Spooky Story Prompt 4 - NOTAMAIDTOORDER- 12/13/21 03:45a.m. EST
This is my photo prompt from the short spooky, creepy, true crime story thing I suggested in the League of Extraordinary Penpals group I am in. I picked this one because everyone loves Snoopy and I'm certain he's witnessed way more than any of the rest of us ever will...
photo attribution unknown - was taken from online as just a story prompt
Goal was 2,000 words (there's a "write a story under 2000 words and submit it" thing in the group newsletter
and I may never make it. LMAO )
2,676 words - and I'm leaving it. I don't want to bloat it. I'm hoping to bring it DOWN with editing.
Stephanie's Story from this Photo Prompt - Parade Day
The other people's stories will be linked here if they give me permission.
Goal was 2,000 words (there's a "write a story under 2000 words and submit it" thing in the group newsletter
and I may never make it. LMAO )
2,676 words - and I'm leaving it. I don't want to bloat it. I'm hoping to bring it DOWN with editing.
Stephanie's Story from this Photo Prompt - Parade Day
The other people's stories will be linked here if they give me permission.
________
Excerpted from the forums on the DIVA DEBUTANTE SARAH FOREVER fan page… between a post wishing the lovely missing woman a Happy 53rd Birthday and a post calling this poster a crackpot and swearing to find them and make them sorry for their negative words and cruelty…
NOTAMAIDTOORDER- 12/13/19 03:45a.m. EST
Ok, ok… ok. So here’s the story. No one believes me anyway, so it can’t hurt to put this here and maybe one of you knows something and maybe you’ll all think I’m nuts, too.
I’m a maid. I like being a maid. People treat me like that’s weird and it’s ok. That is nowhere near the weirdest thing about me, as you’re going to find out. I get time warped phone calls from almost dead people.
So I have this incredible contract - well, I did. I don’t know if I can maintain my other jobs now that this has happened. Anyways. I’m a maid, and I have this awesome contract with a company that works exclusively in the 15 Central Park West towers for all the richy rich. Christmas is like half of my annual income in a single month, and I make bank. You’ll have to trust me on that.
Well, last Thanksgiving one of my clients was arriving late in the afternoon to have a big dinner party for lots of important friends and so I agreed to come in early and make sure the down and dirty cleaners had done their jobs and clean and finish and tidy and do the little things that our service is really paid for, like making sure the towels aren’t just clean but feel fluffy and soaps are new but not sharp-edged new. Bet you never knew there was such a service, huh? Yeah. It’s like dressing a house to look always new and fresh and still always occupied, too. It’s fun.
Except on Thanksgiving day the unit was cold. I checked the heat and it was fine. I checked the gas fireplace, hot as hell. And there was still fog on the windows and even a little fog on all of the china and glass by the liquor cabinet. So weird. I called building maintenance and told them to get someone in because this wouldn’t do and then went about my business of making sure the beds were precisely almost just right and that slippers were on the right sides of the bed and today’s paper was nicely opened and flipped through then closed and waiting on the desk in the nook, along with a little note from me saying it was nice to have them back because I missed them so much when they were away. The devil is in the details, I tell you. The tiniest things make a world of difference in this world where anyone can mop a floor but not everyone can make it look like you didn’t ever need to mop that floor.
So I was shivering my ass off and warming up my hands and just glanced out at the parade going by out the window when the phone rang and scared the liver out of me! I ignored the phone at first. It’s not my job. That sounds calloused and you need to understand, it’s not my job because at this pay scale everyone has a specific job and that one isn’t mine. I could get fired if I got a message wrong. Because I’m not supposed to answer the phones. I’m supposed to leave a pen and fresh paper pad by every phone and make everything look sort of accidentally neat and ready without looking hotel fresh and sterile. And actually, in this unit for this client no one answers the phone except for him. He has a machine and a service for the rest. His assistant probably decides which is going to answer.
Except today nothing answered that ringing phone in the front room. Eight. Nine. I sighed and wiped my suddenly sweaty palms on my legs and picked up the phone on ten.
