderous applause, he had only received a shrug of the shoulders. All he wanted was a loan for a house in a suburb of his hometown in the Rhineland. Nothing spectacular, without turrets or a pool - just his own bourgeois four walls that all young families dreamed of. How was he supposed to explain this to Sandra? She had already made plans: Herb garden, hobby room, the whole nine yards. And he had been telling her off the ledge for months, even years. Instead, it was time to get back to the Slab. Tom, his wife Sandra and their daughters Marie, Elena and Johanna lived in a four-room, kitchen and bathroom apartment on the tenth floor of a 1960s social housing block. A dream in exposed aggregate concrete - with night-time noise, mountains of garbage, drug addicts, weekly police patrols and everything that went with it. But there was no shading at all on the windows of the upper floors. Tom's apartment was located directly under the flat roof, which was covered with roofing felt. As a result, the temperature often rose to over 30° C in summer. In winter, it was freezing cold when the heating was not constantly on full blast. There was a satellite dish on every balcony, and many had the flags of the residents' countries of origin hanging on them. Bulky waste and other garbage were piled up on the balconies almost everywhere. There was often someone sitting between them, smoking. It was desolation cast in concrete. For years, Tom and Sandra had been putting every cent they had left on the table to scrape together the necessary equity to buy their own home "In the green". In their price range, however, "In the green" was more like "Next to the railway line and the sewage treatment plant" - but all that would have been better than the slab. The search had been going on for almost five years. As soon as she had become pregnant, Sandra's ultimate nest-building instinct had kicked in.

Tom rode his bike home from the bank and thought about how he was going to break the disappointment to Sandra. Tom and Sandra were both in their early thirties and had married seven years ago. In order to save money for their own home, they had only celebrated the wedding in a very small circle and without pomp. And they had lived very spartanly. Although Sandra was also an engineer like Tom, she earned considerably less. She simply did not manage to show her achievements in the right light and never asked for more pay in appraisal interviews. And so for years she remained on her starting salary, which was barely above what a secretary earned. At some point, Tom had stopped giving her advice or reproaching her about it. It had only ever put her in a bad mood. He loved her more than anything and wanted to make her as comfortable as possible whenever possible. By the time their first daughter Marie was born, the issue had been resolved anyway. Sandra had originally wanted to wait until they had bought a house before having children, but then changed her mind. Her fear of not being able to have any more children or having to undergo fertility treatment due to her advanced age was too great. But Tom had also been treading water for years as far as his salary was concerned. He was put off again and again:

"The department is already far too expensive anyway. You know, all the old contracts of the older colleagues from the good old days," his boss told him like a prayer wheel in every appraisal interview. Tom felt it was terribly unfair that some of his colleagues who were twice his age and only worked half as fast were earning twice as much. He simply felt cheated. But with three children, it hard to reinvent himself professionally, especially as Sandra did not exactly back him up. On the contrary: he was the one who supported her.

At a crossroads, Tom turned off his way home to pay a visit to his Uncle Til. Uncle Til lived in a retirement home run by the Workers' Welfare Association at the end of a cul-de-sac called the Brick Road. It was the only old people's home in the whole town with an underground parking garage. For some reason that Tom could not understand, the operators were immensely proud of it and advertised it aggressively. Apart from the retirement home, the Brick Road was lined with detached houses - Tom's objects of desire. Swallowing his envy, he cycled briskly past the children playing. Actually, the children weren't really playing. Instead, the children of the affluent upper middle class on this estate were staring at their smartphones. But because that's what the cappuccino moms wanted, at least they were doing it "in the fresh air". Tom parked his bike in the bike rack in front of the main entrance to the retirement home. The automatic double sliding door opened, and Tom was greeted by the smell of coffee and urine. He routinely intercepted a "fleeing" elderly lady, who marched out of the door with great determination.

"But I have to go to class! My pupils are waiting for me!" protested the visibly confused woman.

"But Mrs. Specht, you know you're off today. After all, it's the vacations!" Tom replied. Mrs. Specht was a resident on Uncle Til's ward and almost a hundred years old. She had obviously been a teacher in the past. She repeatedly praised Tom, saying that he had been good today and therefore did not have to do any homework. He went in and out of his uncle's old people's home almost every day and had previously worked there as a community service volunteer. Tom thanked her warmly, dropped Mrs. Specht off at the reception of the old people's home and once again swore to shoot himself on the spot at the first sign of dementia.

He could still hear them singing loudly down the corridor, "Cologne girls, cologne boys, they are all God's best choice!"

"Master of all classes!" Uncle Til greeted him. Tom told him about Mrs. Specht and his plan to prevent Alzheimer's by committing suicide.

"But how are you going to do that, boy? You don't even have a gun!" Uncle Til replied. "Although of course you could easily buy one in the Slab. You already know where."

Tom hugged the "old bastard", as Uncle Til called himself, and told him about the bank advisor.

"That was that Schröder, wasn't it? He's a really lousy left-wing sock, that guy! I'm sure he's going to have one tonight," Uncle Til grumbled like a sailor. He really was a kind of sailor, he always emphasized that, as he used to drive a tugboat in the city's Rhine port. Tom was soon to find out that this was only half the truth.

