Creeps, true stories from Reddit (Second book)

There was something very wrong with the foster kid my parents took in

My parents were (and still are) a couple of hippies who met at a music festival back in the day. I found out later in life that they never wanted a biological child, and that my mother had always dreamed of adopting a little girl from China or Africa instead. Kind of a weird thing to learn while sharing a joint with your dad in the basement during spring break, but hey.
Our family was always (and still is) pretty damn weird.
My parents should have been more careful, though, since my mom got pregnant two years into their relationship. Picture the furthest thing from a trendy third-world adoption and you'll get me - a preemie baby with albinism. They named me Blanche, which is French for "white" because that seemed like a good idea to my mother at the time.
"A little too on the nose," she later admitted to my five-year-old self as she brushed thin strands of my white hair into sad little pigtails.
The point is, I wasn't planned, but adopting a kid was something my parents had always wanted to do. It turned out to be a much more complicated process than they first expected, and it took years of meeting pregnant women who changed their minds at the last moment for them to consider fostering an older kid instead. Shortly before my thirteenth birthday, they told me they'd been approved as foster parents and that I could expect a new step-sibling to come live with us in the near future.
I wasn't exactly thrilled by the news and didn't want to be there for all the stuff with the social worker, so I slipped out to the backyard. My parents were too excited to notice my absence and call me back inside, or maybe they just couldn't be bothered.
The sky was overcast, but I still had to wear half a tube of SPF 100 just so my skin wouldn't burn and peel. One day I would grow up to accept and embrace my unique appearance, but preteen me was bullied something awful, so it was hard to feel good about myself back in those days. I was leaning on one of the swings, considering escaping further than my backyard, when Laina first approached me.
"Hi," she said, walking over to me and sitting down on the second swing, "I'm Laina."
I couldn't help staring. Laina looked to be around my age, but she had already started the process of filling out in places my mother had recently explained I would fill out too. Her most striking feature was the color of her skin. It was the color of a chocolate caramel sundae, of pecan nutshells, of a fine, chestnut wood. It almost looked painted on the way it shimmered even on a cloudy day. Laina's natural, kinky hair was kept short, which suited the dainty oval of her face so much that I felt a pang of jealousy. There I was trying to grow my flat, limp hair out to look a little better when Laina had a boy's haircut and still managed to look prettier than any of the girls at my school.
"Hello," I replied, staring at my dirty sneakers, "My name is Blanche."
"That's a beautiful name," Laina gave me a kind smile, "A beautiful name for a beautiful girl!"
"Ha," I snickered, feeling my face turning red, "It's too bad they gave it to me then."
"Are you kidding?" Laina's eyes grew wide. "I have never seen anyone more exotic in my life! You look like a character from a fantasy book."
"Probably a witch," I remarked, shrugging my shoulders, though the compliment had pleased me. I was already warming up to Laina, something I hadn't expected, "So how come you had to come live with me and my dorky parents?"
Laina stared at my house (now ours) for a minute before replying, "My mom died shortly after I was born and my father died in a house fire."
I hadn't expected to hear that. I vaguely understood that foster kids didn't exactly come from happy homes, but even so, my sheltered mind couldn't quite fathom so much misery in one childhood.
"I'm so sorry," I said, feeling stupid for not being able to produce more comforting words, "Did you live far from here?"
"Not far at all," Laina jumped from the swing, her eyes lighting up, "I could show you if you like. Some of our old stuff is still buried in the ashes. It's pretty neat."
That did sound cool to my twelve-year-old self, and I eagerly followed Laina out of my backyard and down the streets of our neighborhood. This was back in the days before cell phones and location tracking, where kids just wandered off all the time after school. Still, Laina was walking very fast and we had now reached a part of town that I wasn't allowed to visit on my own.
I thought of saying something as we walked down increasingly dirtier streets where the houses were small and had piles of trash scattered in their front yards. I didn't want Laina to think I was a chicken, though, and it was broad daylight after all. Still, I got a very bad vibe as we passed a yard where an overweight, hairy man sat on a lawn chair sipping beer from a can.
"Pretty little thing ain't ya," he called after us.
Laina threw the man a furious glance but kept walking, "Ignore him. A lot of bad men in this neighborhood."
At this point, I was more than a little scared. I had never been so far away from home without letting my parents know ahead of time, and the people living in this neighborhood all appeared to be drunk, dirty, and dangerous.
Finally, Laina stopped in front of a tiny plot of land which contained what was left of her home. Not much remained, none of the walls or anything, but Laina led me inside the gate and into the very heart of the largest ash-pile.
"It wasn't very big, but it was my home," she said simply, bending down to pick a black frying pan out of the ashes, "Used to cook my father dinners on this pan."
Again, I remained silent, not knowing quite what to say. I was both horrified by the state of Laina's house and the fact that she had to prepare food for her dad and not the other way around.
"How did it happen?" I eventually choked out.
"The fire?" Laina asked, and I nodded, "Ah, that's not something I like to tell people about. Only really close friends maybe, and I don't really have any."
"I'll be your friend," I replied gently, "We're practically sisters now."
Laina beamed and embraced me before pulling away, her face suddenly serious as she lifted the blackened pan.
"My father was not a good man, Blanche. I was happiest when he was away working or at the bar after work. Nights were the worst. I never knew when to expect him in my room, so I anticipated the pain every night and struggled to sleep. One evening I was in the kitchen, frying potato wedges on the gas stove when he came home early and drunk. He'd been fired from his job, and wanted to hurt me again."
A cold wind blew, sending shivers down my spine and lifting tufts of ash into the air. I wrapped my arms around my body, unable to say a word as Laina continued.