Because it took me so long to answer the person on the other end sounded frantic and was already talking to me. “..swer… oh god answer the phone… please pick up…”
I picked up with the residence name and thought she sounded like she was crying. “Hello?” I asked. Hey, I get paid big bucks - or maybe did, I suppose, I still don’t know - to know my job and do it well, I’m still human and this kid sounded like she was scared and crying. “Hello, miss? Are you ok?”
She sniffed loudly and was whispering in this terrifying scared little voice so fast that I was struggling to make out what she was saying. “I got the wrong number.” She said clearly and sobbed a little. That voice was a whispered wail and it made me shiver even more. “Please, help me. They aren’t going to let me go. They said the money was there and they don’t have to let me go because Manny let me see Snoopy so I know his face but I didn’t look, I swear… I didn’t see him just out the window and...”
“Mayam, where are you?” I asked, hair on my neck and arms standing up and my guts feeling like I might puke my breakfast from a few hours ago right here on the perfectly arranged rugs and furniture. These are not chatting phones. These are decorator phones. These are stand in the window talking and make a picturesque photo for Forbes or Rolling Stones phones. These are remember the good old days before cell phones phones. I couldn’t move from the window, so I couldn’t move from the rugs. I sank to my knees and thirty years of hand mopping screamed back at me from both offended legs so I was a little distracted and missed something she said. I thought she said she needed a cuddle bear. I know now she said, “Oh, look. It’s the Snuggle Bear.”
“My name is Sarah and I’m 23 and my dad and mom are Elenne and Suzanne Morrison. Tell them I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have gone on my own down to the parade. I’m so so sorry…” She was even quieter now and then she made a gasping sound and screamed. A man then, angry, deep Bronx accent, “I told you, Manny. Nothing but trouble.” And the line went dead. I belched. A long airy disgusting sour belch that almost made me retch. I was gasping like it was me who had been terrified and was about to die and I was gulping air and spit and… yeah. I was gonna hurl if I didn’t get out of here.
I reached for the pretty and damned expensive pad of paper by the phone and stopped myself. I was still holding the handset and just kind of couldn’t think. So I put it back on the cradle and checked the cord out of instinct. Coiled but not caught or tangled, just a little more dangle than should be, and hell, I just used the fucking thing. I’m not sure it’s ever been used before now. The cold air will coil it back up the right amount soon. And then I laughed at myself. Because who thinks of how the dumb cord looks when a girl just screamed and is so scared.
I had to crawl a bit to the chair and carefully got myself up off the floor, then I used one of the pillows gently sweeping to remove the marks I’d made in the carpet - I tell you, it’s an art - and then ran out down the hall to the kitchen and leaned over the sink while I turned it on and drank some water from my cupped hands. Then I wiped out the sink and the handle and tore off the extra two rectangles of paper that were crinkled by my hasty grab for the roll and lowered my face to counter height to be sure no spots could dry that I’d missed before standing and pocketing the wad of paper towel. I did a last look and decided it had to be enough, something terrible was happening and I had to go report it. I gathered my purse from the knob on the inside of the residence’s front door and let myself out after arming the alarm.
Ten minutes later I’m on the phone with the local police because the guy at the desk couldn’t do anything and lookie-loos from all over the country make security a mess in these luxury towers where all the richest and most famous live. I repeated again, no, I didn’t see her, she called and freaked out because it was the wrong phone. No, I don’t know the phone number. No, I can’t say whose house it is. Yes, I called my boss to ask her to find out what we can or can’t say. No, the girl wasn’t in the client’s house. Yes, I really am a fucking maid. No, I’m not pranking them. On and on and on. I should have stopped then. I wouldn’t be on a mental health leave if I had stopped then. I wouldn’t have to keep turning off my cell phone - third new number in as many days - because of crank callers wanting to know what I saw, nothing, what I did, nothing, what I know, nothing.
