I knew it was coming before it was even here. I could smell it in the air. The ground smelled moist and earthy, even the sidewalks and streets. The birds were silent, except for the ravens and crows, they sang their sad songs to fill the silence the other birds left behind when they took shelter. The wind was strong with and howling, flipping the leaves on every tree to show their back sides. Waving about as if to say “We’re so thirsty, please give us a drink!”
I sat on my porch, book and coffee mug in hand, snuggled under a blanket and a sweater on the porch swing watching the dark grey clouds roll in. The sound of booming filled my ears like a sweet song. The air seemed filled with electricity. The fog came first, thick and heavy. The feel of it moist on my skin. Then came the rumbling.
It sounded almost like a gigantic dogs growl rumbling in its throat, then the loud booms came like loud barks. I breathed a happy sigh inwardly and looked out at the darkened scenery before me, counting the rumbles and booms in seconds to see how far away it was. Only when it was overhead did the suspension that came with its before open suddenly into loud thick wet rain drops, hurling towards the ground with great speed, sounding like a thousand men running from some unknown thing as they drops hit the ground.
I grinned as I watched the rainfall, and giggled as thunder boomed. This was the weather I loved and craved. I snuggled into my blanket and put my book down to watch the beautifully eerie and melonchaly sight infront of me. It was much more beautiful a story than the words I read on a page.
“You have 5 minutes, starting now.” Growled the tall masked man infront of me. I couldn’t believe I locked myself in my room with him. What do I do, why the hell did I run upstairs instead of to the back door when I had the chance? Why is he giving me 5 minutes to convince him not to kill me? What the hell is going on? My brain felt like scattered puzzle pieces as I searched for something to say, but I froze in panic.
“H-How?!” I cried whilst shaking with fear. My hands trembling and breath shakey. I even quickly glanced around my room for valuables to offer. For half a second I was scared he wanted me to offer up myself. While my mind raced a thousand miles a minute, he spoke.
“How?” He repeated my question. “Why do you deserve to live. What makes you special enough to breathe the air the innocent breathe. I want you to tell me what makes your miserable life worth existing. Convince me, and you live. 4 and half minutes.” He spat my time limit out like a slur. I froze in panic once more. Why is he doing this? What’s happening, I don’t understand.
“Please, my son is only 2, he needs me. Please don’t take me from him I’m not ready to go yet. I don’t want to die please leave me alone. I haven’t even seen your face, I’ll has nothing to give the cops, I won’t even call them!” I spouted out anything I could think of to beg him to leave me alone. My eyes started to water and I started hyperventilating.
“You have a son?” He asked inquisitively. I nodded my head, my breathing still too erratic to answer. “Do you deserve to be his mom?” I stared confused for a second.
“What?”
“Do you. Deserve. To be. His. Mom. Are you worthy of parenting him. Is he safe with you. Is he happy with you. Does he matter. Or are you a worthless excuse for a parent. 4 minutes.”
“I- I- I try to be a good mom! It’s hard with such an high energy child, but he’s a good smart little boy. He’s sweet and funny and he loves so much and so hard. He’s my miracle.” I said, trying to calm myself. Then before I could blink the masked man had me pushed against my closet door, his knife to my throat in a flash.
“That’s not what I asked you.” He growled. My eyes widened and I yelped like a dog out of fear. “I- I- yes? Yes! I deserve to be his mom. I love him and no one can protect him like I can! I’m a good mom, I’m a good mom!” I kept crying that I was a good mom, my eyes squeezed shut waiting for the final blow. But it never came.
I only realized the masked man had left when my rotating fan blew air near me and I was cold, his body wasn’t blocking it anymore. I stood frozen in place pressed against my closet door for a few more minutes before I slowly began to inspect the entirety of the house. The masked man and vanished without a trace, as fast as he’d shown up. I was almost convinced I’d made him up. I thought about calling the police but what I said before was true, I had no way of catching this guy. He wore gloves, had a mask, he didn’t have a recognizable voice, there was no way to chase him. They’d just tell me to lock my doors and call if he came back.
To be sure, when I was brave enough and had a weapons, I ventured outside to check around the house. No footprints, no nothing, it’s as if the man was never here. Now I really felt like I’d just imagined it all. When I went back inside, I collapsed on the floor and cried. I made a mental note to call my therapist when I’d relaxed. Then I called my sons father to check on them. I broke down and told him to lock all the windows and doors and explained what had just happened to me. He told me to call the police anyways, maybe they’d have someone spend the night here. I was more worried about there with him having our son for the weekend.
He never showed though. I waited by the phone all night to see if the man ever came, to get a call that my son and ex were dead. Instead I got the call that everything was fine and our son would be home with me in a few hours like normal. I was paranoid the rest of the week, but nothing happened. He never came back. He never finished the job. I guess I convinced him not to kill me after all.
