Free Fook by Brian Drinkwater

the road around the
complex. His grandmother’s apartment was toward the back of the
property, just opposite the athletic fields of a middle school,
which stood on the opposite side of an eight foot tall, wooden
fence separating the two properties. Parking was always an issue,
no matter what time of day you came home, but in the middle of the
night, with everyone in the complex home, it was damn near
impossible. To make things even worse, the back of the property had
a tendency to flood in heavy rain, limiting the available spaces
even more.
    Slowly rolling along the dimly lit parking
lot, Ty searched for an open space. As difficult as parking was and
as run down as the complex seemed when compared to other apartments
in the area, it was still better than where he’d lived just two
years earlier. Though only five or so miles away from his current
home, he and his mother had resided just off of Florida Avenue. He
didn’t recall parking being an issue and the gate at that apartment
had always worked, but that was about the only upside to those
apartments. The wiring had either been installed incorrectly or the
degenerates living in the complex had harvested so much copper wire
from the building that they’d managed to disable half of the
outlets and even though management was required by law to maintain
the property to the city’s strict building codes, neither the city
nor the police seemed to care. The abundance of drug dealers and
prostitutes prowling the street just beyond the property’s walls
was probably of bigger concern to them, though nothing ever seemed
to get done about that either…except in his mother’s case.
    A couple of years back, in a typical display
of poor judgment, she’d brought one of her clients back to the
apartment. Unfortunately, the john had been an undercover cop and
even though it had been her first arrest for prostitution, she was
no stranger to the court. The fact that she’d brought the officer
back to her home while her son slept on the pull out sofa in the
living room had rubbed the judge the wrong way, and in the end,
earned her a six year sentence in the Bradenton Correctional
Facility for Women. Since he was only sixteen at the time, the
state had two options; place him in state run care or allow a
family member to take over as legal guardian. Grandma Ushi, having
already been in essence a parental figure in his life, had
thankfully been awarded custody.
    Water splashed against the wheel wells as
the car reached the flooded corner of the property. As expected,
there was plenty of parking in this portion of the lot. Lacking a
pair of waders, he continued on, passing his grandmother’s
apartment on the right.
    Amazingly, there appeared to be a space just
up ahead, that is until he got closer and realized that it was
being occupied by a tiny Ford Fiesta, hidden between a pickup truck
and a van. Maybe he could push the car out of the way, he thought
as he passed the half open space. It couldn’t weigh that much. If
he had a friend with him they could probably just pick the tiny car
up and carry it to the lake at the other end of the parking lot.
Lucky for him though, and the Fiesta, the parking gods were smiling
down on them that night and just another twenty feet ahead on the
left was an open spot between a Ford Escort and an out of place,
brand new BMW convertible…likely an overnight visitor. More
interested in getting some much needed sleep than pondering a
neighbor’s out of place company, Ty swung the Impala into the open
space, placed it in park and swung open the driver’s side door.
    “Ty,” a faint voice struggled to compete
with nature’s dominating sonnet of frogs and insects.
    Stepping from the car, Grandma Ushi came
into view, standing on the sidewalk just beyond the front door of
the first floor apartment. She must have been watching for him
through the front window, miraculously fighting off sleep for the
past two hours while waiting for the update that had