"Now I'm pushing my fucking walker around instead of coal freighters! It's shit!" he used to swear at regular intervals. It sucked too, Tom thought. But at least Uncle Til had remained true to himself, and his mind was as sharp as the blades of his knives. Uncle Til had a soft spot for beautiful, sharp, unusual knives. But because they were forbidden in the old people's home, he had outsourced them to Tom. Sandra did not like that at all.

"We have two small children, what the hell are we supposed to do with a knife collection?" she had grumbled. Johanna had not been born yet. Uncle Til's knife collection filled half the cellar - but Tom always claimed to his uncle that the knives were in the living room cupboard and showed photos on his cell phone to prove it. He actually stored the most valuable knives in the living room cupboard, but more out of fear of theft. He and Sandra stored everything dangerous up there - out of reach of the children.

"At least knives aren't taking the piss out of you, Tom!" Uncle Til said in a rage and Tom tried to catch the conversation again.

"If only I knew what I could do! I mean, the situation is catastrophic: there are endless interested parties, but no offer," he explained.

"'Socialism needs scarcity, boy! I should frame that saying and hang it on the wall," Uncle Til interrupted him. "Besides, you young people have only yourselves to blame! Who becomes a craftsman these days? 'Something to do with media' and all that new-fangled frippery isn't going to make a house out of bricks!"

"The usable houses change hands among family and friends. And when a house comes on the market, at least 600,000 euros are asked for it - and then it's a ruin. But we don't even have 50,000 euros on the high edge. The bank would like to have at least 15 to 20 % of the ancillary costs as equity. We put aside around 10,000 euros a year, but prices rise by 15 % every year."

"Yes, yes, yes, I get it: Your poverty pisses you off!" Uncle Til interrupted him. "But all these figures, boy, boy, my head is spinning!"

"That equates to 90,000 euros a year for the purchase price or 13,500 to 18,000 euros for equity. That means: we can't save against these price increases and yes: it pisses me off! With renovations, we would have to take out a loan for 800,000 euros. With an initial repayment of 2% ..."

"That sounds like a genetic defect, son. You should have it checked out," Uncle Til recommended, grinning. Tom gave him a terribly serious look. Uncle Til scratched his head.

"Are you finally done with your number salad? What are you trying to tell me?"

"I work my ass off, but I can't even afford a Porsche! My older colleagues work half as much and get paid twice as much. Where's the intergenerational fairness in that? What's more, they all live in paid-off houses, and I rent in a slab!"

"I see. It's never been easy to get other people's money! Look: it's not at all politically desirable for people like you and me to have our own homes. Because of land sealing and all that! You're one of those people who are probably called 'blenders' or something like that," said Uncle Til, talking nonsense in Tom's eyes.

"'Mixer'? Bartender, or what?" Tom joked, because he only understood the station.

"Think about it: if only the dregs live in the slab, then the Kotten will fall apart by the end of the year. Neighborhoods like this also need people with higher incomes, from middle-class backgrounds, to literally keep the place going," explained Uncle Til. Tom gave him a terribly serious look. "Onlythe dregs live there! The place isfallingapart! Whatever. That's too much conspiracy theory for me! Where's my tinfoil hat?" Tom waved it off.

"Think about that movie! What was it called? "Icepiercer"?" asked Uncle Til.

"Snowpiercer," Tom corrected him.

"That's right! "Snowpiercer! They always need these little guys to keep things running in the big machine. It's the same with us: the poor are needed! We don't want them to become wealthy. They are supposed to generate returns for landlords. They are supposed to do the dirty work. And they are supposed to bring in votes if they are dependent on the state."

"That may all be true. But that doesn't get me anywhere. I needmoremoney," Tom objected.

"You could deliver newspapers on the side, together with the children," suggested Uncle Til, grinning mischievously.

"Delivering newspapers is complete garbage. I might as well stand at the traffic lights and juggle empty beer cans to entertain the drivers, I'll get more out of it," Tom replied sarcastically and flipped his uncle the bird.

"As if you could juggle!" Uncle Til objected.

"Can't be any more difficult than picking a lock with a lock pick," Tom replied, shrugging his shoulders.

"What about Sandra's parents? Can't they help you out? I thought they had money like hay?"

"Sandra doesn't want that. They've always said she shouldn't marry me, but a rich snob. And they've always let Sandra starve financially. She should stand on her own two feet! On the two feet of a rich husband. What a load of nonsense! Besides, they're still dancing around the Holy Bimbam in Timbuktu, or who knows what they're doing," sighed Tom.

"They're still traveling around the world. For how long now? Five years?"

"I think there will soon be six of them. They've never seen the girls before and they weren't at our wedding either," explained Tom.

"You really do have the strangest monsters-in-law in the world. Shouldn't they be actively making your life a living hell?"

There was silence for a while.

"Supply and demand!" Uncle Til finally said. "You either have to increase the supply or reduce the demand..." Uncle Til scratched his head again.

"What do you mean? Am I supposed to kill off anyone interested in our house?" asked Tom more in jest. "Our house" was the castle in the air that Tom and Sandra used to keep each other happy. The whole thing had already taken on such epic proportions that the two of them often forgot that they did not even have a specific house in mind, let alone had bought one.

"Difficult! You'd have to time it just right, the window of opportunity for house viewings is short, there are heaps of witnesses and so on. Not a good opportunity for a murder," Uncle Til realized and had one of his coughing fits.