I can’t pinpoint when this crush formed, but I’m certain of when I realized it. We were sitting on the back porch, our phones in hand, in comfortable silence listening to videos through our headphones and passing a blunt back and forth. I was watching a video and when it said your name, I would’ve thought nothing much of it, if my heart hadn’t skipped three beats.
I was so thankful you hadn’t noticed the blush that formed on my cheeks when I stole a glance at you after calming my panicking heart, I forced myself to think “When did this start? Do I really like him like that?”, but no matter how hard I try, I really couldn’t say when it started. It could’ve happened every time you’d call me beautiful if I felt bad about myself, and the sincerity in your voice and eyes every time you said it. Or the way you laughed and smiled at my dad-jokes, and called me a dummy every single time.
It could’ve been when we first met, and I was too shy to meet your gaze for more than a second, and would get anxious and shy whenever we were left alone at the time. Was it the way your voice sounded every time you said my name, or the nicknames you replaced it with when you noticed I’d flinch at the sound of my birth name? Whenever you went to work, you came home with snacks or a drink for me. Every time you bring me along to the store, you get me something, even if I say I’m fine, because you know I don’t like feeling like a burden by letting people buy me things without returning the favor.
Maybe it was your eyes and the way those beautiful orbs looked at me, the way you gave me your full attention as if I were some goddess speaking the gospel to you. I don’t know when this love for you started, but I know that I have it. I know that I wouldn’t change it for the world. This is more than puppy love. After 3 long years of friendship, my heart has said “it’s you, it has always been you. Hello old friend. I’ve known you for millennia, and it took me a bit to recognize your soul, but I could never forget what the other half of me feels like. I’ve recognized you now, just as I will in every life I live after this, just as I have in every life before.” This love I feel, this crush that has formed, it’s strong and true.
My cheeks flush when you’re around, I get so flustered when we stand next to each other. A fire burns within whenever you hug me, warming me in every area our bodies touch. This crush is different from elementary school crushes, rushing to pick your crush as your lab partner in math and science, praying they pick you for recess and gym games. There are no butterflies in my belly when I see or think of or hear you like those types of crushes. Just this warm tingling feeling all over from my head to my toes, I giggle nervously and I stutter more. I hope you don’t notice, I don’t want to scare you away from our friendship.
This feeling gets so strong, and I want to tell you. I’m terrified to, however, because I’ve never told anybody that I liked them. Always keeping my crushes a secret because I felt unworthy of those I liked, but you… you deserve to be loved by someone who sees how hard you try, appreciates your efforts and loves you unconditionally. And I think that person can be me. Even if I can only have you for a moment, it would be bliss. I’ve seen the way you treat women, even if they treat you like crap. I was sad, and sometimes angry, to witness the heartbreak they’ve put you through. Not only that, I’ve even felt guilty for not helping at certain times.
I’ve watched you love them, listened to you when you were guilty for being the bad one sometimes, seen you try to change and be a better man. And encouraged you to do so, showing you support while giving you gentle pointers. Even now. I listened to the dreams you dared to share, what your dislikes and likes were, learned your favorites to use for future gifts and such. You taught me the stories of your past.
I can’t change the bad things that happened to you in the past, but I want to make your future and present seem like Elysium. At least, if I ever have the chance to. Processing that I’ve fallen for you has been a roller coaster ride, it feels wrong. In so many ways, but it feels so perfect, like it was meant to be. I intend to love you so hard you forget what heartbreak feels like, but I’m scared of what it might take to happen, and what the cost will be if it does.
My soul tells me it’s worth it.
You always hear the saying “never take the same path anywhere, having a routine path makes it easier for predators to hunt you.” But no one ever really listens to that until it’s too late. I certainly never listened until it was too late. I’ve had brushes with danger before, a man following me in his car trying to get me in it, men following me until someone else scare them off, sketchy women in parking lots, but I always managed to have luck on my side.
Except for the one time I didn’t.
I was about sixteen during the time this story takes place. For context, my mom and step father had set up a system between me, my little brother, and our older step brother, for us to walk our family dog, King. One of us would do a morning walk around 6:30 am before school, then one of us would walk him at 3:00 pm after school, and the one of us who had yet to walk him would walk him one more time around 7:00 pm before we all started winding down for bed in a few hours.
We flip-flopped taking turns for the walks, we all hated the morning walks and would gun for the afternoon and evening ones so it wouldn’t impede our teenage after school plans. King is a sweet dog. He’s the kind of dog who’d probably let a serial killer in our house unscathed if he gave him a treat and a belly rub. He loves people, so if he growls at you or tries to bite you, there’s definitely a reason behind it.
I had just moved in with my mom a year or two before this stories incident took place and I liked having a routine and had a specific way I did things. I always walked King the exact same route; one half swing around the block, up the street towards the church, down the church alley way, straight down the back street to my block, and wrap back around my block to my house.