"He snuck up behind me while I was cooking, and I panicked and hit him over the head with this hot frying pan. I must have knocked the oil and paper towels onto the gas stove because the next thing I knew the entire kitchen was in flames."
We stood in silence for a while as I tried to comprehend the enormity of Laina's background. To say we came from two different worlds was to say nothing at all. I was horrified at the cruelties my new friend had endured in her lifetime, and I was just about to hug her again when someone grabbed me from behind, clasping a fat, dirty hand over my mouth.
I tried to scream, but the man shoved his greasy palm further into my mouth, silencing me.
"Pretty little things shouldn't be wandering off on their own" the man from the yard we'd passed snarled as he carried me back to his house. I tried to kick and wave my arms, but the street was entirely empty. He hadn't grabbed Laina and I hoped she had run to get help.
It took the man no effort at all to carry me up the rickety stairs of his filthy home and into a bedroom. He threw me on a bare, stained mattress on the floor, stepping back to block the doorway. He laughed as I jumped up and started backing away to the far end of the bedroom.
"Don't worry lil darlin' you'll like this," he said, a sickening smile spreading on his meaty, unshaven face. His eyes were two small, bloodshot dots buried under layers of face fat and acne. His giant stomach hung well below his belt, which he had started to slowly unbuckle as he watched me cower in the corner of the room.
I started to cry.
"Please," I whimpered, my eyes darting left and right, trying to find a means of escape. The window looked like the only option, but I couldn't even see how to open the rotting, splintered frame, "Please don't hurt me!"
The man had taken off his belt now and folded it in a loop. Slowly, he started walking toward me, waving the belt in front of my face, a nauseating smirk playing on his thin, cracked lips.
"Be a good girl for daddy and I won't have to use this."
Hysteria rose in my throat and I broke down into tears, sliding to the floor to wrap my knees in a final attempt to shield myself for the pain that awaited me. The man's feet were right in front of me now, and I could smell his old, worn-out shoes.
Suddenly, he leaped back and I looked up to see a look of alarm contorting his features. It took me a second to register what was wrong, but then the smell hit my nostrils, and smoke started to fill the bedroom.
"What the blazing hell?" the guy screamed, forgetting about me as he turned and ran from the room to find the source of the fire.
Laina dashed inside the moment he was gone, "Come on! You've got to get out of here!" she said, grabbing my hand and pulling me after her as she ran down the stairs and out of the house.
She let go of me once we were on the sidewalk. We both turned to stare at the kitchen window, which was clouded over in smoke. The man came into view, throwing the panes open before turning his back to us. We watched as he raised a fire extinguisher and started spraying the stove.
To my horror, Laina started walking back toward the house.
"Where are you going!?" I screamed after her, my voice a hysterical mess, "Stop, Laina, STOP!"
She was already at the front door when she turned back to me, "Run home, Blanche!" she called back, and I was about to protest when I saw the stone-cold expression that settled on Laina's face as she looked to the window.
"Get to safety," she shouted, before turning the doorknob and walking back inside the house.
I was overcome with so much panic that I didn't know what to do. As much as I didn't want to leave Laina alone in the house with that man, I also knew that I couldn't possibly find the courage to run back inside after her.
So I took off, sprinting down the littered sidewalks of Laina's old neighborhood until the streets became cleaner, more familiar. Big houses with nice gardens, and people my parents knew waving me on as I rushed by.
It felt like an eternity, but it probably only took me about fifteen minutes to get home.
"Mom, dad!" I screamed, barging through the front doors to see my parents and a strange man sitting around the dinner table with stacks of papers lining the surface, "It's Laina! She's in trouble!"
"Blanche, calm down," my mom said as she and dad ran up to see if I was okay. The man followed at a respectable distance.
"What happened?" my dad asked, embracing me in a hug.
"It's Laina," I repeated, "We went to go see her old home and then a man grabbed me and,"
"A man grabbed you?" my mom's eyes widened in fear, then to my father, "We have to call 911!"
"No time!" I started crying again, "Laina is still back there with him! We have to go help her right now!"
I pulled away from my dad and grabbed him by the hand, trying to pull him after me as I headed back to the door.
"Blanche!" my dad pulled me back to him as my mom ran to get the phone, "Blanche stop for a second, please! Who is Laina?"
I paused then, looking from him to my mom to the strange man standing in our living room.
"Laina, the foster kid," I spoke slowly, not understanding their slow reactions, "The girl we're fostering."
"Honey, we're still only getting the paperwork sorted out," my dad's brow furrowed in concern, "this is Mr. Wilbank, he's the social worker who is handling our application. It may still be a while before anyone comes to stay with us."
The rest of that afternoon went by in a blur as police arrived, questioning me about my abduction. Someone had started a fire in the man's house, and they suspected my attacker had died of smoke inhalation before the firefighters arrived. They got there in time to contain the fire, but not to save the man's life, since he was standing right at the source of the flames - the gas stove.
I told the police and my parents about Laina, but no one knew who she was. Witnesses in my attacker's neighborhood had mentioned seeing only one pale, white-haired girl on the streets that day. As time passed, my parents, teachers, and counselor gently suggested that I had envisioned a friend, a guardian angel of sorts, to help me process the horrible events that happened that day.
They were all wrong.
When things settled down again, I went to my local library and spent hours poring over newspapers until I found it. A short article on page twelve with Laina's school photograph and a picture of the burned remains she had shown me. The title of the article was enough to confirm what I already suspected:
Mystery Surrounds Deaths of Father and Daughter Who Perished in House Fire
I don't know why Laina came to me that day. I guess she wanted someone to see where she came from and to learn the truth about her death. Wherever she is, I hope she knows how grateful I am for her help that day, and hope she can find some happiness in me sharing her story with the world.

Posted by u/peculi _ dar