Spoiled happiness E-Book

Marcus Brown

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

Seitenzahl: 59

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

The most pious person cannot live in peace if the evil neighbor doesn't like it. This is how you could summarize the story "Spoiled Happiness". Toby has finally found his dream apartment, but his happiness is short-lived. Because he has barely moved in when his trouble with the neighbors begins. The central character has to reorient himself to life in a small town, going through the worst to finally find himself. Will he be able to stay in his new home or will the neighbors manage to scare him away?

Leseprobe

Part 1

He finally made it! After several years of restlessness and uncertainty in Germany, Toby, a dark-skinnedyoung man, found his dream apartment at last:

Living room, bedroom, kitchen, even a bathroom with both bath and shower along with a toilet that you didn't have to share with other tenants. This is a big deal if you consider Toby's background. He previously lived in the attic of a house. This roof apartment consisted of a small room with shower and toilet in the hallway which was accessible, but not available, to all other tenants. As Toby viewed his current apartment fully equipt with its own bathroom consisting of shower, bath and toilet, that alone was reason enough to accept it!

All in all, the apartment is about 40 square meters in size, with a beautiful view of the countryside. Originally from the big city of London, this apartment with both cows and sheep in sight is something of a culture shock for Toby. Nevertheless, it is beautiful. He found out about its availability from a former colleague. Toby went straight for it. Anything would be better than the previous roof house, he thought. Toby gradually furnished his new apartment with new modern furniture and gave the walls a fresh coat of paint.

He slowly became aware of the position of his apartment. It was in a central point where all the neighbors could look in from different directions - and did so regularly. Alone in his apartment, Toby often felt like a fish in a goldfish bowl, constantly watched as he swam back and forth! That was reason enough to hang opaque curtains all over the apartment as quickly as possible.

Slowly Toby also became aware of the role he played in the neighborhood. It consisted predominantly of foreigners, and racial segregation was constantly present in this area. Germans lived on one side, while tenants from other countries such as Kosovo, Croatia, Turkey or Italy lived on the other. The Germans kept to themselves, just like the other resident foreigners. Of course Toby was there to represent the black quota. This is indeed a somewhat cynical statement to make, but perhaps true.

The janitor who supervised everything was originally from Switzerland, married to a German. In fact, like Switzerland itself, he was always neutral and didn't get involved in neighborhood squabbles. However, he liked to play the role of thelaughing third partyto ensure law and order.

Clear lines developed. On one side the Germans, on the other the foreigners. Then along comes Toby, the only black resident. The situation really annoyed him, constantly observing and experiencing this racial segregation and peer pressure. He originally came from London, a multicultural capital. It also annoyed him how some people could voluntarily live within this state of racial segregation. "Some people are neither able nor willing to integrate," Toby thought.

Bullying

Right away Toby felt excluded, as if he was different. At a local residents' meeting which took place a few weeks after he had moved in, the presumed ringleader from the pack of residents shouted at him: "Get lost, get lost!", saying that Toby could find a nice house somewhere else. Just not here. It's interesting to note that this particular resident didn't receive any backlash from the others. It was as if the majority secretly agreed with him, but didn't dare to say it out loud. Toby just shrugged everything off lightly. Unfortunately however this tenant had a strong influence on the neighborhood along with the area as a whole. It turned out that both he and his wife were the ringleaders. Their pressure and intimidation on others was apparently considerable. Toby often found himself at the center of the argument.

Toby's brief encounters with the ringleader

You could count them on one hand. First of all, during the aforementioned "get lost attack" at the neighborhood meeting. From that point on, Toby could clearly see who was in charge. A few months later, Toby happened to meet the apparent male leaders of the neighborhood in the yard. He took the initiative to give them a little speech.

"Surely there's a way we could live side by side in harmony, right?" In English; this was his interpretation of the famous speech by the black American Rodney King: "Can't we all just get along". The three participants, including the ringleader, reluctantly accepted it.

Later that year while moving a new sofa into his appartment, Toby caught the ringleader gossiping about him.

I've had enough, thought Toby and went straight to the ringleader. Toby started, "Alright, what's your problem? Obviously you have a problem with me living here."

The leading wolf took a few steps back and asked, defying him: "What do you want from me? Why don't you try hitting me? I bet you wouldn't dare !"

He was obviously trying to provoke Toby. He also smelled of alcohol. Toby just replied: "You'd like that. So that you can run crying to the police straight away."

At the same time, Toby made the facial expression of a crying child with his fingers stretched out under his eyes. Everyone involved laughed heartily at this, except the ringleader, who didn't find it funny at all.

"Nobody wants you to live here. Why don't you just leave?" the offended ringleader insisted.

Toby immediately responded: "How do you even know that everyone here thinks like that?"

"I just know, don't worry," the ringleader assured him.

"You only know because YOU turned everyone against me, admit it," Toby countered.

The leading wolf had not expected that he would expose him within a second. He stepped back and lit up a cigarrette.

Toby finally thought it wasn't worth continuing the discussion. As he was leaving, he shouted out loud, "Listen, I don't know what your problem is with me moving in, but I'm going to find out."

His speech was deliberately audible for everyone to clearly show the constant tension between himself and the leading wolf. Toby also wanted to give the other neighbors an idea of what was really going on here. Toby had a feeling from within that the ringleader harboured racist tendencies, but preferred not to mention it.

That was exactly the point at which the lead wolf stepped back from the public eye. He felt so degraded and humiliated by Toby. The longer Toby talked to him, the more he found out what really made the ringleader tick. It would be even worse if the ringleader was drunk and just babbled nonsense. The ringleader realized Toby's superiority, and from then on he withdrew his public prescence around the area.

After that, only his wife was to be seen throughout the residential surroundings. To use a terminology from football, she would have come off the bench as thesubstitute