Disclaimer: The person, places, events and setting in this story is fictitious and comes from the author's imagination. Bold statements indicate the dialogue of the characters.
Van is a single parent with one daughter. His wife died after giving birth to their daughter named Princess.
She is a 5-year old girl, lovely and caring daughter. She always smiles and makes her dad laugh. Her relationship with her father is unique and special. They have a closeness to each other like a King and Princess.
Tomorrow is Princess' 6th birthday, her father bought a second hand playhouse. Since they are poor, he cannot afford to buy a brand new playhouse.
Note: second hand means it is something that is already used by someone but decided to sell/buy it despite not being brand new.
They are poor financially but full of love emotionally.
Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to youuu! Happy birthday, happy birthday, happy birthday to you. Van sang while holding his gift and smiling to his daughter. Happy birthday baby, here's my gift. He handed his gift to her and the girl smiled widely at him.
Aww, thank you daddy. She started opening the gift. To her surprise, it is a foldable playhouse. Wow! This is really great, thank you daddy. I love it.
They started setting up the playhouse and building it. It has free toy balls and dolls. Both of them played together for hours but her dad needed to cook something for their dinner. Hey baby, I need to cook our food. You can play alone, right? he asked. Her daughter smiled.
Yes daddy, Amanda is here so don't worry. Princess said while looking at her dad with her big smiley face. Uhhh...who is Amanda, baby? her dad was confused.
Amanda, my playmate. She started humming and entered the playhouse with her doll. Uhh....okay. Just play with Amanda. Although he is confused, he just smiled thinking that she is referring to her doll. He went to the kitchen and started cooking.
He was about 5 minutes in the kitchen when suddenly a disturbing noise in the living room came. It is a sound like something fell. He ran towards the living room. Princess! he shouted in his mind.
He came to the living room but his daughter was not there. He rushed to the playhouse, she's not in there either. His sweat is now flowing on his face, he is nervous.
Then, he saw something in the cabinet. He noticed that someone was staring from the cabinet, inside the cabinet. He started walking towards the cabinet, slowly. When he is going to open it, the door suddenly closes and a loud noise inside distracts him.
Despite being afraid of what is inside, he needs to be brave. His daughter might be inside the cabinet. He held the knob then he opened it...and then he saw a little girl crouching. She is crying.
Oh come on baby, why did you go inside the cabinet? It's okay, it's okay. He approached the girl and tried to carry her.
Amanda! it was Princess' voice, it was from Van's back. He looked on his back and he saw his daughter smiling at him. Dad, she is Amanda.
He looked back inside the cabinet and he saw the smiling creepy face of the little girl, Amanda. Let's play… she said and laughed, a creepy laugh.
Princess also laughed innocently. Van immediately runs towards his daughter and carries her. Where are we going dad? I want to play with Amanda!
We're leaving, baby. Don't play with her! he unintentionally shouted.
Princess was shocked by her dad, she did not understand what was going on. They went outside the house and saw the big and shining moonlight.
And then, a text message came to Van's phone. He read it and was shocked by the message.
Every time that the moon is big and shining brightly, she will come to play in her playhouse. She is a lovely kid and loved by the people. It was 3 years ago when their house burned, her playhouse was the only thing that was mysteriously saved. Her family was suffocated by the smoke and died. Amanda, a 5-year old kid.
It was a text message from the person where he bought a playhouse.
He looked at the window of their home and saw the crying little girl, Amanda.
This is my entry for the weekly prompt of @theinkwell community about #moonlight.
This is a lovely story, @theimpostor. You create sympathetic characters and a vivid scene. We feel the father's love for his daughter, and the innocence of that daughter. We are left to wonder, will he allow his daughter to play with tragic Amanda despite her ghostly nature?
Thank you for sharing this story with the Ink Well community. We appreciate that you engage with other writers.
Oh well, I made the ending of this story as open-ended. It depends on the readers to think of what will be the finale. A lot of stories out there that is open-ended and I want to try writing like that.
You did alright. There is still a mystery, but you have created a complete story arc: beginning, middle and end. The conflict in the story is, who is in the toy house? You solved that mystery by showing us Amanda. That's good enough.
I will take it as a compliment, thank you and have some !LUV
@theimpostor(1/1) gave you LUV.
Well, poor Van, he got scammed with a dollhouse that came with a free ghost.
He got a freebie haha!
Nice work. Now we can only hope Amanda's intentions are not evil, that is assuming Van allows princess to play with her.
Oh that will be a good yet creepy ending.
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