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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/MouseCurtains on 2024-10-29 12:47:09+00:00.
When I was around six or seven (maybe even eight), I had a next door neighbour, called Mindy.
I had moved to a small town just north of El Dorado, Kansas, and was waiting for the new school year to start. Mindy was my age, and, on one warm summer morning, she’d knocked on our door to ask if I would like to come over and play. She said she’d seen me moving in, and was delighted that another little girl had moved in on the street. She’d wanted to be my friend.
After my parent’s divorce, I had moved in with my Dad. He was a quiet, meek man, who didn’t do much but garden and watch old reruns of “All in the Family.” My Mom lost custody because of her drug abuse, and I suppose that he hadn’t really known what to do with me when I’d first moved in. I hadn’t lived with him in my formative years, and it was only once my grandmother got wind of things that he’d pushed to be a part of my life again, having been disillusioned that I was living in some stately house up north. I think, in the beginning at least, he wasn’t prepared to start raising up a little girl, particularly one he’d last seen as a toddler, and so the option of letting me play with the girl from the nice family next door must’ve been a relief. A way for him to get his life in order to step in as the Dad he needed to be. And I’m grateful to say that he really, truly did.
Mindy was a bit spoilt, but a good kid. From what I recall, she had long, blonde hair that her Mother always tied into pigtails, and a sweet, chocolate-box pretty face. Like Shirley Temple. I’m afraid there aren’t many more details I can give on her appearance—my memory is hazy. Even when I try my best to recall her face, all I can see is a blur, but that initial feeling—that impression, still remains.
She always wore the nicest clothes, and despite my reserved jealousy that she and I were not cut from the same cloth, she nevertheless tried her best to make me feel like her equal. She’d ask her Mother to teach us how to bake, and her Father would always let us stay up late to watch television. She’d give me her old dresses and shoes so that I’d have nice things to wear for the first day of school, which seemed to be an eternity away at that age. Although we only ever knew each other for several weeks, her memory is something I would never forget. I can’t forget it.
The best thing about Mindy’s home was a little playhouse she had, tucked right at the end of the backyard. It was big enough for the two of us to be in, but any adult would have a hard time bending down and minding their head on the doorframe. Her Grandfather had built it for her when she was just a baby, and it was truly a gorgeous thing; cream painted wood, with a coral-pinkish roof, clad with real tiles. Painted ivy and roses adorned the outdoors, and the duck egg green door held a sweet, heart shaped doorknob. The windows had proper glass, and matching green shutters on the outside.
Inside were two wooden stools, and a toy box filled with make-believe kitchenware. A faux-stove, completely covered with painted appliances, and a rocking horse in the corner. Floral curtains to draw out the light. It was every little girls’ dream. And Mindy let it be mine as much as it was hers. Ours.
Sometimes we’d have sleepovers in there. The door had a hatch key lock on the inside, so it felt like we really were adults; pretending to be roommates in our own grown up apartment. Telling each other stories over make-believe tea, and leaving the curtains open to star at the stars in the sky. The warm, summer nights left us comfortable in our sleeping bags, and I truly thought I’d never be happier.
My therapist says trauma can hide a lot of things from you. It’s a tricky thing; leaving you with the dread and anxiety without ever revealing the extent of it all. I suppose PTSD is the phrase I should be using. My fond memories of Mindy’s house are still there, untouched—untainted. Maybe my own childhood experiences with my Mom didn’t allow me to realise the cracks that were forming in Mindy’s home.
I never thought Mr Howard was a bad man. He was nice, and looked all cleaned up. He had a white-collar job, and I never considered that, with his income, he shouldn’t have been living in our rundown neighbourhood, let alone be my next door neighbour. He always came home from work with a smile on his face and a kiss for his wife, and treated me as he treated Mindy. In my eyes, they were the perfect, nuclear family. Compared to just me and my Dad, who—bless his heart, was trying to make ends meet, they seemed so comfortable. So cosy.