"What do you know about perfect murder?" Tom made fun of Uncle Til after he had stopped coughing. Uncle Til had been Tom's surrogate father since Tom's real father, Uncle Til's younger brother, had fallen out with his mother and killed himself shortly afterwards. Tom had only been ten years old. As a result, Tom was very grateful to Uncle Til and visited him every day at the old people's home. Tom had heard rumors about his uncle: supposedly he was not the staid tugboat skipper in the harbor, but a red-light kingpin. But Tom had never heard anything about it and therefore did not believe the rumors.

"Nerves are on edge, huh? Sandra must be going crazy! Will you have one too? You can say 'no' too," Uncle Til asked with a grin and poured Tom a glass of schnapps before he had even answered.

"Didn't you always say worries could swim?" asked Tom, somewhat surprised.

"Oh, let's give her a bit of a kick today!" Uncle Til replied and winked at him. They clinked glasses and drank. Tom lost control of his features for a moment.

"What the hell is that? Brake cleaner?!"

"Oh, one of my fellow inmates, Peter, burns himself from time to time - in the bath, here in the old people's home. He shares his fine drop with me - a fine fellow. In return, I don't tell anyone about the light girls he lets come to his room. Yes, boy, it's scary here in the country, you have to see where you stay!" explained Uncle Til and winked at Tom. "Luisa finally brought me back my shot glasses from Peter yesterday. If you lend him something, I'm telling you, you'll have to tie the cat to it to get it back..."

Luisa was a geriatric nurse. Uncle Til went on for a while about his "fellow inmates", as he called the other residents of the home. At that moment, Tom did not care who ordered prostitutes, who had wet their pants and when, or who had tried to escape. Only one thought crossed his mind: if he could adjust the supply to the demand so that there was an oversupply, the prices would be reduced. Tom looked at his watch. It was time to go home.

"You're being way too stubborn about this, kid. If you buy a house now, she'll run off with someone else in a few years and you'll be left empty-handed. Think about it: what do women and hand grenades have in common? If you take the ring off, the house is gone!" explained Uncle Til, looking at Tom deadly serious and then laughing aloud.

"You should have seen your face, boy!" he continued to laugh. Tom smiled sheepishly.

"Well, I already told you back then: one of the five pillars of a solid retirement plan is to marry rich. You can't do anything for a poor father, or uncle in your case, but you can for a poor father-in-law!" Uncle Til prattled on.

"Ihavea rich father-in-law. Unfortunately, a stingy one," Tom replied grudgingly. Suddenly the door opened and Luisa, the geriatric nurse, came in.

"So, boy, I'm kicking you out now, although I would have liked to philosophize with you for a while, I have to go to Bingo afternoon. Let's see if I can win the coveted, legendary "Excavator ride through the Eifel" today."

Tom said goodbye to Uncle Til and made his way home to Sandra and the children. His bike was cracking in the pedals. It was only a matter of time before they gave up the ghost. Tom was torn from his thoughts by a teenage smartphone zombie running right in front of his bike. He braked sharply on the bend, lost control of his bike and fell a few meters into the bushes at the side of the road. A pack of kids with smartphones immediately came running and started filming Tom trying to free himself from the bushes.

"The old man must have been drinking. I can smell it all the way over here!" boasted one of the lads.

"And this is supposed to be the means of transportation of the future?" asked a young woman, her face grimacing.

"I wish you a shitty day too!" Tom thanked them and swung onto his slightly warped bike. These affluent brats have no idea, he thought and cycled much more slowly along the road.

2. The Confession

Sandra was anything but enthusiastic. "So, it's not going to happen? Great, Tom! I told you right away! All this fuss, all this talk, it's all for your ass!" she grumbled and gasped when Tom told her the good news.

"He just said ... with only one income and three children ... it's not going to work with the current prices. There's no supply and all that. They all sit in their stalls until their asses are in the coffin," Tom replied, shrugging his shoulders. Sandra had to laugh for a moment, then she punched him in the stomach, hugged him and they stood like that for what felt like five minutes. Sandra had been a sweeper, a dream of a woman, actually far too demanding for him, Tom often thought. He was also attractive, well trained, a striking face with a full beard, but she was in a different league to him. The years, the breastfeeding, the sleep deprivation, the children, the stress of everyday life and the record had finally turned the butterfly into a caterpillar. Sandra often let herself go, snacked too much, stopped exercising and became rounder by the day. Nevertheless, Tom was still very much in love with her and would do anything for her. Sandra finally broke free from the embrace.

"This 'house' is driving me crazy. Every day something else is broken. Every day another neighbor goes on a rampage. Sometimes all of them together. Thisfuckingelevator is broken so often that I don't dare use it anymore. There's garbage piled up all around this house. There are more rats than songbirds. We don't have enough space. I can't even take a shower in the evening because this dump is too noisy. I want my peace and quiet and a place to retreat! I can't stand it anymore! What about the nicest bathroom in town? It's all just castles in the air! And my friends live in their fancy houses, bombarding me with photos and stories about how great it is to have space and a garden and two bathrooms and, and, and ...,“ she gave Tom the usual sermon on the mountain after a while. He did not say anything.

"And here? It's all disgusting, full of fags, garbage and junkies! This is no place to bring up children! I can't stand it anymore! I want to get out of here!"

