Inspired from "The Girl Next Door" a true story of a horrible tragedy.
My thanks to FernieLyn who proofread this piece and gave me some good opinions and insight! Thank you FernieLyn!
This story takes place in a more innocent time.
*
The moment when I saw her changed all our lives forever. It had taken me a few days to piece together little snippets of talk that Andrew, my eighteen year old son had said over the dinner table as we ate our meals before the confused and troubled boy ran next door to continue "playing" with his best friend Jake.
The questions he asked while we ate our meals were on subjects that were troubling.
"How can pain be enjoyable?"
"Why are all girls whores?"
Ginny, my wife's face dropped each time he asked a question. I asked him where he heard these things and he just muttered, "Around."
After he was excused, Ginny and I spoke about the disturbing turn in topics that our son was interested in. A few times I wondered if his friend next door, Jake was filling his head with these things.
Jake was eighteen as well, the same age as Andrew, and as far as we could tell, he was a good innocent young man just like Andrew. That summer, the two of them had been inseparable, fixing their cars together, going to the park and fishing at the pond together, and just hanging out.
Jake's family seemed to be okay as well. Ginny was friendly with Gertrude, Jake's mother. I waved to Fred, his father each time I saw him outside. Jake had an older brother named Jeff, who I suspected was the one who was putting these thoughts into Andrew's head. However, I wasn't sure how to address the issue, short of banning Andrew from seeing his best friend all summer long, which as an adult was pretty much inpossible.
Gertrude's niece was staying with them. Her name was Melanie. Her parents had died in an accident a few months ago and Melanie came to live with Gertrude and her family. Melanie was a small, blonde girl. She was eighteen and she always seemed sad. She had become friendly with Andrew and Jake, and had avoided Jeff as far as I could see.
As I pondered over the last meal, before Andrew had left to go over to the house next door, I wondered what his last cryptic words to me meant.
"Dad, if you had a secret and knew that it was wrong, would it be okay to break the secret, even if you got into trouble yourself?"
These words gave me pause. I kept my face straight and looked at him. He couldn't meet my eyes.
"I think it would be your duty to break that secret if it was wrong," I said. I paused to let him talk. He was not forthcoming, so I prodded him.
"Is there some secret you need to tell me?" I asked.
His face flushed and he shook his head. He quickly excused himself and asked to go next door.
Ginny and I were upset. Something was wrong.
"What are we going to do?" she asked me. "We have to make him tell us!"
I tried to think. I was in agreement with her, but I wanted Andrew to come to us. He had become different this past week. The entire family next door seemed to behave normally, almost like they were trying to behave like so. They all made an effort to be seen by us doing their regular things. Jeff had even helped to wash my car with me. Fred was more cheerful and friendly than ever; he normally said only one word to me before going about his business, now he was actually chatty. He actually seemed to be feeling me out on something, some issue --
Everyone had been normal. Well except for Melanie, who I hadn't seen in over a week.
She was always outside playing. Now I tried to remember the last time I had seen her. All those comments Andrew made, they all related back to an attitude towards a woman, or a girl.
"Oh god!" I suspected.
"What?" Ginny asked.
"Stay by the phone!" I told her as I left the house and headed over next door. I hoped that it was just our imagination. I wondered whether I was just jumping the gun. I knocked on the door. No answer.
I tried the door and it was unlocked. That wasn't unusual as the kids ran in and out of there all the time.
Entering the house, I found it empty. "Hello?" I almost whispered. "Anyone home? It's Brandon."
Nothing.
I listened up the stairs and heard nothing, no steps no activity. Strange, both Gertrude's and Fred's cars were still there.
I walked into the kitchen and noticed a door leading to the cellar. The house was built just like mine so I knew that the cellar was a full sized cellar. I heard some muffled noise coming from the door and slowly opened it.
Peering down the stairs I heard some muffled voices. I couldn't make them out so I slowly climbed down the stairs as silently as possible. At the bottom of the stairs I discovered that the cellar had been divided into two rooms. The wall to the other room seemed to be soundproofed and insulated.
I heard a crack. Then a muffled howl of pain. I heard some sobbing and the voice of Gertrude speaking.
I grasped the door handle and opened it.
They were all there.
In the little room.
Gertrude and Fred sitting on a ratty couch.
Jeff, Jake and Andrew were standing.
Jeff was holding a large stick.
They all turned to face me and in a flash, they all registered discovery.
