4. kwasakwasa

So a couple of years ago my house was broken into and all my cousins things were stolen. I wasn’t home at the time, I was out breaking curfew with an ex of mine when all of a sudden I get this call from my mom.
At first I was horrified because I thought she was going to lose it from how late I was, but when I picked up all she said was “The house has just been robbed.” I got home and the village guards were gathered around my front door. My family was waiting in the kitchen, then they told me what had happened.

My cousin, who was staying with us at the time, had gone down stairs a little past midnight to have a midnight snack. When she went back upstairs she tried opening the door to her room and noticed it was locked. The lights were on and she heard people behind the door. She tried banging on it, but to no avail. She quickly ran to my parents room and alerted them, but by the time they had gotten the door open the room was ransacked.

Later, my mom had found footprints right outside her bathroom window and a broken watch. Now we have high walls that surround our house and the way to get to the roof would be to scale a tree and hoist ourself onto the roof. From the vantage point of outside my parent’s bathroom you can see the upstairs hallway and anyone who walks up and down it. That means the entire time someone was watching my family. This burglary wasn’t spur of the moment. It had clearly been planned. Someone had been watching and observing our house for a while.

5. beccabenvie

It started on my way back from NYC. The flight had been going smoothly up until our landing in Cincinnati. I was told that my flight was delayed due to bad weather. Keeping myself entertained, I went outside, read my book for a few hours, than made my way back to the counter to figure out what was going on with my flight. More delays later, it became clearthat I would not be making it back home anytime soon. I settled in for a long night.

Outside for a cigarette, I notice a drag queen pacing back and forth in front the vending machine. A few minutes later I got up and went to buy myself a bottle of water. I turned around just in time to see the drag queen sauntering up. “You having a bad night honey”? I politely motion that I’m on the phone. She’s persistent and I eventually hang up. The drag queen (her name is Chris) Asks me to join her for a cigarette. We chat for a while then she asks me to join her for a drink. My option of hanging around the airport isn’t looking like much fun. Get drunk in Cincinnati with a drag queen? Beats trying to find a spot to sleep on the cold floor.

Over a drink, Chris starts to talk about how she would just love it if I would join her at a nearby casino. I decline. She tells me its only a half hour drive away. I again tell her that I would prefer to just stay around the airport area. We continue chatting and after more insistence that we head to the casino, something makes me change my mind. The problem with all of this was that from the beginning my gut was telling me this was not a very good idea for many obvious reasons.

We get in the vehicle and start to drive, I’m keeping an eye on where we are going and am immediately alarmed when I realize that we are getting farther and farther away from the city. In fact, we are now on the highway (its 12:30 at night at this point) and there is no one on the road except some truckers. I start to get a little creeped out and ask some questions about the casino. Where is it? Are there signs? I am assured that it’s not much farther at all and that there will be some signs coming up at any moment. We keep driving. It’s getting more secluded and I still haven’t seen any signs for this casino. Now at this point I am more then a little scared. I am sick to my stomach. We take an c “exit” and are all of a sudden plunged into complete darkness on a road with no street lights, not traffic no NOTHING! Just farm land. We are in the middle of nowhere. I am in the middle of nowhere in Ohio with a drag queen who has asked me to go to a casino which I am not even sure exists. I am about to puke. I reach in my bag and dial 911 on my phone and hold my finger over the call button ready to press send at any second but I’m not even sure if I’ll get reception. The only thing I can think over and over is “what have I done?”

I could barely even talk at this point. I needed to get out of the car ASAP!! I ask her to pull over so I could pee. “But it’s just a bit further”. No, I really need to go now.” She pulls the car to a stop and I grab my purse telling her I’ll be right back. I go down a hill and take off running down into farmland. I can hear animals and I am so scared I can hardly even see straight. I press myself up against the side of the hill and wait for about a half hour until I think she is gone.

I walk for a bit until I come to some kind of community down a dirt road. The first house has a TV on and a rottweiler guarding the house. I keep walking and come to the last house around the bend. The TV is on. I knock on the door and peek through the screen. There is a man with a serious mullet asleep on the couch. I knock. He kind of sits up then sits back down and turns off the lamp. WTF!?! I knock again and say I need help.. nothing. All of a sudden he bolts up does a double take at the girl standing in his doorway and runs outside. He can hardly contain himself “Oh my god, oh my god,” I give him the short version of my story leaving out the part that my companion was a drag queen. He invites me in. I immediately find out that this guy is a taxidermist. He offers me juice (just water please) milk (just water please) kool-aid? sunny d ? coffee? tea???? MOUNTAIN DEW!!???!!! I see the disbelief in his eyes that I refused mountain dew so he cracks one himself and chugs the entire thing in about 30 second flat. He cracks another one, and in a few minutes I watched this man consume three mountain dews.