My own little Thanksgiving dinner was forgotten by noon. By four I had told the story a dozen times to three different cops. The client’s representative gave the police the number, under the circumstances and the phone company had confirmed an incoming call but not from any location known. By seven it was clear that no one knew what to think, and I was allowed to go home. By the morning after I had more information than I think they bothered to get. And that was a bad thing to have done.
I googled her parent’s names. It came right up. Elenne and Suzanne Morrison, of the big shipping firm magnates Morrison had reported their daughter missing the morning of the 1987 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. She had left early despite their protestations, insistent on camping out the best spot at the corner of Central Park West and Columbus Circle. Across the street was the already seedy and still infamous Mayflower Hotel. Cops thought she’d met a terrible end at the hands of the seedier residents there, or visitors to those residents. Witnesses had seen her on the neon green and blue striped crocheted blanket on the grass in her neon pink jacket and cute short black lace skirt. Descriptions of her spiky dark hair and wildly garish makeup all matched. Then they hadn’t seen her at all. The blanket was there and the girl was not.
Online conspiracy assholes have pointed out that she could have made a scene of getting set up and then walked away on her own.
They paid the ransom. They waited. She never came home. When I read the outcome I could hear that scream in my head and I actually peed a little and had to run down the hall to my bathroom and go, then stripped my pants and rinsed them in the sink and laid them on the edge of the tub to dry and went to find new ones in my bedroom. I stood there braced with plain white panties bunched in one hand and both hands on the top of my dresser panting and trying not to cry or throw up. And over and over I heard her scream and that ugly male voice, “I told you, Manny…”
And here’s the bad thing I did. So far I’d done the right things. Even if they had turned out bad, they had been the right things. This world is full of ways to make every right thing a bad bad thing. And this was bad. I looked up her family and I called them. It took a lot of doing. I looked all night. I wasn’t exactly going to sleep, was I? Not with that scream and that evil man sounding so… what DID he sound? Resigned? Not even angry. Resigned seems like the right word. Not emotive, anyway. Just kind of sad and like a know it all. I told you so. Nastly little fucker on every playground anywhere, every hall monitor and classroom monitor growing up.
I found a business, and finally found an answering service and they said they would pass along my message. I gave my real name and real phone number. I mean, in my defense your honors of the world wide web… the police didn’t know her damned name. Google had her in less than a second and three cops and eight hours and no one knew anything at the NYPD. How was I supposed to know this is the most beloved disappearance in history? Before Thanksgiving I had never known her name, either. I’m a maid. I work for my living. I read Nora Roberts and I collect stuffed bulldogs and I knit. True crime is for someone else. Shit, I live in New York… I stay way the hell away from crime anything.
And so I left my brief message. Your daughter didn’t run away. She didn’t spend your money. Some man named Manny and his friends did. I left off the part about she dialed right the fuck through time and space into an apartment that didn’t even exist and got a maid who was a teenager then herself. Thirty-three years and probably not one second difference in time I was the unlucky bastard who got her call and heard her last seconds of life.
And now everyone knows my name. They somehow keep getting my phone number. Some asshole at the police gave up the name of the client so now everyone wants to know why it was his phone that rang. The internet wahoos and freakazoids have made everyone’s life a living hell. My client fired me and suggested highly to my boss that I should be fired for being such a menace and making up such an inappropriate tale. Luckily she believes me enough to know I didn’t leak his name, I did exactly all of the things my job required me to do and certainly never tried to get famous for this.
The worst thing is her parents. I don’t think they’ll really sue me. I’m pretty sure her dad was just hysterical. Over and over their lawyers and some representative I have to guess is their heir kept asking me to go over it again. I don’t know how she called me. Yes, she called me. Yes, she knew it was a wrong number. She said she was so so sorry. She said Manny let her see Snoopy and now that I’ve had some sleep on it, she said, “It’s the Snuggle Bear.” No, I’m not trying to be mean. On and on and on. He was yelling that he was going to ruin me and sue me for every penny I ever make again when I left. He is in his 80’s and frail in a wheelchair with a bottle of something on a stand being wheeled around for him by his skeleton old lady wife who never even looked up at me, or I was looking somewhere else and missed it.