A few days earlier, they had taken the children to the meadow behind the house to play and let baby Johanna crawl a little in the grass. But it was not even thirty seconds before Johanna had a cigarette butt in her mouth. Cigarette butts are poisonous or even fatal for babies and children. They had literally been sitting in cigarette butts. The whole lawn was full because it was a popular resident sport to flick the fags off the balcony in a high arc. Tom and Sandra found it simply disgusting. And it was another nail in Sandra's coffin. Her anger turned to sadness and a few tears rolled down her cheeks.

"Did you talk to Til? About the fucking knives? Marie stole another one earlier. I'm throwing those stupid things on the street! I've had enough!" she suddenly changed the subject.

"How did she get that?" Tom asked, visibly puzzled.

"Same as always: took a chair, climbed up the cupboard ...,“ Sandra explained. Tom rebutted and interrupted Sandra's explanation.

"The children and I have already eaten. Time for bed!" she continued, making a hand gesture as if it were time to storm a fortress with pitchforks and pitch torches.

"If you say A three times, you have to say B three times," sighed Tom. With three small children, his and Sandra's everyday life was very busy. They had met at work, and both worked as engineers at a mechanical engineering company on the outskirts of the city. Sandra had been taking a break for over four years now, having worked for a few weeks after her second child, but stopped again due to her third pregnancy and the ongoing illness of her first two children. Tom was on parental leave to support his physically and emotionally battered wife. Their deal was that Sandra would look after the baby and Tom would look after Marie, aged four, and Elena, aged two. He tried to relieve his wife wherever he could. But whatever he did, it was never good enough: the laundry was not folded accurately enough, the food was not spicy enough, the order of whatever was wrong, the wrong temperature in the dishwasher, forgetting to take out the garbage and so on. When they did not have children, they pretty much split the housework 50-50 and had no such problems. It was only when they became parents that these things suddenly started to mean the world to Sandra. Tom was sure that it was her way of dealing with the stress of everyday life, of counteracting the chaos with perfect order. But he was unable to make her understand that a large part of her stress stemmed from these completely exaggerated ideas. The pinnacle of it all was the dream of owning her own home. In Sandra's mind, having her own home magically made all her problems disappear into thin air. And so she pushed Tom wherever she could. He grabbed Marie and Elena and directed them into the bathroom to brush their teeth, pressed their toothbrushes into their hands and squeezed the last bit of toothpaste out of the tube onto them. Marie started brushing. Elena chewed more on the toothbrush. She already looked like someone who had reached into a socket because she kept chewing on it. When Marie had finished, Tom brushed her teeth. Then it was Elena's turn. However, she fidgeted around so much that Tom had to do a real dance to finish brushing her teeth. Then the girls said goodnight to their mom and Tom put them to bed. The two of them shared a nursery and he read them another story. As it was already quite late, they thankfully fell asleep quickly. Like an elf, Tom tiptoed out of the room and closed the door, which creaked ominously. But neither of them woke up. Then he went into the other children's room, kissed Johanna and Sandra goodnight and disappeared into the bedroom. He had neither eaten anything nor brushed his teeth. And so he flew into bed with all his clothes, just got rid of his jeans and socks, pulled the comforter over his head and fell asleep within a few seconds.

3. The Hovel

The Slab was a gigantic building complex. Built in the early sixties of the 20th century to alleviate the housing shortage after the war and during the economic miracle. More than two hundred families from fifty nations lived here, door to door and wall to wall. Tom had grown up here and hardly knew it any other way. He had persuaded Sandra to move in because it was unbeatably cheap. It would make it easier to save up equity, he had promised her. But on a day-to-day basis, the flat was exhausting. Her apartment was on the tenth floor, the top floor of the tower block. There was a mezzanine above it with a washing machine and drying room. The elevator was broken so often that it was better to take the stairs if it was important to get upstairs or downstairs quickly. The neighbors were usually so preoccupied with themselves and their misery that they missed to hanging shelves during the day and preferred to do this work after midnight. This night was no exception. Tom woke up because all three children started crying at the same time. Being woken from a deep sleep felt more like torture every time. It took a moment before he realized why the children were crying and screaming: Someone was drilling hole after hole in the wall in the neighboring apartment. Tom was sure it was the wall that separated Marie and Elena's children's room from the neighboring apartment. He knew the acoustics in the slab from an early age. He put on his slippers and swung Uncle Til's old baseball bat over his shoulder. The baseball bat bore the somewhat outdated inscription "Opinion-Amplifier". It was the fourth time in a few days that the crazy people from the neighboring apartment had started drilling in the middle of the night. Tom left the apartment. The children were still bawling, but there was no point in trying to calm them down while the drilling was still going on. Tom rang the doorbell, and the drilling noise suddenly stopped. It took a while for someone to open the door. When the door opened, Tom was hit by the smell of hashish.

"Hi, can you please stop drilling? Normal people are asleep at this time of night!" he said kindly but firmly. The neighbor, a young man perhaps in his early twenties, looked at him with huge pupils.

"We weren't, man!" he replied, quite stoned. Tom raised his eyebrows.

"Of course it wasn't you..." Tom replied. "Even if it wasn't you, please stop it anyway. Thank you."

He turned around and went back to his apartment. Tom and Sandra had just calmed the children down a bit and were asleep again when the noise from hell started up again. Tom was in the girls' bedroom and could feel the drill penetrating his head. He grabbed Uncle Til's opinion amplifier again. Again, he rang the bell. Again, it took a while for someone to answer.

