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.

- based on a true story