Short Stories of an Untreated Mind Read online

surprise is that children actually have the ability to see me. There have been a number of occasions where a child would believe that I was their imaginary friend. When they got older though, they would see me less and less. As soon as they reached their teenage years, I was nothing more than a distant memory. I was replaced by other friends, simply left to observe them.

  As I have said before, there have been a number of stories that have happened around me. The story I am telling you now is nothing too special. It may not be the most interesting story I could tell of this house. However, this story does stand out from all the rest. There are even things about myself that I haven’t even been aware of for the past two hundred years that which a pair of ivory eyes exposed to me.

  When I first met Johanna, she wasn’t anything too special. It sounds cold for me to say, but it’s true. She was the young daughter of a single mother sometime in the middle of the 1980’s. Although it hadn’t caught my eye at that moment, she was wearing her blonde hair up in pigtails and was wearing a polka dotted Sunday school dress.

  It was only a few days after she and her mother moved in that I first talked to her. Even though the invention of the television had been around for quite a while at this time, just laying around the house alone was always boring. I wanted to have some kind of adventure, away from this place, but my ghostly presence wouldn’t allow me to go even an inch beyond the property line. Young Johanna was using the swing that was attached to the old tree in the yard. She was humming along to a song, one that I had not heard before.

  When we talked, she was just like any other kid that I spoke to. They acted as if I was really there. In their eyes, I wasn’t a ghost. I wasn’t dead. They simply believed that I was alive. Johanna was different from the others though. She was a very loud girl and very playful. One thing that she liked to do was sing at the top of her lungs while twirling around in the yard.

  On the days that she would have to go to school, it actually hurt a bit to see her go away. She would sometimes ask me to follow her to school, but I could never make her that promise. Unlike many of the little kids that lived here before, Johanna never had any friends over to her house. When she finished her homework, it would always be me and her talking to each other.

  “No one really talks to me,” Johanna told me when I asked her about it one day. “They say that I look scary. I sit by myself during recess in the library. Do you think I look scary?”

  That was a question that caught me off guard. Johanna was staring at me with her wide eyes, waiting for what I have to say. It was a bit obvious what I was going to say to her though.

  “Of course not, you’re beautiful,” I answered.

  Johanna smiled, showing her gleaming teeth, although one of the front ones had been missing since last week. It didn’t seem like what was bothering her was eating at her anymore. I had always thought that children were always a bit strange. They were able to be so emotional about something one minute and then to brush it off and feel something completely different the next minute.

  For the next several years, Johanna would refer to me as her best friend. She was around ten years old when she moved into my house. By the time she was twelve years old, two things happened in her life that appeared to change her. One event caused the other to occur, which seemed to make both of us feel very empty on the inside.

  The first thing that happened was her mother took her father back, the two of them remarrying during the summer. From the stories that Johanna told me about her family life before moving into the house, she had always feared her father. The reason her parents were divorced was because her father was caught cheating with her mother’s sister. It even turns out that Johanna has a half-sister because of that entire mess.

  When Johanna went back to school in the fall, she seemed to be trying to stay away from the house entirely. In turn, that caused her to talk to me less and less. She would come home in the mid-afternoon, eat her dinner, finish her homework, and then go to sleep. It took it almost a year for her to be completely unable to see or talk to me.

  From this, at least, I learned why adults were never able to feel my presence within my house. On the day that Johanna’s mother and father got remarried, Johanna’s innocence appeared to have died. She was taught a big ugly truth about life: not everything can go however you wish it to go. Johanna hated her father, and she would never allow anyone else to see her true feelings. Whenever I would watch her cry over when her father used to beat her mother, I felt like I shouldn’t have been there at all.

  The only reason I would still observe her was because she was my friend. There were kids in the past who would talk to me, but Johanna was the first one who ever asked me about my life. Even if she wasn’t able to communicate with me anymore, I was still here for her. It seemed obvious that she only believed I was something that spawned from her imagination out of loneliness, but that didn’t change the fact that I made her happy when I could.

  Many years passed by since the last time I had ever spoken to Johanna. I was at least thankful that her good days were more frequent than her bad days. Going through her things when she wasn’t around, I was able to figure out that she became a very good kid. She was a very friendly person, and very caring. When she was eighteen, she had graduated from her high school as one of the highest achievers.

  There was once incident, before she left to college that I can never forget. The thought of it still follows me. There isn’t a day that goes by where I cannot think about it.

  It was late in the middle of the night. Johanna’s parents were out for the weekend, leaving behind their college bound daughter. Johanna, who was only a month away from moving out of my house and was spending the night in front of the television, watching old movies while wrapping herself in a blanket. There was movement at the front door, but the both of us simply thought it was the wind.

  BAM!

  The front door seemed to burst off of its hinges! Johanna, terrified, was unable to move. All she could do was lift the blanket that was keeping her warm over her head. Stumbling through the threshold was a young man with black hair and bloodshot eyes. He was obviously very drunk and was carrying some kind of hunting knife.

  I could only assume that this young man was some kind of ex-boyfriend. He stumbled to where Johanna was hiding. There was no way that anyone could camouflage themselves under a pink blanket and not look suspicious. Johanna, with tears in her eyes, was begging for the young man to stop.

  His knife first slashed across the girl’s wrist, causing her to scream out in pain. Her mouth wide open, the young man stuffed some kind of gag in order to keep her quiet. It was obvious what he was here to do. The young man was going to kill Johanna.

  I was paralyzed, which surprised me because it had never happened to me before. It sounds sick and twisted, but a part of me didn’t want to save Johanna. If she were to die, it would be very untimely for her. That would mean that she would be able to join me and live in this house forever. The two of us could live happy afterlives, not needing anyone else.

  Of course, I knew that was wrong. It would be selfish of me to want Johanna to die so I wouldn’t be lonely. Johanna had a life outside of these four walls that housed the both of us. Even when I was alive, my life wasn’t going anywhere. Johanna is very different: she had a future and the world needed her.

  Focusing all of my energy in order to move, I grabbed onto the young man’s arm as he was ready to slit Johanna’s neck. My strength was easily able to outmatch his, causing him to be completely unable to move his arm. The young man struggled, but his arm would not move an inch. His eyes began to widen as he let out small shrieks of panic.

  This was where Johanna saw her opportunity. When she went to remove his hand, I moved it for her, causing the young man to turn over and fall onto his back. The knife had slipped, cutting his hand and then falling away from the two of them. The young man let out a small scream and started to truly panic. In fear, he got away from Johanna and ran away from the house. br />
  When Johanna’s parents returned from their trip, she told them what had happened that night. She told them how she had fought him off, and that she channeled her instincts in order to save her life. It didn’t surprise me that she didn’t notice my presence at all when I aided her. I didn’t do it so I could have her see me again, even if it were to be just one more time.

  There was a moment though; a moment of silence after Johanna had finished speaking to her parents. Her mother was hugging her while her father was acting indifferent towards the two of them. Johanna was staring straight out of the window. It was the middle of the day, and nothing was going on outside. If only, just for a moment, I was hoping that she was staring at me. Johanna then smiled, a sight that I had remembered from when she was a child. It had always amazed me that this young woman was able to express so much with just so little.

  A Letter

  To whoever may find this letter,

  I am long gone by the time you are able to read any of this. If everything has gone according to my plan, then there is no need to worry and you can go on with your daily life. No one should have to make the choices that I made in life. To my darling wife...Allison, I’m sorry for what I have decided to do. My