"What's wrong with you, old man?" the stoner grumbled. Tom took a deep breath, pushed him aside with the opinion amplifier and entered the apartment. Then he turned right into the room where he thought the drill was. Bull's eye - the second stoner was hanging up a completely messed up, crooked shelf. Tom took the drill, ripped the cable out of the socket, opened the window and threw the drill out of the window on the tenth floor.

"Good night!" he wished them and left the apartment again. The two experts stood there with their mouths open, looking after him in disbelief.

But as if in punishment for his harsh reaction, the record seemed to have conspired against him the next morning. Sandra discovered mold on the walls of the rooms surrounding the bathroom. Tom took a look at the situation himself and concluded that water seemed to be leaking from a pipe somewhere. Tom reached for his cell phone - the landline had not been working for a while because someone had cut the cable in the basement - and dialed the property management hotline. He had dialed it so often in recent years that he already had it on speed dial. Of course, a computer answered first. But Tom had his own method.

"I'd like a portion of currywurst with fries," he said into the phone.

"I'm sorry. I didn't understand you correctly," the computer voice replied and listed the menu again. Tom ordered a second currywurst with fries, then the computer gave up and put him on hold to speak to a member of staff. While he waited, he walked around the apartment with his cell phone, trying to bring order to the chaos. There were toys and worn clothes everywhere.

"Property management Blitz, you're speaking to Maria," suddenly came from the speaker on the phone. Tom had some trouble explaining to the lady on the phone what was going on.

"You need to ventilate better!" she recommended. Tom lost his composure for a moment but pulled himself together.

"Our bathroom doesn't have a window," he replied matter-of-factly.

"Oh, uh, yes, then someone must be looking," she finally agreed in broken German. "I'll watch the appointment."

Tom sighed. Then he got an appointment.

"On Wednesday?! Are you joking? Water is running uncontrollably into the wall from a pipe somewhere!" protested Tom. But the lady at the other end of the line did not care. Tom hung up. He could almost feel Sandra's tension. She seemed to be literally suffocating in the chaos of the children, the pressure and the housework.

"Someone really needs to tidy up here!" she sighed. Tom decided to go out with the children. He took the elevator - bravely - because he had time. And packed enough food and drink. But the elevator did not stop. With Elena by the hand and Johanna in his arms, he went down to the basement, put the baby in the baby carriage and then carried the baby carriage in two separate pieces up the stairs from the basement to the front door, before dragging it back down the stairs outside from the front door to the forecourt and putting it back together. This absurd architecture regularly drove Tom to despair. Pulling it out was a feat of strength every time. Two boys from the neighborhood played on the forecourt.

"Are you going to the playground, Tom? Are you taking us with you? Please!" asked Louis. Louis was 6 years old and in first grade. Tom had known him since birth because he lived three apartments below them on the seventh floor. His parents only allowed him to leave the Slab property when an adult was present. Tom therefore regularly took him with him. This gave the girls more playmates and Tom learned the latest gossip from the Slab. He enjoyed commanding a battalion of garden gnomes.

"Okay, fine by me. What's your name?" Tom asked the other boy, whom he did not know.

"Carlos!" he replied as if shot from a pistol.

"He doesn't live in the Slab. His stepfather bought a house at the end of Schiller Street," explained Louis.

"Yes, my mom has had seven men since dad," Carlos agreed. "She kept on looking until someone bought us a house!"

Tom was somewhat flabbergasted and stood there with his mouth open. But the kids were serious. He stood up in front of the boys and gave his usual speech.

"There will be no shouting. And no running off in between, right?" he said with a serious face and the two boys stood in front of him, intimidated, like recruits on their first day. "All right! Let's go then! Where there's no snow, you can run!"

"Snow? In the middle of summer? You're crazy, Dad!" Marie said. Then they set off for the playground at the end of Wolf Alley. Tom liked to engage the neighborhood kids in conversation. He knew from Louis that he had a terrible crush on a girl in his class. It's hard to believe, nowadays people are already in love in first grade, Tom thought.

"And Louis? Have you asked the girl to marry you yet?" he asked straightforwardly. Carlos giggled. But Louis knew no shame.

"Her name is Jasmin! And no, I haven't asked her yet! But I'm going to marry her! That much is certain!"

"What do you actually need to marry a woman, Louis?" Tom began his usual game of questions.

"Money! Lots of money!" Carlos blurted out.

"What do you need the money for?"

"To buy a ring. And then you have to put it on the woman's finger and then you can marry her," Louis gushed. Tom had to smile.

"And to buy a house!" Carlos interjected.

"But the wife has to agree too, doesn't she?" Tom asked. The boys hesitated. "And what else do you need money for?"

Louis and Carlos scratched their heads.

"For the wedding, of course!" Marie suddenly exclaimed. Tom was a little surprised and no less proud.

"And what else do you need?" he continued. But the boys could not figure it out. For them, it was a done deal: money, buy a ring, put it on your finger, get married, done. Life could be so easy when you were a six-year-old boy from a socially deprived area.

"And where do you find a woman?" he asked, feeling how the question really made the boys sweat.

"Well, you just find them!"

"Where can you buy them? You can buy them on the shelf in the supermarket, or what?" Tom made fun of the dwarves. But the boys had fun and laughed their heads off.

"They grow on trees!" Louis joked.

"Or they'll fall from the sky!" Carlos joined in, holding his stomach with laughter.