He starts to tell me again what a nervous guy he is (could it have anything to do with the mountain dew?) and how “this sorta thing happens on TV and he just cant believe this and he is just so glad I’m ok.” I ask for a ride to the airport. He agrees except that he has just had a bunch of beers. That’s ok we have time for him to sober up. He talks to me a lot for the next little while showing me pics of the biggest fish he ever caught and some taxidermy, a mounted squirrel that he shot with a BB gun. He showed me the fishing rod he had been in the process of patching with crazy glue and dental floss, and he told me how he hates the city (his friend once brought him to a bar where there were men dressed as woman…. This made me silently congratulate myself that I had left out the drag queen part in my story)

Despite my better judgement I ended up passing out in the lazy boy after he set an alarm. When it went off a few hours later the closing credits to an X-Files rerun was playing it’s eerie music on the television. I woke him up and was soon dropped off at the airport just in time to catch my flight home.

Whenever I tell this story it feels unbelievable even to me. It’s so ripe with clichés and the best part of the story? The helpful redneck told me at one point in the evening that there really was a casino in the area.
Update! Three other things happened that I didn’t mention in the original post.

1) Chris originally mentioned that we would go to the casino “in town” because it was more “lively” then the one that was further away. When we turned off onto the dirt road she said we were going to the one that was further away because it was “quieter” then the one that was “in town”. So, there was a lie in a tense situation.

2) Before we made the turn as we got further away from the lights of the city she started getting strange and aggressive with me. She kept cagely asking me if I judged her like everyone else.

3) She had told me she was a flight attendant from Florida with a layover. When we got to her car it had Ohio license plates and she excused this by saying it was a loaner from a friend.

6. beesoup

I don’t remember the beginning of the story too well. I was standing at the college bulletin board reading different ads and clubs when a guy started standing next to me and reading it too. I moved on and sat down on one of the couches in the hallway, and he immediately followed and sat down near me. After a while he struck up a conversation with me. He asked what music I was into, that kind of thing. Gave me the usual lame guy speech about wanting to start a band. He said he liked me and was basically a really terrible flirt. I was not into it and kept trying to shake him. The guy must have sensed my weakness because he kept following me. Every excuse I had to get away wouldn’t work, he’d insisted on coming with me. The problem with college is that all the class times are uniform. The next round of classes didn’t start for another hour, so he knew I wasn’t going to class. I kind of felt like I had been held hostage. I was way too beta to just tell him to fuck off. I had given him ample physical and verbal cues to get him off my back. There was something seriously wrong with this weirdo and all my red flags were going off. I texted a male friend that I was getting creeped on. I didn’t get a response.

Then the weirdest part of the encounter started. Everything before was your typical socially maladapted flirt experience. Then the guy started telling me how he had a guitar in his car, he could play it for me. I said, “Sure! You should go get it. I’ll wait here.” I was hoping this would be my opportunity to get away. Nope. The guy started insisting I go with him to his car. “I’m not really into that idea, I’d rather stay here. You can go get it and bring it back, though.” He was like a dog with a bone. He REALLY wanted me to come back to his car with him. My college is a commuter school, the parking lots are huge and spread out. It could very easily be the case that his car was in an empty area. I’m glad I had enough sense back then to turn him down. But I felt stuck: he wasn’t going to the car without me, and he kept waiting for me to come. I couldn’t seem to ditch him. He was becoming visibly upset and agitated every time I told him to go to his car by himself.

I decided to use every girl’s last resort. I headed to the women’s room. He seemed ready to follow me. I had to give him a look like “WOMEN’S ROOM” to make him stop in his tracks.

Women’s restrooms are like little glowing safe havens! I stayed in there for maybe twenty minutes before my friend saw my text and called me back. He told me I should just hide out. I told him I’d call him back. Luckily for me an older woman, most likely a teacher, was in the bathroom, overhearing our conversation. She emerged from a stall looking pissed off. She asked for a description of my creeper and walked out of the bathroom. After a couple minutes she returned and gave me the go ahead, the guy had gone. I never asked if he had just given up or if she told him off for waiting outside. After all that work, I find it hard to believe that he gave up after 20 minutes of me hiding in the bathroom. That lady is my hero if she told him off!

For the next few months I varied my route around school. I’m very careful about not keeping the same habits because I’ve been creeped on in the past. I never ran into the creep again. I always look back and think how weird it was that he tried to get me to go back to his car so urgently.