The Puppet Master

It wasn't even that strange; the sentence repeated near constantly in Josh's mind.

He might just have a small, minute, infatuation with his neighbour, Oli. It isn't even that serious, he told himself, while peeking out of his window at the house opposite; staring at Oli through his window.

He was doing pretty mundane things; cooking, reading etc..

Somehow Josh still found it fascinating, there was something about Oli doing very normal tasks that perplexed him. It seemed pretty odd. He couldn't detect why, it just didn't suit Oli. He looked so out of place.

He ducked down with haste: Oli had just turned to look out of his window and Josh sure as hell wasn't taking that risk.

Can you imagine it? The son of the town council's leader a stalker? God, he would hate to hear what some people would say about his slight obsession being on a guy.

In order to deter his thoughts from morphing into bitter mumblings, he focused on what he should have been doing. Heading back to the kitchen, he spotted his father's car halting in the driveway. As Josh's job at a local accountants finished earlier before his father's, he always made dinner.

It wasn't like Josh's father could actually make anything edible anyway.

The dinner was nearly ready, and Josh's father had sunk onto the couch, holding his face in is hands in desperation.

"They haven't found anything."

Josh didn't need him to clarify the topic, he understood.

"Maybe they are looking in the wrong places?"

The only noise to be heard was a heavy sigh from Josh's father.

"They are the police, Joshua; they know what they are doing."

And that was that. The discussion was clearly too painful to bring back up. Josh just busied himself by stirring the pasta and then draining it, before putting it back in the saucepan and adding the sauce.

"Smells good." His father mumbled, his head still cradled in his hands.

"Dinner's ready." Josh alerted his father, dishing out the pasta and placing the dishes on the table in the dining room.

They ate in silence. They washed up in silence. They sat down to watch a football in, you guessed it, silence.

It didn't used to be like this, with a lack of communication due to lack of effort on both sides. They used to get on well, but the escalating crime rate made then both tense and Josh's father was the town council leader, the consequence of this being the amount of pressure that was put upon him.

"We should go out for dinner tomorrow." His father suggested, Josh just agreed and turned his attention back to the TV screen.(And Oli's house out of the corner of his eye, which was conveniently visible from their living room window.)

His mother was nowhere to be seen, she was visiting some relatives in Scotland for a while. They were deathly ill, and required his mother to be there, much to her family's annoyance.

He would usually reveal all of his secrets to his mother, but her absence meant he was just left feeling so guilty. He wasn't used to having so many secrets and not venting about things to someone. No way in hell would he go to the confessional in church either.

"Have you even spoken to the new kid opposite us yet?"

"What?!" Josh's heart nearly gave out at the thought of his father actually paying attention to him paying attention to their neighbour.

"He isn't really new, he moved in like two months ago." Josh practically hisses through his teeth because trying to keep his cool has never been one of his talents.

"Jus' wondered." His father mutters, hauling himself off the couch and strolling into his bedroom. Where he spent the remainder of the night, leaving Josh to stare at Oli's house. Yet again.