The Bright Colours of Misery [COMPLETED]

𝙲𝙷𝙰𝙿𝚃𝙴𝚁 𝚃𝙷𝙸𝚁𝚃𝚈 𝚂𝙸𝚇 -a new neighbor-

Heidi got grounded the next day. Frieda had obviously told Trudy about what happened, or at least that's what Heidi guessed she had done. Honestly, she didn't exactly care. She was still sort of sick anyway, so she wasn't going to school, and she also felt like she completely deserved a punishment. She mainly stayed in bed all day, thinking about what she'd said—or rather yelled to her sister.

"You are vile person Frieda Amelia Seide"

Haunted her particularly. She'd said it so violently, with force and so close to her face, staring right into her sister's eyes, right after she'd given her a hug and been so kind.  She couldn't even begin to imagine how much that had hurt her, whether this statement was based on some partial truth or not.

Heidi recalled the hurt and pain of every single word that Franz, Lila and Maria had spoken against her, realising she had inflicted the same pain on her twin.

She dwelled on it all day, to the point where she wanted to punch herself or throw herself against the wall because of how mean she'd been.
In her quiet self-pity, suddenly, she heard a voice that interrupted it all.

"Heidi, is that your name?" It asked, startling my dear girl. She jumped out of her bed and spun around, scanning each centimetre of her room. There was no one there.

"Who are you?" She asked, her voice starting to shake, she didn't exactly believe in ghosts, but the idea of them still scared her. She took a look around the room once again, she still had no idea where her voice had come from.

"Hey!" this unfamiliar voice called, louder this time. My human frowned, it seemed as if it had come from the other side of the bedroom. The wood cracked under her feet, the sound of it felt strangely loud. Louder than it had ever been, mostly because of how quiet and scared she'd gotten.

"There you are!" The voice chuckled, Heidi wondered if she'd potentially just died, and joined the earlier ghosts of the house, but then her eyes widened as she noticed a half open trap door. A trap door Heidi had never seen before, the facade of it blended in perfectly with the wooden wall. She crouched down, wincing as a wooden shard slipped under the skin of her hand.

After a second she shook the pain away, and gently pushed this small trapdoor open a little further. This new discovery immediately raised a few questions, but Heidi barely got the time to dwell on any of them before she screamed and jumped back as she saw the face of a dark haired girl with incredibly pale skin, sitting on the floor on the other side. The girl's eyes rolled up at the ceiling.

"No need to be so dramatic!" She exclaimed, going closer to Heidi. My human was petrified, somehow she hadn't expected a real person behind the opening, for some reason. Suddenly the girl's bony hand grabbed Heidi, and she pulled her through the trap-door.

Heidi hit her head on the corner of the door, and yelped.

"Entschuldigung." The mysterious girl apologised almost immediately, chuckling awkwardly. "I didn't want to hurt you, I'm sorry."

Heidi could only nod, this situation seemed far too absurd for her to even care.

The dark haired girl stretched her hand out to Heidi.

"Astrid Werner." She said politely, waiting for Heidi to shake her hand. The red haired girl took a second to do so, and once she did her shaking was rather unconvincing.

"Heidi...Franziska...Seide." She answered, hesitating after each name. It is still rather unclear to me why she felt the need to say her middle name, but oh well, she did.

"Franziska..huh?" The girl chuckles again. "Fancy."

Heidi nodded again, not knowing how to answer that. I doubt there even was an appropriate answer she could have come up with.

"I'm just Astrid." She continued with a smile. "Anyway, sorry if I scared you and also, sorry again for your head."

"It's fine." Heidi assured, rubbing the back of her skull slightly. She would probably get a big pump there soon. It hurt unnecessarily.

"Anyway," Astrid then said, stretching her arms up to the ceiling. the small room Heidi had been dragged into was big enough for her hands to barely touch the ceiling while doing it.

"I live on the other side, I just moved in, so we're neighbours. I just found this little secret passage"

Heidi took a deep breath, relieved. At least she wasn't speaking to a ghost, or some scary girl who'd lived in the gap between her bedroom and the empty semi-attached house next door for years. Heidi's mind was a creative one, sometimes it went a bit too far, especially when scared or surprised, I found it to be quite entertaining over the years.

"I also heard you crying, are you all right?" The dark haired girl asked, getting so close to Heidi's face she felt her warm breath on her rosy cheeks. "I mean you don't have to tell me anything, we just met, but If you want...maybe I understand." Astrid then said, at first Heidi was going to nod and say she was fine, she was good at pretending to be okay when she really wasn't, but this time she didn't. She couldn't, even if Astrid was a stranger, the fact she'd told her she might understand had changed Heidi's mind almost instantly. So, even if it was absurd for her to even talk to this stranger, that she knew nothing about apart from her name, Heidi did. She was just as shy as she had always been, I assure you. She stumbled on her words, barely looked her in the eyes and held back from the actual truth many times, but she still told her more than she maybe should have. Heidi was desperate to find someone who would listen.