Story Four

Paulina

My Neighbor, The Predator


I'm a twenty year old woman and this happened to me when I was eleven.

My family's wealthy and we lived in a nice neighborhood. Next to us, there was a middle age couple who didn't have any kids. The couple (let's call them Bill and Rhonda) would always have barbecue once a month and they would invite us and only us. They had a big swimming pool and told my older sister and me that we're always welcome to swim. All we had in the backyard, was a large garden. Whenever my sister and I go and swim in their pool, Rhonda would make lemonade and Bill would make hot dogs and hamburgers.

Months passed and things got weird. Since my sister is three years older than I, she began puberty and started to develop breast and hips. Bill started to add comments like "Easy there; those are getting too big" and "Do you know the breast stroke?" After that, my sister didn't want to go, so I was the only one going.

One day, I was swimming and I began bleeding from down there. Luckily Rhonda helped me by calling my mother and got a change of clothes and underwear and a maxi pad. Bill wasn't so pleased. I wasn't because of just had my period, it was because of Rhonda helping me. He started yelling and asked why did she helped the "little whore." I told my parents about this and they kept us from going to Bill and Rhonda's house.

Fast- forward to a few months, and it's Halloween. My sister and I went trick- or- treating only a couple blocks and we avoided going to our neighbor's. We came back and we saw the police at the front of their house. They only arrested Bill. We never saw Bill again and Rhonda moved to another state. It took a few years to realize that Bill was a registered sex offender and was on parole. I did some research about this and it turned out that sex offenders who were on parole were not allowed to give out candy to children on Halloween, never allowed to be near by children, playground or schools. That same time I found out that Rhonda was his sister, not his wife. She was forced by Bill to accompany him or else he would do things to her child, a boy around my age who lived in another city with her actual husband.

I'm glad that I never saw Bill again.