The Time Tragedy Rebooted my Friend
By: Jessica Barnaby
Tags: Self Improvement, Life Lessons, Inspiration, Love, Mental Health

The Time Tragedy Rebooted my Friend

Emotions are the boss of logic

Photo by veeterzy on Unsplash

My friend lives on a street where the town’s finest people mill under the overhang at nights, leering at mothers with prams, whooping, drinking and drugging until a weary sun rises and sends them home to bed.

She locks her door at six-thirty and if she needs something from the supermarket at the end of the road, she takes the car. Or orders from Amazon, even though she has to bulk up the order for same day delivery.

The couple next door have just had a baby. They lie awake night after night, listening to the alcohol-laced howls echoing under the moon, young enough to remember how bright the future looked from the playground, old enough to understand it was glare.

They’re determined their baby will build her life in an area where streets aren’t sticky with human sputum and the police come when you call them. The kind of life their own parents had wished for them.

My friend’s name can’t be told, she requested anonmity. Like her neighbours, she laments the twists and turns that have pushed her nose flat against the window of life, always on the outside of what could have been. The glass will cut her if she tries to break in. It sits thick and stoic, a sentry separating her from the warm amber welcome of a life rightfully hers.

The darkness knows her weight. It moves as she moves. It holds her when she leans back. Pulls her in when she leans too far forward. The darkness is all she knows now and it keeps her safe while she watches her life.

It’s Halloween. No trick or treaters have come down this street in years. Hell, even the Grim Reaper sends a sub.

But something comes tonight.

A white Range Rover with blacked out windows stops outside my friends house and two men in Father Christmas costumes step out. One crosses over to exchange something with the druggies on the corner. The other retches and lands an oyster on the pavement. A blade glints in his hand.

Later, we find out the neighbours are already dead. She’s on the stairs, strangled, we’re told, and he’s taken the baby to that jumper’s spot on the south coast.

But we don’t know this when we’re hiding behind the curtains watching Knife Santa bang on their door. We switch off the lights, nothing must draw attention. Please don’t look this way. My friend calls the police and they give her a crime reference number.

He’s getting very aggressive out there and we think he’s going to break the door down, but Drug Santa’s back at the car now, and eager to be away. “Yo man, come back later-like when they’re back, bruv. Prolly out doin’ Halloween, innit.”

They get in their Range Rover and drive off. I notice it’s less than a year old.

The police arrive two hours later. My friend already asked them not to give the game away by knocking on her door. The druggies wouldn’t be pleased to know she called them. To their credit, they don’t. They do see fit however to break into the neighbour’s house, which is when the real drama starts. An ambulance comes and a lot more police cars.

The druggies disperse and the police go door-to-door for hours into the night.

My friend’s shaking, her hands are ice. Yes, she was friends with the neighbours. No, she didn’t know about any problems they were having. Yes, they struggled financially, but not more so than anyone else, as far as she knew. We tell the police about the two Santas and they take notes.