Mindy
I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place with this and I don’t know where to go and what to do. I’m caught and I’m implemented because I paid for this to happen in the first place.
Basically I found this company through a guy I know vaguely from work. I knew that he got a divorce and it went through in three weeks. Three weeks! No arguments. No lawyers screaming at each other. His wife just agreed to everything and that was that. She signed the papers and walked away from everything – the house, the kids, the money. He said she just woke up one morning and said she didn’t want to fight anymore.
So I asked him how.
He gave me a number to call. He told me to ask for the ‘residential programme’. He told me it would be expensive but if it’s what I wanted they’d get it done. He said you don’t ask how, you just pay the money and wait.
So I called and a woman answered. She seemed professional enough and asked me what outcome I was looking for. My wife and I have been arguing for several months nonstop. I’m sick of it. We both are. But I knew I didn’t want a divorce. I want to be with her like it was before all this shit started. I told the woman on the phone that I just wanted my wife to be more compliant. Just to agree with me more often.
She said she could help. It would be a six month programme.
A cleaner started coming every Tuesday. Not my doing, so I figured it must be something to do with the number I’d called and the money I had paid. My wife was annoyed at first as she said it was a waste of money, but I told her it was my treat. When she first saw how clean the house was after the cleaner had left she soon changed her tune. We weren’t always in when the cleaner visited, but on the few occasions we did meet her she seemed nice. Her name was Mindy. She was a pretty average fifty-something white woman with a London accent. We’d exchange a bit of small talk with her and then she got to work. I never saw Mindy do anything peculiar or out of the ordinary.
That was five months ago.
Here's what's happened to the woman I married.
Month one. Nothing. She was the same. Arguing with me all the time about everything. I was really pulling my hair out by this stage. I thought I'd been scammed.
Month two. She stopped arguing about the mess in the kitchen. I always leave a mess in the kitchen after I cook. But one day she just stopped being mad about it. Maybe because she knew the place was going to get a thorough clean the following Tuesday. She’d clean the dirty dishes and forget the rest. The dirty counters, messy shelves – it just wasn’t a problem for her anymore. Before she would have screamed at me for an hour.
Month three. She stopped going out on Fridays with her friends. This was something she’d done for as long as we’d been together. She just said she didn't feel like it one week. Then she stayed in the next week. And the next. Her friend Karen called by the house three times. My wife hid in the bedroom.
Month four. She lost weight. And trust me, she did not need to lose weight. She'd make dinner for me and sit there with a glass of water. I asked if she was okay and she said she was fine. She said it with this flat voice that didn't sound like her. Like someone had taken the colour out of her words.
She started checking things constantly. The front door. The windows. The oven. She’d check the door lock multiple times before going to bed. She’d get up in the early hours and check it again. Then one night she got up and was gone for several minutes so I went to look for her in the house. I found her in the kitchen sitting on a chair staring at the wall. It’s one of the creepiest things I’ve ever seen.
I called the number. I said I wanted to stop. I said something was wrong. I said this wasn't what I had asked for.
The woman said the programme was proceeding as expected. She said my wife was responding well and that the final phase would be complete within seven to eight weeks.
I said what final phase.
She said: "The outcome you requested."
I said I requested compliance. I said I wanted her to be easier to live with.
She said: "Yes” and hung up.
The next Tuesday I waited for Mindy to arrive. It was the first time she’d arrived late. I immediately told her to stop coming, and I took back the keys she held for our house. She looked at me confused that I was in such a state and left.
I came home very late from work and my wife was sitting in the kitchen in the dark. Just sitting there. The chair was in the middle of the room facing the front door. She wasn't crying. She wasn't doing anything. She was just sitting there with her hands in her lap staring at the door like she was waiting for someone to come through it.
I said her name and she looked at me and for a second I swear to god she didn't recognise me. We’ve been married five years and she looked at me like she had no idea who I was. And then for no reason she smiled – this awful stretched smile that was fucking terrifying, but her eyes were dead. Then she suddenly came round like she’d woken from a nightmare and went upstairs and slammed the bedroom door and didn’t come out for fourteen hours. I spent the night on the sofa.
I’ve stopped the cleaner coming but my wife isn’t getting any better. She’s getting worse.
The nights that followed she pretty much stopped sleeping.
Every night at 3am I’d wake up and she’d be standing at the foot of our bed staring at me. Not moving. Not blinking. Just standing there with her arms at her sides and her head tilted slightly like she's trying to remember who I am.
The first time she did it I screamed. I haven’t screamed since I was a kid. She didn't react. I turned the light on and she was just standing there in her pyjamas with her eyes wide open and this expression on her face like she's solving a maths problem. I said her name – but I’m not going to tell you her name. She blinked once, very slowly, and then walked back to her side of the bed and lay down and closed her eyes. In the morning she didn’t remember.
This happened every night for two weeks.
Month five.
I woke up and she wasn’t at the foot of the bed. She was crouching on all fours over me. Her face was three inches from mine. Her mouth was slightly open and I could feel her breath on my face. Her eyes were open and she was looking at me with that same tilted head expression but now she was smiling. Not a real smile. Something her face was doing without her permission.
I was terrified. I didn’t move. I didn’t know what to do. I lay there for forty minutes until she stood up and walked downstairs. I heard her sit in the kitchen chair. The one facing the front door.
The days were just as bad. She started to agree to everything. Everything.
I’d ask her what she wanted for dinner and she’d say whatever I want. I’d say no what do YOU want. She’d say whatever I want. Every time. No preference. No opinion. No pushback on anything.
So I tested it. I said I thought we should give the car to my brother. She said okay. I said I was going to empty the savings account. She said okay. I said I wanted to invite my mother to live with us. She said okay. She said it with the same flat smile every time.
Then I pushed it further. Not because I wanted to. Because I needed to know where the edges were.
I said I wanted her to cut her hair off. She went to the bathroom. I heard scissors. She came out with handfuls of her own hair and put them on the kitchen table in a neat pile and said "is that enough or do you want me to keep going."
I said stop so she stopped. She stood in the kitchen with patches of scalp showing through what was left of her hair and she was smiling at me and waiting for another instruction.
I was crying and she was looking at me with absolutely no expression and just asked if I would like a cup of tea.
Two nights ago she was standing at the foot of our bed again. But this time she's holding the scissors. Not threatening. Just holding them at her side.
I told her calmly to put the scissors down and she put them down.
I said to get into bed and she did.
I asked her if she was okay and she said she was whatever I needed her to be.
I lay in the dark next to a woman who would do anything I asked and I realised that this was exactly what I had paid for.
Yesterday I said I’d take her to the doctor but she flat refused. So I got the doctor to come to us – had to pull a few strings. He came and as he approached her she showed him her wrists. I don’t know why she would do that. She barely said a word to the doctor. Just replied with quiet yeses and nos. As he was leaving he told me she needed more sleep. That was it. But he doesn’t know her.
I tried the line again but it was dead.
I don't know what compliance means to these people. I don't know what the final phase is. I don't know what's in the cleaning products Mindy has been using in my house for five months. I don't know why my wife sits in the dark staring at the front door.
I know I should call the police. I know it. But I paid for this. On my credit card. There are records. I asked for it. I used the word compliant. I said I wanted her to stop fighting. I said I was tired of her being difficult.
I don't know what they're going to do to her in the next two to three weeks.
And I don't know how to stop this thing that's started.