So here you go. On Thursday, November 26th, 1987 somewhere in plain view of the balloons with the McDonald’s All Star marching band playing merrily below on Central Park West or Columbus Circle between the Snoopy and Snuggle Bear balloons 23 year old Sarah Morrison met her end to people she didn’t know but still saw too much of? She didn’t run away, she didn’t dupe her parents or set up a sexy liaison gone wrong. A man called Manny could give you more details. If he’s still alive.
Excerpted from the forums on the DIVA DEBUTANTE SARAH FOREVER fan page… between a post wishing the lovely missing woman a Happy 53rd Birthday and a post calling this poster a crackpot and swearing to find them and make them sorry for their negative words and cruelty…
NOTAMAIDTOORDER- 12/13/19 03:45a.m. EST
Ok, ok… ok. So here’s the story. No one believes me anyway, so it can’t hurt to put this here and maybe one of you knows something and maybe you’ll all think I’m nuts, too.
I’m a maid. I like being a maid. People treat me like that’s weird and it’s ok. That is nowhere near the weirdest thing about me, as you’re going to find out. I get time warped phone calls from almost dead people.
So I have this incredible contract - well, I did. I don’t know if I can maintain my other jobs now that this has happened. Anyways. I’m a maid, and I have this awesome contract with a company that works exclusively in the 15 Central Park West towers for all the richy rich. Christmas is like half of my annual income in a single month, and I make bank. You’ll have to trust me on that.
Well, last Thanksgiving one of my clients was arriving late in the afternoon to have a big dinner party for lots of important friends and so I agreed to come in early and make sure the down and dirty cleaners had done their jobs and clean and finish and tidy and do the little things that our service is really paid for, like making sure the towels aren’t just clean but feel fluffy and soaps are new but not sharp-edged new. Bet you never knew there was such a service, huh? Yeah. It’s like dressing a house to look always new and fresh and still always occupied, too. It’s fun.
Except on Thanksgiving day the unit was cold. I checked the heat and it was fine. I checked the gas fireplace, hot as hell. And there was still fog on the windows and even a little fog on all of the china and glass by the liquor cabinet. So weird. I called building maintenance and told them to get someone in because this wouldn’t do and then went about my business of making sure the beds were precisely almost just right and that slippers were on the right sides of the bed and today’s paper was nicely opened and flipped through then closed and waiting on the desk in the nook, along with a little note from me saying it was nice to have them back because I missed them so much when they were away. The devil is in the details, I tell you. The tiniest things make a world of difference in this world where anyone can mop a floor but not everyone can make it look like you didn’t ever need to mop that floor.
So I was shivering my ass off and warming up my hands and just glanced out at the parade going by out the window when the phone rang and scared the liver out of me! I ignored the phone at first. It’s not my job. That sounds calloused and you need to understand, it’s not my job because at this pay scale everyone has a specific job and that one isn’t mine. I could get fired if I got a message wrong. Because I’m not supposed to answer the phones. I’m supposed to leave a pen and fresh paper pad by every phone and make everything look sort of accidentally neat and ready without looking hotel fresh and sterile. And actually, in this unit for this client no one answers the phone except for him. He has a machine and a service for the rest. His assistant probably decides which is going to answer.
Except today nothing answered that ringing phone in the front room. Eight. Nine. I sighed and wiped my suddenly sweaty palms on my legs and picked up the phone on ten.
Because it took me so long to answer the person on the other end sounded frantic and was already talking to me. “..swer… oh god answer the phone… please pick up…”
I picked up with the residence name and thought she sounded like she was crying. “Hello?” I asked. Hey, I get paid big bucks - or maybe did, I suppose, I still don’t know - to know my job and do it well, I’m still human and this kid sounded like she was scared and crying. “Hello, miss? Are you ok?”
