Let's Not Meet Again

My Deepest Regret

I am NOT posting this for attention or pity, I am sharing this experience to warn others and if given the chance, to save someone else's life.

I have never told anyone this story before, I guess you could say it's one of my deepest, darkest secret, and that ugly skeleton in my closet.

This story takes place around 9 years ago, when I was 6 years old. My parents divorced when I was very young, and of course separated. I live with my mother, and visit my father on vacations, especially summer vacation.

Some background about where my father lives, please bear with me. He lives a few states away from me (I don't feel entirely comfortable stating what town/state or the state I reside in, sorry) in a town that's very, very small. Literally. The population is about 782 people, and most, if not all, residents are over the age of 75. So pretty harmless, right? That's what I thought.

My father's neighbors (two houses down) was a married couple that came over from the UK. They were in their late 40's, early 50's. For the life of me I cannot remember the wife's name, but I do remember that she was a a lady who loved to gossip and talk smack about others. Her husband on the other hand was named Richard, but for the sake of the story I'll be referring to him as Dick because of how much of an asshole he was. Dick had issues (which wouldn't be revealed until much later, which is a whole other story.) He was a sick and deranged man, but at the time, we didn't know that. No one did.

Everyone in town kind of brushed the couple off. They weren't unnoticeable, but they also weren't in the spotlight. They were just...there.

But, for some reason, Dick was on my father's radar (that sounds hilarious, I apologize.) My father has a killer intuition which is almost never wrong. He told me very, very sternly to stay away from that house, more pointedly Dick. This struck me as odd because my father was hardly a serious man. He's extremely happy go lucky, witty, always cracking jokes and just a delight to be around. BUT I was only 6 years old, and very naive. Not listening to him was my first mistake.

Because the town was so small, everyone knew each other. There was no worry for my dad to allow me to get on my Barbie scooter and ride to the church and back. The church is not far at all. It's about 5 houses down. Additionally, everyone was friends with my dad (give or take a few people) and knew about me being his daughter. Along with him, I was relatively liked as well. Seeing me go up and down the sidewalk to the church and back to my dad's house was not a rare sight. I essentially did it everyday, and my father always told me if I ever ran into trouble, just holler and he'd coming running (he was EXTREMELY fast and a force to be reckoned with). The only problem with riding was I had to pass Dick's house going to the church and coming back. This was mistake number 2.

Now, please believe me when I say I don't remember quite how this all happened, I was 6 and deep down I feel I've suppressed this incident/dreaded memory to the point I've forgotten certain details.

Dick was outside of his house, sitting on his patio. Thinking back now, I believe he'd been waiting for me to pass by. He somehow coaxed me into his house. I think (like I said, I honestly don't remember) Dick had promised me that I could pet his dog (he had a Bernese mountain dog) or that he had cookies or something. Me being seriously naive and trusting everyone in town, and just in general idiotic, I foolishly trusted him. This was mistake number 3.