I was still confused as Fred and Gertrude jumped up. No one said anything as I looked beyond Jeff and saw her.
Melanie.
She was naked. Standing with her hands stretched above her head. They were attached to rope that kept her taught and standing in that position. Her wrists were bloody from the rope. Her entire body was cut and bruised. The stick looked to be only one tool that they had used on her.
Her face was matted with dried hair and blood and tears. Her one eye was blackened and her mouth was inflamed. She was sobbing. Looking down her body, I saw written in marker and lipstick words that no eighteen year old, no adult, should have used.
On her breasts were written "Whore Sacks".
Just above her crotch was written "Whore Cunt".
On her stomach, was a bloody scar that they had carved into her. "Use me" it read.
My stomach lurched. Andrew began crying. The others dropped their heads. Jeff ran past me and up the stairs to escape. I heard him leave the house. It took me a moment, but I then turned to Andrew and said, "Andrew, go back home. Tell your mother to call the police and an ambulance." He nodded and ran home.
I grabbed a knife; probably the one used to carve those words into Melanie's stomach and approached her to cut her down. She saw me approached and howled with fear. She struggled to escape me, thinking I was going to inflict more harm and torture on her.
I shushed her and spoke calmly and soothingly to her. Everything was going to be alright. She was safe now. I was here and she wasn't going to be harmed again. She calmed down a little and looked into my eyes. A glimmer of hope was somewhere deep within those pools of blue. I cut her down and she collapsed into my arms.
I could hear the sirens and Gertrude, Fred and Jake had resigned themselves and were now sitting back on the couch.
I rode with Melanie to the hospital. She wouldn't let go of me until they finally sedated her. I met up with my wife Ginny at the hospital. She was aghast when she saw Melanie asleep in the hospital bed.
"My god Brandon, what have they done to her?"
"I don't know, Ginny." I said. "They tortured her. I just have to wonder what part Andrew played in this."
Ginny blanched. I explained how I found them. Andrew was with Jeff and Jake who had been beating Melanie with the stick.
The police questioned me about what I had found. They took me down to the police station where they took my statement and my son Andrew's. It turned out, through Andrew's story, that Gertrude had become so mad at Melanie that she decided to punish her downstairs in the cellar room.
He recounted the horrors that had transpired as Gertrude had forced her sons and Andrew to see what a little slut and untrustworthy whore Melanie was. She was teaching her a lesson. Soon the lesson got out of hand and somewhere along the line Gertrude had refused to let up on Melanie.
She had done things to the tied up young woman, stuck things up Melanie's "cunt". My wife gasped at the word that came out of our son's mouth. How could he know such a nasty word?
Gertrude had Fred, her husband, "stick his pecker" in her first. Gertrude had said that if she was a cock tease, then she needed to feel what a cock felt like. That had upset Andrew as he was forced to watch little Melanie scream and beg for Fred to stop. The blood oozed out her after he was done. She hung lifelessly from her bound wrists.
Over the next few days before I had found her, all the sons had raped her as well. They had been pressuring Andrew to rape her next. Gertrude had tried to encourage Andrew in fucking her by calling Melanie a whore, that it was alright to cause her pain for pleasure and that she would enjoy it as the slut that she was.
This was where his questions had come from on that fateful night when he asked me at dinner. That evening, he was called over to "stick his thingy in her" just like the others did.
In between the rapes, Gertrude had been the one that had written and carved those hateful words into that soft innocent flesh. The doctors were not sure when I brought her in if the scarring would fade away enough that it would be illegible.
Andrew was released under our custody and it was almost morning when we arrived home to go to sleep. The house was quiet and all three of us did not sleep. Ginny continued crying. I tossed and turned. I was sick to my stomach and couldn't get the vision of that poor helpless child out of my head. To further compound things, I kept seeing Andrew there, with a disturbing smile on his face and his pants down around his ankles as he thrust into her.
My eyes snapped open. I had been dreaming about that last part. I staggered to the bathroom and threw up. I popped an alka seltzer and went down to the kitchen to make some coffee. I couldn't function without it.
Ginny joined me soon after. We were like zombies as we went through the motions of preparing breakfast. Ginny started to call for Andrew to get up and come down. I stayed her with my hand.
"Let him sleep. Right now I don't think I can look at him."
Ginny had a pained look on her face, but nodded in agreement.
I called into work that morning. I told them a family emergency came up and I would probably be out the entire week. They understood and gladly gave me the time off.