She sniffed loudly and was whispering in this terrifying scared little voice so fast that I was struggling to make out what she was saying. “I got the wrong number.” She said clearly and sobbed a little. That voice was a whispered wail and it made me shiver even more. “Please, help me. They aren’t going to let me go. They said the money was there and they don’t have to let me go because Manny let me see Snoopy so I know his face but I didn’t look, I swear… I didn’t see him just out the window and...”
“Mayam, where are you?” I asked, hair on my neck and arms standing up and my guts feeling like I might puke my breakfast from a few hours ago right here on the perfectly arranged rugs and furniture. These are not chatting phones. These are decorator phones. These are stand in the window talking and make a picturesque photo for Forbes or Rolling Stones phones. These are remember the good old days before cell phones phones. I couldn’t move from the window, so I couldn’t move from the rugs. I sank to my knees and thirty years of hand mopping screamed back at me from both offended legs so I was a little distracted and missed something she said. I thought she said she needed a cuddle bear. I know now she said, “Oh, look. It’s the Snuggle Bear.”
“My name is Sarah and I’m 23 and my dad and mom are Elenne and Suzanne Morrison. Tell them I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have gone on my own down to the parade. I’m so so sorry…” She was even quieter now and then she made a gasping sound and screamed. A man then, angry, deep Bronx accent, “I told you, Manny. Nothing but trouble.” And the line went dead. I belched. A long airy disgusting sour belch that almost made me retch. I was gasping like it was me who had been terrified and was about to die and I was gulping air and spit and… yeah. I was gonna hurl if I didn’t get out of here.
I reached for the pretty and damned expensive pad of paper by the phone and stopped myself. I was still holding the handset and just kind of couldn’t think. So I put it back on the cradle and checked the cord out of instinct. Coiled but not caught or tangled, just a little more dangle than should be, and hell, I just used the fucking thing. I’m not sure it’s ever been used before now. The cold air will coil it back up the right amount soon. And then I laughed at myself. Because who thinks of how the dumb cord looks when a girl just screamed and is so scared.
I had to crawl a bit to the chair and carefully got myself up off the floor, then I used one of the pillows gently sweeping to remove the marks I’d made in the carpet - I tell you, it’s an art - and then ran out down the hall to the kitchen and leaned over the sink while I turned it on and drank some water from my cupped hands. Then I wiped out the sink and the handle and tore off the extra two rectangles of paper that were crinkled by my hasty grab for the roll and lowered my face to counter height to be sure no spots could dry that I’d missed before standing and pocketing the wad of paper towel. I did a last look and decided it had to be enough, something terrible was happening and I had to go report it. I gathered my purse from the knob on the inside of the residence’s front door and let myself out after arming the alarm.
Ten minutes later I’m on the phone with the local police because the guy at the desk couldn’t do anything and lookie-loos from all over the country make security a mess in these luxury towers where all the richest and most famous live. I repeated again, no, I didn’t see her, she called and freaked out because it was the wrong phone. No, I don’t know the phone number. No, I can’t say whose house it is. Yes, I called my boss to ask her to find out what we can or can’t say. No, the girl wasn’t in the client’s house. Yes, I really am a fucking maid. No, I’m not pranking them. On and on and on. I should have stopped then. I wouldn’t be on a mental health leave if I had stopped then. I wouldn’t have to keep turning off my cell phone - third new number in as many days - because of crank callers wanting to know what I saw, nothing, what I did, nothing, what I know, nothing.
My own little Thanksgiving dinner was forgotten by noon. By four I had told the story a dozen times to three different cops. The client’s representative gave the police the number, under the circumstances and the phone company had confirmed an incoming call but not from any location known. By seven it was clear that no one knew what to think, and I was allowed to go home. By the morning after I had more information than I think they bothered to get. And that was a bad thing to have done.
