The Fear

* This story is based loosely on real events. This is mainly me writing what could happen, just to get the paranoia out of my head so it can't plague me anymore.

September 12, 2008
I remember walking through the streets, almost in some sort of thick fog, but in reality the night was as clear as could be. When you think about, there is always a fog hanging around your head after a particularly tramatic encounter. It should never have come to this, me walking to nowhere, afraid of every shadow that so much as flinches and cowering inside the nearest building when I see a certain body type of a man passing by me. I don't like feeling like I’m being hunted, like some poor frightened creature running through the night from the clutches of some unnamed aggressor.
This all could have been prevented, you know. The very first time he asked me to be a roommate, I could have stuck to my guns and said no. I knew it was a bad idea from the start and I knew something terrible like this would eventually happen.
The sound of my golden baby doll shoes clicking on the pavement gives me a small bit of comfort. Moonbeams catch my shoes at just the right angle to make it seem as though they were actually a precious metal, rather than a cheap fabric concoction. Seeing them shine like that makes me think of when I was happy, before all this malarkey started.
A little night-time breeze plays with one lose strand of hair as I turn my head up towards the sparkling painting that is the cosmos. Watching those bright lights dancing in the distance cools me down once more. Sometimes I wish I could be up their in the pitch black sky, just shining down on anyone who, like me, needed a bit of comfort.

September 14, 2008
Oh Goddess, not again! Will he never let me be?

September 15, 2008
I don’t feel safe anymore. Not at home, not at work, not on campus. Footsteps in the hallway startle me because I’m so afraid it will be him, coming to berate me once more. When I hear the ding of the door alarm at work, I look over my shoulder repeatedly, fearing that one time, he’ll be there breathing down my neck. It’s been four days since I told them and in that time, the calls have not stopped. I never pick up, but I hear the messages he leaves me. He calls me a fucking coward and demands that I come and talk to him face to face. I know the danger in that and I know that above all else, he relishes the chance to create and stir up conflict. He’s like a twisted child with a kitten tied to a chair leg in his parents basement. The more the cat screams for mercy or struggled for freedom, the brighter his eyes gleam in the dark and the wider his malicious smile becomes. In this situation, I am the cat standing still trying to find a way to escape, while he sits across me, brooding and attempting to coax some sort of reaction from me to no avail.

September 17, 2008
The day for me to move draws closer and closer. I feel safe in my hotel room, for the most part. There are some times where I’ll hear a knock on a door and think it’s him outside my own, wanting to “torture his kitty once more”, but when I look through the peep hole, I find that he’s nowhere to be seen. I never told anyone where I was staying, so this fear is completely irrational for me to have. Were he that desperate, he could drive from hotel to hotel, looking for my car, but there are so many establishments and he has no idea which way I’ve gone or how far away I’ve gone. Still, any car coming into the parking lot is a threat to me. The fear will ebb eventually, but I have to remind myself to hold my head high and keep living my life. I can’t shrivel into a tiny little ball and hope that he’ll just go away.

September 18, 2008
I was racing through the halls, flying past faces skewered into looks of confusion and concern. This time he had come to school. Oh, damn me for living with him! He knows my schedule and when I’ll be at school. He knows my major and on this campus, it gives him a very good idea of where to go if he really wants to track me down. He was waiting for me outside my first class. I have a four hour break between the first two courses and so I was in no rush to be anywhere in particular. I looked up as I walked out and there he was, just standing there, glaring at me, impatiently waiting for me to come out into the open, where he could corner and attack me. He wasted no time in doing so…oh, Goddess look at my hands! They are still shaking like leaves in a stormy breeze…he called me a coward and screamed at me, demanding answers from me, not letting me talk, calling me a bitch, and all I could do was look about for someone, ANYONE, who could help me. At last, I could take it no longer and I fled. I dropped everything and I fled, with the teacher just coming out from the sanctity of his classroom and other inquisitive heads slowly popping out from every doorway in the building. I didn’t know who to turn to or where I was going to go. I was going to go back to the hotel, but no. He might tail me and then where would that leave me? Cowering in fear within the classrooms of my school and behind the door to my own home?
I’m so afraid to be here, on my own with all those I love three states away.

September 20, 2008
Move in day, at long last. My hope is that now I am nearer to the few friends I have out here, I’ll feel safer. He knows the apartment complex I live in, but not my address. Quite honestly, I think he’s too lazy to come looking for me. For the moment, I’m content to complete school projects and unwind by making my little faery doll key chains. My art calms my mind when it’s in these frantic states. Just being totally engrossed in something makes me feel like I have nothing to worry about and that is a wonderful feeling to have at this point in time.

September 21, 2008
He’s here! He followed me home today and when I went to open my apartment door, there he was trying to push his way in, screaming at me, and backing me into a corner. I screamed with all the wind in my lungs and all the strength in my body. I screamed so that everyone could hear, but he continued to attack me. The young couple across from me heard my terror and came rushing out. The man, Johnny, pulled him away from me, while his girlfriend Marsia, hugged me like she was shielding me from a blast of fire. He shouted at Johnny and threatened to return, but Johnny just told him to go to Hell and that if he ever saw him again, he’d call the cops himself. I just stood there in the comfort for Marsia’s arms, shaking, crying, and wishing none of this had ever come to pass. Goddess, I feel so alone and unprotected…

September 23, 2008
It was self-defense. I had no other option. When I came home today, I put all my bags on my bed and went to the kitchen to make myself some dinner, only to find that he had found some way of getting into my apartment. I noticed a draft to my left where a rather large window was and found that it had been smashed. So that’s how he got in. I stayed near the counter where I knew I had plenty of ways to defend myself if need be, and as I backed into the kitchen, he advanced. He called me a bitch repeatedly and then, he charged. It was like a terrible movie with one scene being played over and over again until the audience was sick of it. In the few moments I had, I frantically reached behind me to my cutlery drawer and began rooting about it for a knife or some object to protect myself. Right as he was about to grab me, his face went pale as a sheet and every part of him quivered. I didn’t know what had happened, until I followed his eyes as they looked down towards his stomach. I had impaled him with a corkscrew. He staggered back, grabbing at the counter for support, but in the end he came crashing down to the kitchen floor. For a moment, I watched him laying there with a steady stream of blood oozing out from where the corkscrew dug into his flesh. I watched him gasp for air as death took him to Hell where he belonged…
I can hear the sirens now and I am not afraid. Marsia and Johnny are sitting with me until the police get here. I don’t plan on covering up what I’ve done or running. It was self- defense. It was self-defense…