"You can find women at a festival. For example, the Oktoberfest! You idiots!" Marie blurted out and Tom stared at his four-year-old in amazement. How did she know that again, he thought. When they passed house number 8 on Wolf Alley, Tom could not believe his eyes. This fool of a house owner was actually shoveling white decorative gravel out of his front garden with his hands in order to vacuum up whatever was underneath with the leaf vacuum. Tom greeted in a friendly manner while thinking "what a complete idiot!". The man greeted back very reluctantly.

"You've got your work cut out for you!" he called after Tom and the children. He obviously thought all five children were Tom's.

"We come from the blue, blue mountains; our teacher is just as stupid as we are.

With those glasses on his nose, he looks like an Easter bunny!" Marie suddenly started singing.

"You're singing it all wrong!" protested Louis and Carlos agreed with him.

"Aha? How does the text go?" asked Tom, although he knew exactly what was coming next.

"We come from the blue, blue mountains,

Our teacher is just as stupid as we are.

With three buns in his face,

he comes to mass every day.

We come from the blue, blue mountains,

Our teacher is just as stupid as we are.

With a fag in his face,

he comes to mass every day.

We come from the blue, blue mountains," Louis and Carlos sang together and had endless fun.

"No, completely wrong!" protested Marie.

"I've got a riddle for you!" Tom changed the subject and unpacked a classic: "Which is heavier: a kilo of lead or a kilo of feathers?"

"A kilo of lead!" the two boys replied as if from the same mouth.

"Wrong!"

"Yes, then a kilo of feathers?" Louis replied, unsure. "Eh?!"

"They both weigh the same, you idiots!" Marie announced proudly. Tom had done the puzzle with her before and explained to her what a kilo is. The two boys stared at her in disbelief. Then they started to laugh. "Another riddle! Another riddle!" they shouted excitedly. Tom thought for a moment.

"What is the most important thing in life?" he then asked, looking into beaming faces.

"Money, of course! Money, money, money!" the boys shouted regularly. Tom raised his eyebrows and looked at them sternly.

"And what about health? What good is all the money in the world if you're dead?" he asked.

"Decoration! For my grave!" Louis replied as if shot from a pistol. Then he and Carlos looked at each other and ran the last hundred meters to the playground ahead.

"Boys are really stupid!" Marie said defiantly and ran after them. When they arrived at the playground, they stormed the equipment.

They spent several hours in the playground, then returned home. Tom could not believe that Sandra had not lifted a finger.

"It looks like the Serbian army has gone through here," Tom said with gallows humor. Sandra was sitting on the couch, a glass of wine in one hand and her cell phone in the other.

"Hello darling, have you cooked anything?" he asked, poking his head through the half-open living room door. Sandra did not answer. She waved her cell phone, on which the menu of the pizzeria at the end of Schiller Street was open. She had found the menu online. Tom was sure it was the wrong menu. Sandra had written an order list at the bottom. Tom took a look at it.

"They don't have any fries, do they?" he objected.

"But it says here. And Marie and Elena want fries! And I want pizza!"

Nevertheless, he called with Sandra's list and ordered. The order was taken somewhat haltingly. Tom was sure it must have been the trainee. He set off to pick up the order. When he arrived at the store, it was already hectic. There was a big queue, and it took a while before it was Tom's turn. Then he got his order, and everything was wrong. Tom read his order to the boss.

"Those aren't my numbers!" protested the pizza chef. "Where did you get them?"

"From the internet!" Tom replied.

"My menu isn't on the internet!" the pizza chef replied, waving his paper menu.

"My trainee left the oven open and now it's heated up to a thousand degrees. Look at this, several hundred euros worth of pizza," the pizza chef cursed with an Italian accent and paused theatrically, "for the garbage!"

Then he smugly threw the next burnt pizza in the bin. It was not Tom's fault. Nevertheless, the mixed-up numbers were the straw that broke the camel's back for Giovanni, the pizza chef's name. Tom hated that Sandra was riding him into the shit with her eyes open. And he regretted not having stood his ground. He argued with the pizza chef for a while and was about to leave, but he did not want to make a fool of himself with Sandra. He had to wait a while for the pizzas. As he stood there waiting, he suddenly realized that Sandra must have done it on purpose. She knew the menu inside out. And she did not want the children eating fries and stuff like that all the time. So, it would have been his fault that the children did not get any fries. Shewanted to puthim on the spot. At least he got his and Sandra's pizza. He shook Giovanni's hand to say goodbye and gave him a good tip.

"No offense, shitty day..." Giovanni apologized. Tom thought about it. He was not going to let Sandra get off that easily. He decided to improvise and made a huge detour to stop by his favorite kebab shop to get some fries.

"Tom, my friend, as usual! Cüs, you were with the competition!" the kebab man greeted him and pointed to the pizzas. His name was Aki.

"Nah, not "as usual" today. Just two portions of fries for the girls. But with blue lights, please. And, if it's quick, never mind!" growled Tom.

"What's going on? Vallah, crisis at home?" Aki asked in a good mood and laughed. "With women," he paused and looked at Tom with terribly serious eyes, "always a crisis, Vallah!"

"You're damn right!" Tom agreed.

"You can pay me with PayPal now! Look at that, how cool is that, Mashallah!" said the kebab man enthusiastically.

"Cüs, Aki, abnormally awesome! If you don't move with the times ..."

"Are left behind, exactly! My cousin gave me the idea."

"Which one of the 40?"