It was only years after that I’d come to understand the lengths some people will go to keep up a facade. What I had perceived as a healthy, happy lifestyle was nothing more than a perfectly practiced production; a play put on a stage where the actors couldn’t leave. They couldn’t stop playing pretend, as Mindy and I had done so many times in her playhouse. The real playhouse was their own home, and despite their food and water and appliances all being very real, they’d manufactured themselves to be nothing more than puppets on a stage; marionettes controlled by the overwhelming desire to not let a tear slip, or issue be revealed. A waltz of souls tethered to an unattainable dream.
Mr Howard was a gambler. His savings whittled away down to mere pennies in his pockets. But he never stopped his grandiose spending. Mindy always got a new gift whenever he went away for ‘business’, and Mrs Howard was always presented with some fabulous flowers. Sometimes, she’d send me home with her bouquet, telling me that she’d not need them with all the wonderful flowers he’d bought her before. She’d seen my Dad gardening on the small, shameful plot of land we called a garden, and he’d always been grateful to try and plant them back there.
It really was strange how it happened. Mr Howard, despite all his flaws, loved his family. He loved them so much. But perhaps love confused him.
It was only a few weeks before school when Mindy invited me around for a sleepover. It was the usual routine; her Mother made a fantastic meal, and we stayed up a bit to watch the television, laughing at whatever risqué scene was portrayed past 9pm. Then, around 10pm, her Mother ushered up to get ready for bed, having set up our little camp in the playhouse outside. It was all the same. The same old passage of events. Mindy and I were tucked away in the playhouse, and as we grew sleepy from chatting about god knows what, we heard a large bang.
Mindy shot up, and looked concerned. I was extremely tired, and, whilst rubbing my eyes, I asked her what the matter was. She didn’t speak, but put a finger to her mouth, beckoning me to stay quiet. She said she’d go in and see what was happening. She left, and then whispered a final few words.
“Lock the door, Kelly. Don’t let me in unless I say the password. Promise?”
I did as she said, and waited. Then; screaming.
There’s not much else to remember from that. My Dad said that I refused to come out of the playhouse, even when the police had tried to calm me down and tell me I was ok, that I was safe. I screamed and wailed that I couldn’t leave until Mindy gave me the password. That I needed to wait for Mindy to come back.
A child’s brain is such a fickle thing. Once I’d heard my Dad’s voice, I’d forgotten about any promises sworn to Mindy, and leapt out of the playhouse and into his arms, sobbing from a concoction of fear and comfort that felt oh-so crushing upon the weight of my tiny shoulders.
Although I was young, I wasn’t stupid. I’d known what the implications of those screams were, and those sounds. I knew why I was carried out through the side gate and not through the house. I knew what the men in white overalls were doing, moving in and around the property. I knew that my participation in the Howard’s charade was over, and that my friend wouldn’t ever come knocking on the front door of her playhouse again.
Even if we wanted to, my Dad and I couldn’t leave. We had no money, and we were forever cursed to live next to the house of the tragedy. I started school without her, and I cried on the first day when I walked into class with an old pair of Mindy’s shoes and a dress she’d given me. It never looked as nice on me as it did her.
I came to learn that Mindy’s grandiose tales of her popularity amongst classmates was a fairytale. She was a nobody to them; a sad, lonely girl with no one to talk to. Perhaps that’s why she’d latched onto me—someone who had it worse, or at least, she’d thought they did. Someone she could continue to spread the plague of perfectionism passed down so unceremoniously onto her. And I wondered if her parents thought the same thing. That I wouldn’t be able to see the chipped paint on the walls of their home, because mine ran so much deeper.
Dad and I never really spoke about it much after I turned 10 (I think). Years of therapy had taught me to repress those memories, but sometimes they pulled themselves out from the back of my scalp, and grasped hold in the front of my mind. I could never truly forget it. My first friend after such a traumatic time in my life, and how wonderfully crafted it had all been; how I, in all my naivety and desperation, had been so blinded by gratitude that I took part in the illusion without any inkling to help her back.
No one ever moved into Mindy’s old home. It lay there, derelict, and as did the playhouse at the back of the garden. I must’ve been sixt…
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