Ollie.
When I was little I had imaginary friends, which is really common in some children. At school they said it was weird, and for that reason they didn’t want to talk to me. So, I isolated myself in my own imaginary world, in which I could be happy. However, as the years passed I stopped being that lonely and marginalized child. I became more sociable, totally opposed to who I was.
I never became the most popular, nor did I intend to be, but I liked talking to others and when they stopped labeling me as “the weird kid”, everything started to go better for me.
Until one day everything changed.
I remember playing at the park when I found a little boy who I had never seen on the slide. We talked for hours until it got dark. That day, my grandmother was with me on a bench reading a magazine. When she announced it was time to go home, I obeyed.
“Did you have fun?” she asked.
“Yes, I made a friend, his name is Ollie,” my grandmother smiled.
“Oh, and where was he?”
“At the park with me”, I innocently answered.
“At the park?” she seemed confused, “There was nobody, there was only you”
“There was a boy my age, grandma” I insisted, “He was very nice”
She muttered "childish nonsense" and without saying anything else we walked back home. When my mother asked me what I had done during the day, I changed the story by omitting that I had met Ollie. I knew adults wouldn’t take me seriously, and was sure my friend would be offended.
The next day, I went back to the park. Ollie was still in the same place, sitting under the slide, playing with the sand.
“Why don’t you have any friends?” I asked him when I saw that he had returned. I found him nice, but at the same time strange. He reminded me of myself.
“I do have friends, but you don’t see them”
I told him I wanted to meet his friends, but he said that wouldn't be possible. When I asked him why, he told me it was because no one could know about his existence. I decided not to talk about it anymore.
With the days, our confidence increased. We saw each other very often, always in the same place.
But one day, he angrily told me that if someone knew we knew each other, they would pay for it. I didn’t understand what he was saying.
I wish I’d never met him.
“What if someone knows?”
“They can’t stay alive”, I was a little boy, but I knew those words didn’t mean something good, “Does anyone know?”
“No…” I murmured restlessly.
“You’re lying. Who knows?”
“My grandmother…” I trembled as I felt that I was about to cry, “Don’t do anything to her, she is very good, she prepares the best desserts in the world, if you want I can ask her to bake me a cake and I’ll bring it to you tomorrow” I answered with the innocence of an eight-year-old boy. I saw that he was smiling, however, that smile seemed to be hiding many secrets.
Two days later, my grandmother died. Everyone said it was a heart attack, except me. But I couldn’t do anything about it.
I didn’t want to go to the park anymore. I refused to see Ollie again. But soon, I started seeing him in school, in my room... closer and closer to me. He never spoke to me like before, he simply looked at me with a macabre smile. When I closed my eyes, I could not forget that disturbing smile.
I cried for weeks, months.
My parents didn’t know what was wrong with me, I couldn’t tell them anything. If I told them, they would also be victims like grandmother and I didn’t want that.
As I grew older, I stopped seeing Ollie. And little by little I forgot his memory. I studied, went to college, and had a life like anyone else. I found a beautiful woman with whom I had a child, my great joy. And I finally got to stop thinking about that demon.
I was unaware that evil never dies.
One day like any other, I came home from work and saw my son sitting in the living room watching TV. The boy ran to me to say hello.
“Hello, champ. How was your day?”
“Very good, I made a new friend”, he said smiling.
“Oh, is that it? What’s his name? You can invite him home one day so we can meet him”
“ His name is Ollie”, he responded.
Two days later, I was dead.
Ollie had ended my life.