I did this because it had the least amount of bigger dogs whose barks scared me because of past trauma and made King either want to fight or play, and barely any little dogs since my dog hated them, the only little dog on our walk route was a sweet little girl dog and she was the only dog of her size that King seemed to like. The block right after hers is where the church alley is.
This one particular time I was walking King, we’d turned to go down the church alley and I froze. At the other end of the alley, there are two apartment buildings. The one on the left, the side the church is on, theres a small parking lot plot, and on the other, a fenced in yard with a deer statue sitting on the little patch of grass between the alley gravel and the fence. Sometime within the last twenty four hours the deers head had broken and fallen off.
When king and I rounded the corner into the alley, I immediately noticed that on the alleys gravel path, blocking the other entrance sitting between the deer statue and the fence just before the parking lot plot, was a silver four door sedan. Driver and passenger doors wide open, driver standing outside of the car on the passenger side fiddling with something inside the car. I immediately had a bad feeling but thought I was over thinking it. Maybe he was cleaning out the car before backing it into the parking lot. I continued to walk King down the alleyway, sticking to the right side of the trail and keeping a sharp eye on the driver, a tall older man with white hair, but not exactly old old, I’d say he was about 45-50 if I truly had to guess.
King started acting odd the closer and closer we got to the car, only solidifying my fear. I would’ve turned back at this point but I had learned somewhere that turning and running the direction you came maybe a more fatal choice, going the opposite direction, especially in cases like this one, would give you more time to get away while your persuer tries to catch up to you.
When we’d gotten right in front of the driver side of the car, and I’d politely said hello to the man after he’d said hi to me, King dug his front paws firmly into the ground and was pulling back on his hind legs, growling. At this point my anxiety was through the roof and I just wanted to get away. I was slowly getting him to move around and away from the driver door when suddenly the man appeared right next to me.
I hadn’t even noticed he’d moved from the passenger side from the half second I’d looked away from him for, but as soon as he was close to me, King jumped up on his hind legs and barely missed biting the guys face off thanks to me pulling his collar. The guy backed completely away and I apologized as I moved King along. He only stopped freaking out when the man moved away and was sufficiently scared from nearly losing his face. I ran home while calling my mom. I begged to be excused from walking him for a bit after that and I gave King extra treats even to present day, and from that day forth I never leave my house without a knife on me. Ever.
If you were to ask my mom about this story, she’d tell you I called her to tell her about it right after, but that I was probably being dramatic and overthinking it, that king was freaked out by the deer statue missing its head, but I’m not dumb. I know what happened. I don’t care if you believe me or not. I’m just here to tell you, listen to the saying. Never create a routine route. Have multiple routes and filter through them randomly. Never patternize it. Always trust your dogs instincts. And always carry a weapon.
A simple dog walk could be the very reason you end up in someones basement.
“You have two choices. Leave and the boy lives, or stay and I hunt you and the child down. And when I catch you, I’ll kill him in front of you.” Jackson sneered at me, knife in hand, gesturing with it towards my sons room. I thought for sure he’d never find us here. How’d he find us so quickly anyways? Could I make it around him and get to the baby? No, he’d either block my way or kill him now. I can’t risk that. “Alright,” I said with a shakey breath. “I’ll go. Just- just let me say goodbye. Please?” I glanced at the door then back at Jackson. I knew leaving with the baby was going to cause issues, but not these kind. I thought he was “slamming doors and throwing things” kind of crazy, not “I’m going to murder you in your sleep” crazy. He watched me inquisitively for a moment, before sighing and nodding for me to go in the room. “You have sixty seconds.” I crept slowly around him, scared he might attack me if I did otherwise. Then I booked it to my sons door, I walked in and hovered over his crib. He was laying on his stomach with his hands pulled up to his chest, butt up in the air. He was snoring lightly, his hair falling over his little eyes and his sweet chubby cheeks and sticking up in other areas. I felt my eyes begin to water. If I stayed, I wasnt sure I could protect him, but what would happen to him if I did leave? Would Jackson kill him anyways? Would he be abusive? Would he raise him properly? Would he turn out just like Jack? My mind raced a mile a second. I expertly manuvered my son into my arms and held him to my chest. He instinctively wrapped his arms and legs around me. For half a second, I contemplated climbing out the window with him and running away. Maybe I could make it, I thought. “Thirty seconds, Natalie.” Jackson’s voice booming into the silence broke me out of my thoughts, and I knew I wouldn’t have enough time before he came to escort me out. I sighed a heavy broken sigh, and buried my face into my sons neck. Breathing in his scent as tears fell from my eyes. I studied his sleeping face and squeezed him gently. “I love you my sweet handsome boy.” I whispered as I gently set him back in his crib. “I love you, I’ll come back for you, I promise.”
That was 2 years ago.