"It's 38, okay, cüs, 38! Hey, that reminds me of a joke!" Aki announced proudly. "Why does everyone love kebabs?" He paused for dramatic effect before breaking the joke: "Sos!"

He laughed his head off. Tom grinned. It took a few more minutes, then Aki put the two portions of fries on the counter.

"Because fries always taste good!" sang the kebab man. Tom plonked a fiver on the counter, took his fries and hurried home.

"You see! I told you they had fries!" Sandra triumphed. Tom could see in her eyes that she was surprised and angry because her plan had not worked out. But Tom did not say anything. There was nothing to gain here. This whole stunt and the argument with the pizza chef had really put him in a bad mood.

A tradesman finally came on Wednesday. But he only took a quick look at the bathroom - and then left.

"You have to make an appointment with a gas and water company. I'm a tiler. No gas-water-shit," explained the handyman. Tom took a deep breath, thanked him and dialed the number for the property management company.

"What, a plumbing company? But I thought the tiles were broken?" answered the lady on the hotline. It was a different one to the one on the first call. Tom explained again what was going on. The woman politely apologized and promised that someone else would come the next day. Tom waited the whole next day. At 6 p.m. there was still no one there.

"They're calling outside service hours..." Tom's cell phone rang when he called the property management hotline again. The next morning, Friday, someone rang at 6am. It was a workman from the plumbing company. Tom rubbed his tired eyes and pointed to the walls.

"I'll have to get some tools from the car, I'll be right back," said the handyman and tried to leave the apartment through the storeroom. Tom showed him the way.

"Golly! Nobody could have expected that! That a handyman would need tools!" Tom said sarcastically to himself. But the handyman did not come back. It was not until about three hours later that he rang the doorbell again. Without a word of explanation, the workman set to work and began to chisel open walls in the hallway and bathroom. The noise was infernal. Tom ordered Sandra and the children outside. The chiseled walls revealed a veritable labyrinth of pipes in various colors and diameters.

"Holy shit..." sighed the craftsman. Then his cell phone rang.

"Oh, shit! Okay, I'm coming!" the handyman spoke into his cell phone and frantically packed up his tools.

"Come back tomorrow, emergency!" he said briefly and was through the door - this time even through the right one. Tom clutched his head. The apartment looked like a bomb had gone off: huge piles of rubble were scattered in the hallway and bathroom. If Sandra sees this, she'll have a nervous breakdown, thought Tom and fetched a bucket, bin liner and dustpan. It took almost an hour before the apartment was in a tolerable state again. Tom inspected the pipes. He could not find one that did not look completely ruined. Water was dripping in several places and running down the pipes onto the floor, where it then spread over a large area.

The next morning, Saturday, the handyman rang again at 6am. Tom struggled out of bed, got dressed and let the workman in. He immediately inspected the pipes.

"We'd actually have to completely redo everything ... but the owners' association won't pay for that. I'll go and turn off the water first," explained the workman with a shrug. Then he disappeared again. It took him half an hour to get back. Completely out of breath, he stood on Tom's mat. He had told all the neighbors that the water would be turned off and had run up the stairs from the basement to the tenth floor.

"I hate skyscrapers," he muttered.

"Is there somewhere I can smoke with you?" he then asked, and Tom showed him the balcony. Tom looked for an ashtray but could not find one. He took a bowl of cereal instead.

After the smoke break, the workman started to take the pipes apart. It took him until the afternoon to get everything back together. In between, he disappeared to get some materials from the nearest DIY store. Tom's forehead was covered in sweat. If he leaves now without the water running again ... who knows how long it will take, he thought. And indeed. At around 4 p.m., the workman announced:

"So, off work for today! The part up to your main tap for the bathroom is okay again. I'll come tomorrow, er, I mean, on Monday, and finish the rest."

Tom squinted in the direction of the opinion amplifier leaning against the wall behind the front door. The whole weekend without water in the bathroom? That was a glorious prospect. But he let the workman go and texted Sandra to say that the coast was clear again. She had not even entered the apartment when she smelled a rat.

"Has he been smoking here?" she asked reproachfully.

"On the balcony!" Tom replied, annoyed that he had not yet cleaned up the improvised ashtray, the cereal bowl. Sandra literally floated through the apartment like a sniffer dog on the trail of a criminal. She found the cereal bowl and let out a roar that made Tom flinch. The children were completely perplexed, and the baby started screaming.

"You can't let him dispose of his fags in my cereal bowl!" she hissed and hurried across the apartment to the kitchen with the bowl.

The next Monday morning, at 6 o'clock sharp, the doorbell rang again. It took a few hours before the workman finished and turned the water back on. Tom let out a sigh of relief.

But the walls were still open. He dialed the property management hotline again.

"Yes, someone will come and have a look tomorrow," said the lady on the phone, again a different one to the two times before. And sure enough, the next day someone was on the mat. But to Tom's horror, he discovered that the water damage was so far advanced and so extensive that everything would have to be removed - including the bathtub.

It took until Thursday for a company to come and remove the bathtub. Then they knocked out the floor tiles and the lower half of the wall tiles with a deafening noise. It felt like an eternity until all the rubble was taken into the elevator with buckets.

"And what happens now?" asked Tom, visibly annoyed.

"Drying company must come."

Tom felt like a site manager.

"Rent an apartment, call the property management if something is broken and they'll take care of everything, they said!" he mumbled to himself and called.