I googled her parent’s names. It came right up. Elenne and Suzanne Morrison, of the big shipping firm magnates Morrison had reported their daughter missing the morning of the 1987 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. She had left early despite their protestations, insistent on camping out the best spot at the corner of Central Park West and Columbus Circle. Across the street was the already seedy and still infamous Mayflower Hotel. Cops thought she’d met a terrible end at the hands of the seedier residents there, or visitors to those residents. Witnesses had seen her on the neon green and blue striped crocheted blanket on the grass in her neon pink jacket and cute short black lace skirt. Descriptions of her spiky dark hair and wildly garish makeup all matched. Then they hadn’t seen her at all. The blanket was there and the girl was not.
Online conspiracy assholes have pointed out that she could have made a scene of getting set up and then walked away on her own.
They paid the ransom. They waited. She never came home. When I read the outcome I could hear that scream in my head and I actually peed a little and had to run down the hall to my bathroom and go, then stripped my pants and rinsed them in the sink and laid them on the edge of the tub to dry and went to find new ones in my bedroom. I stood there braced with plain white panties bunched in one hand and both hands on the top of my dresser panting and trying not to cry or throw up. And over and over I heard her scream and that ugly male voice, “I told you, Manny…”
And here’s the bad thing I did. So far I’d done the right things. Even if they had turned out bad, they had been the right things. This world is full of ways to make every right thing a bad bad thing. And this was bad. I looked up her family and I called them. It took a lot of doing. I looked all night. I wasn’t exactly going to sleep, was I? Not with that scream and that evil man sounding so… what DID he sound? Resigned? Not even angry. Resigned seems like the right word. Not emotive, anyway. Just kind of sad and like a know it all. I told you so. Nastly little fucker on every playground anywhere, every hall monitor and classroom monitor growing up.
I found a business, and finally found an answering service and they said they would pass along my message. I gave my real name and real phone number. I mean, in my defense your honors of the world wide web… the police didn’t know her damned name. Google had her in less than a second and three cops and eight hours and no one knew anything at the NYPD. How was I supposed to know this is the most beloved disappearance in history? Before Thanksgiving I had never known her name, either. I’m a maid. I work for my living. I read Nora Roberts and I collect stuffed bulldogs and I knit. True crime is for someone else. Shit, I live in New York… I stay way the hell away from crime anything.
And so I left my brief message. Your daughter didn’t run away. She didn’t spend your money. Some man named Manny and his friends did. I left off the part about she dialed right the fuck through time and space into an apartment that didn’t even exist and got a maid who was a teenager then herself. Thirty-three years and probably not one second difference in time I was the unlucky bastard who got her call and heard her last seconds of life.
And now everyone knows my name. They somehow keep getting my phone number. Some asshole at the police gave up the name of the client so now everyone wants to know why it was his phone that rang. The internet wahoos and freakazoids have made everyone’s life a living hell. My client fired me and suggested highly to my boss that I should be fired for being such a menace and making up such an inappropriate tale. Luckily she believes me enough to know I didn’t leak his name, I did exactly all of the things my job required me to do and certainly never tried to get famous for this.
The worst thing is her parents. I don’t think they’ll really sue me. I’m pretty sure her dad was just hysterical. Over and over their lawyers and some representative I have to guess is their heir kept asking me to go over it again. I don’t know how she called me. Yes, she called me. Yes, she knew it was a wrong number. She said she was so so sorry. She said Manny let her see Snoopy and now that I’ve had some sleep on it, she said, “It’s the Snuggle Bear.” No, I’m not trying to be mean. On and on and on. He was yelling that he was going to ruin me and sue me for every penny I ever make again when I left. He is in his 80’s and frail in a wheelchair with a bottle of something on a stand being wheeled around for him by his skeleton old lady wife who never even looked up at me, or I was looking somewhere else and missed it.
So here you go. On Thursday, November 26th, 1987 somewhere in plain view of the balloons with the McDonald’s All Star marching band playing merrily below on Central Park West or Columbus Circle between the Snoopy and Snuggle Bear balloons 23 year old Sarah Morrison met her end to people she didn’t know but still saw too much of? She didn’t run away, she didn’t dupe her parents or set up a sexy liaison gone wrong. A man called Manny could give you more details. If he’s still alive.
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