Unnerving Short Stories

Trust Your Gut

I am female. This incident happened when I was in college; I was 20. I lived in a big city where I went to school but I still used my car more than public transportation since I needed to transport a lot of materials back and forth from my apartment to campus (sculpture major.)

One weeknight I had been working late in the studio and decided to stop at the 24hour drugstore chain on my drive home to pick up a few things (tampons and chocolate.) It was pretty late, probably 2am, so there wasn't any other customers in the store but there were two male cashiers around my age.

After I had been there about three minutes, a new customer entered the store. He was male, late 30′s, kinda jittery looking. He noticed me and started following me around the store in a really obvious way. I was trying to ignore him, get my stuff and get out of there. He came up to me and started doing this "psst" noise like he was trying to discreetly get my attention. I kept ignoring him. Then he said "fuck you bitch" and left the store. I figured, whatever... Weirdo.

As I paid for my stuff I had this overwhelming gut feeling to ask the cashier if he wouldn't mind walking me out to my car since that jittery guy had creeped me out. The cashier said it was cool and we make our way out to the parking lot. So I'm feeling more at ease about half way to my car and I turn to say thanks to the cashier for his help when he grabs my shoulder and says, "that guy is under your car."

Sure enough, that fucking jittery guy was UNDER my car. The cashier shouts "what the fuck are you doing, I'm calling the police!" The jittery guy starts scrambling out from under my car and cashier guy and me run back in the store and he immediately calls the cops. It scared me pretty good. He ran away before the cops got there.

I sometimes wonder what he would have done to me if I hadn't asked the cashier to walk me out. Grabbed my foot? Stabbed me with something? Just let me run over him?