"Next week, Wednesday at the earliest," explained the woman on the phone without even a hint of regret in her voice.

"Um, excuse me, please. We have no water, no flushing toilets, nothing. Our apartment looks like Dresden '45. We have three small children, how is that supposed to work?" asked Tom, visibly upset. But the lady on the hotline did not care.

"There is no earlier date. Too few craftsmen," she replied.

"We'll manage, Tom. For our house, for our dream!" Sandra encouraged him.

"At least we have water in the kitchen. We just fill buckets to flush the toilet," she continued. Tom was surprised at her optimism. But by the second day, they were already arguing violently. Sandra blamed him, but it was not Tom's fault that the place was falling apart.

"I want a shower, Tom, man! What a load of shit!" she cursed.

"Not in front of the children ..." Tom tried to reassure her. But Sandra was a changed woman. The stress, the hormones, all of that had turned his dream woman into a wreck. A wreck with demands and precise ideas about how things should be. Demands that Tom and reality could not fulfill.

The drying company set up a large construction dryer that was supposed to run day and night. The construction dryer made as much noise as a Eurofighter on take-off - and probably consumed as much electricity as an entire street. Tom could literally hear the electricity meter jumping for joy. But he had to keep going. Giving up was not an option.

The construction dryers had to run for a whole week. The timing was bad, because Sandra's sister Carolina's wedding was coming up at the weekend. And Sandra naturally wanted to polish herself and the children to a shine. But that turned out to be much more difficult. Tom suggested renting a room in a nearby hotel for the night, but Sandra refused.

"We need the money, Tom!" she replied.

4. The Coincidence

Tom had to get out into the fresh air. He grabbed the children, took the stairs from the tenth floor down to the basement with Johanna and Elena in his arms and fetched the baby carriage.

"Can we go to the wolf playground, Dad? Please!" Marie asked. Tom thought that was a good idea. And so they strolled along Schiller Street and then turned into Wolf Alley. Johanna had already fallen asleep.

"What's that strange black car, Dad?" asked Marie, pointing to a hearse parked outside number 2. Two employees of the funeral home were carrying a coffin out of the house. Tom knew the resident of the house by sight. He always said hello when Tom walked past with the children.

"This is a hearse. It's used to transport dead people to the cemetery. In this box, it's called a coffin," Tom explained calmly and matter-of-factly.

"I see! So, there's a dead man in the box now?" Marie replied.

"Exactly. I think the man who owns this house is in the box."

"And now the house is being sold when no one lives there anymore?" she continued to ask.

"It won't be that quick, of course. It'll probably take a few weeks for the heirs to clear everything out, think about how much it should cost and so on," said Tom, waving it off. The playground at the end of Wolf Alley, popularly known as "Wolf's Playground“, was one of the nicest in the city. There were heaps of playground equipment made of real wood in various sizes, climbing frames, a large climbing pyramid, a ropeway, various sandpits, teeter-totters, swings and so on. When Tom arrived with the children, the turning area was full of three luxury SUVs. There were already four mothers in the playground with their children, all of whom were no more than two or three years old. Of course, they had driven here by car. And although there were a few free parking spaces in the street, they had parked their city tanks in the turning area, where there was actually an absolute ban on stopping. Tom could think of little that was more German than this ultimate urge to drive the car the last few meters. They would probably have preferred to drive right up to the sandpit. Tom greeted them, but the dolled-up Porsche moms only greeted him back reluctantly.

"So, we bought last year and are super happy," said one of the mothers.

"We're just building," explained another. Then she ran off as if stung by a tarantula because her son, Tom estimated him to be three years old, thought it would be a good idea to climb a climbing frame. But Mum thought the child was still too small for that. Tom let go of Elena's hand. His middle daughter was almost a head shorter than her Porsche mom's overprotected dwarf. She whizzed past her mother and scrambled up the climbing frame like a capuchin monkey. The Porsche mom stood there with her mouth wide open, unable to believe her eyes. But the scene was interrupted when another Porsche mom came running up and started giving loud commands to her daughter, who was standing at the top of the climbing frame by the slide.

"Seraja, watch out, go over there, let Cedric pass by!"

Cedric's mother was also on the spot and called almost at the same time:

"Cedric, watch out, go over there, let Seraja pass!"

Tom had to grin terribly. He felt incredibly sorry for the children. They were not allowed to solve this extremely tricky situation of who was allowed to slide first on their own. It needed two air traffic controllers on parental leave. Tom could hear the other two moms getting annoyed with him from a distance:

"How can you let your little child climb like that? Well, if my husband would let me do that, I would tell him off for it ..."

Elena was a natural at climbing. Her aunt Carolina, who was a passionate climber, had given her a climbing frame for her nursery for her first birthday. Tom had long since stopped worrying about her falling off somewhere. On the contrary, he enjoyed it and was proud of his daughters' physical abilities. Marie was not quite as talented but made up for it with her age and enthusiasm. Tom decided to trigger the ladies a little more.

"Marie, Elena, would you like to take your shoes off?" he called up to the climbing frame and the shoes came flying off. What happened next put a mischievous grin on Tom's face. The affluent dwarves rushed to their moms with the urgent need to be allowed to take off their shoes too. Because children hate shoes, Tom was sure of that, especially in summer. And the gang of moms were by no means unanimous: one refused categorically, the second was softened by tears, the third stuttered briefly and then allowed it, the fourth was talking on her cell phone.