The Gallows

There were these silly basketball games that were always fun to play on the Sega Genesis as a kid. I always had fun with this friend of mine who would play NBA Jam and continue to beat it all the time.

So, her family came from some money, big deal. If you look at it subjectively, so did mine. Only mine wasn’t two very successful yet very busy doctors.

I mean, don’t get me wrong, my parents were busy busy busy all the goddamn time to the point I never saw them and when I did it was almost like they didn’t want to be seen by me, but yeah, they worked hard and so did my friend Maddie’s parents.

But not only did THEY work hard, they expected Maddie to work super hard too. Which can be a good thing as well as a bad thing.

I’ll never forget the day…

See, Maddie was a little overweight (according to her pops, the doctor) and so she was required to run around the block twice every morning to ensure that she lost those extra pounds that you know, a 13-year-old flat chested girl isn’t going to carry well. It was all in her legs.

Oh, don’t let me forget, I made her laugh so hard one time, she peed her pants outside in the sprawling neighborhood with all the big houses and luscious trees with the green leaves just ripe for picking. Did we pick them though? No. I would have felt bad! I think.

The very same week that she peed her pants from us laughing so hard, we were hanging outside wandering around her neighborhood which still wasn’t even finished being built yet… anyways, she wanted to explore, and I was okay with it. I was with Maddie, what could go wrong?

We broke and entered, or more like just entered the foyer by the front door of the one house down the street from her parent’s McMansion in a No-name town, in Pennsylvania. And walked right in we did. Thank you very much, we were good to come in. I don’t know what we were expecting to find or really do in there, but it was all good, because I got to explore, and with Maddie.

The interior of the house looked much like my friend’s parent’s home, except for the fact, it wasn’t finished yet. And oh, mi goodness yo—what if I told the current residents, that way back in the day I had been inside their home before it was even done? I was a construction ho! Hardi-har-ha.

The wood innards of the house made up most of it. I mean, it was still wood. There was not any electric wiring even in this jam yet.

So, there we are, and we somehow get to the upstairs of the house, and then I wander off one way and Maddie walks off in the other direction. We were upstairs in the wood frame of the house, that only “housed” a front door. I am looking around seeing not much of anything interesting and then I hear a cry out…

“Ow!”

And I also hear a scream. It sounds almost guttural.

Then, “Help me!”

I instantly think, Maddie! And turn around and start walking in the direction she had been going but see a hole in the floor up ahead. I am wondering what exactly happened, but I get my answer, and I see Maddie sprawled on the floor below me, beneath the hole. She had mis stepped and fallen through the wood boards that had not been sealed yet.

I mean, the house wasn’t finished, and she wasn’t careful. I guess we were just asking for trouble by being in there.

In those moments I couldn’t help but think; Her running days are over. But they weren’t, good thing, and I also had heard she rowed crew throughout college too, star athlete she was.

But in the end, on that day, I ran off and got some help from her cool older uncle who lived with her and her little brother and parents. He was a cool guy, but man was he mad at us. I guess we were supposed to be under his watch. He wasn’t doing a good job apparently, but it is what it is.

After getting Maddie home and her foot up (it was swollen pretty good) the rest of the day we played Super Nintendo Donkey Kong and Mario Cart and then I went home. Maddie was okay, stunned mostly. She had the swelling in her ankle, but her dad had come home a few hours later and checked her out, because as I mentioned, he was a doctor. He knew what was up. He determined it was a sprain and she would heal. She wore a brace on it for a week.

In college I would be known to smoke weed and go on explorations of areas around my university. I remember there was a building that looked like some gallows. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t. If I did the research, I could find out, but I was lazy and smoking reefer, what do you want from me?

I remember getting so very freaked out by this gallows looking thing, while high, mind you, and maybe it was my trauma from when I was a 13-year-old girl, and my best friend fell through the floor. I often wonder if it was a gallows, and just how many people watched their friends fall through that floor and swing. Yikes. Eerie to think about floors and falling through holes.

“Let’s get out of here,” I would tell my friend. “We don’t need to be in here.” Luckily my friend Janine was always such a laid-back lady, she didn’t give a fuck what we were doing. “It’s really like a horror story, if you think about it,” I told Janine as we wandered off to another area and took a seat. I took a drag off my cigarette. “The people falling through there, they died, I hope quickly, but yeah, sealing in their fates for real,” I said. My empathy rode deep through me. Even if those poor souls did something outrageously horrible, they didn’t need to die that way. It wasn’t justice, it was really all for show.

I often wondered if Maddie ever explored with other friends of hers as she was growing up or in college where she attended Dartmouth. Or did she hold back? All our experiences add up to something and I often wonder if she enjoyed the same things I did, but more adult things as she grew older.

We had a falling out our freshman year of high school and never spoke again except in one awkward Facebook instance and then blocking done by her. I guess I came on too strong, I was excited to talk to her, even if just a few words. Maybe I creeped her out, I don’t know.

She had been such a special friend to me, I guess I missed her. She released the explorer in me back in those days of being a young teenager, and for that, I thank her.

BIO: Laura Winterbottom is a former “journalist” who now writes when she isn’t rescuing animals. She can be found with her 2 favorite felines, a book and on: Twitter: @me0wmixlaura and TheStack: @LauraW