Let's Not Meet: A Collection

he had plans for me

So yesterday I was at my sister's house with my mom watching my son and nephews play in the yard. One of my nephews, Harrison, was picking bark off a tree when I remembered an odd encounter I had as a kid. I said "so weird" out loud thinking about the encounter. My mom inquired what I was talking about so I told her.

When I was a kid, I was hanging out at the Pinecone Forest (which was what the neighborhood kids called a small patch of trees on the side of the road). I was picking bark off of one of the trees to pass some time waiting or my friend Frankie to finish his homework and come out to play. Out of nowhere it seemed, a guy came up to me. I could smell him before I saw him. He smelled like stale cigarette smoke. I was kind of scared when I looked at him. He wasn't very old but he had a very lazy eye that was cloudy, and his teeth and fingernails were stained yellow. My mom taught me to be nice to people even if they don't look like me, so I faked a smile and said hello.

"What are you doing" he asked me.

The smell of his breath was the worst.

"Umm I'm picking the bark off this tree"

"You shouldn't do that. It's like picking off the tree's skin. How would you feel if someone picked off your skin?" He said while lightly pinching my arm with his sharp yellow nails

"I don't know" I replied and took my arm back

Just then Frankie's mom called for me out the door and told me to come and wait inside. I didn't think anything of the whole thing at the time. When I told my mom about it, she had this look of, I don't know, guilt maybe? She said that it's probably time I know the whole story. She thought I forgot about the whole encounter so she never brought it up to me. First you should know that the neighborhood I grew up in was a small tight knit community. Everyone knew everyone and there was no reason for an outsider to come unless they knew someone there. Anyway, here's what happened with this guy:

Frankie's mom, Sonia, noticed a white van with no windows parked on the side of the road(how cliché right). She didn't recognize it but figured maybe it was a visitor for a neighbor. Sonia said(or rather told the police) that the van had been there all morning and afternoon. She was kind of keeping an eye on it, she said she just had a bad feeling. Her house had a huge window in front facing the Pinecone Forest, and the van was parked next to it. She saw me waiting for Frankie and kept a constant eye on the van while holding the phone just in case. She saw the man exit the back of the van and walk up to me. As soon as she saw him grab my arm and pinch me she called the cops. That was when she called me into her house.

The cops stopped the guy just outside of my neighborhood. In the back of his van were binoculars, a Polaroid camera, and pictures of me taped all over the walls and ceiling. Me at school, at my grandparents house, at the bank with my mom....just me everywhere I went.

But that's not all. He had a key to a storage unit on him. Inside the unit they found a cabinet full of knives. A. Lot. Of. Knives. Paring knives, a butcher cleaver, a thin flay knife, a melon baller, and just various knives of all shapes and sizes. There was also a few anatomy books, obstetrical equipment, duct tape, and 10 empty five gallon buckets. In the middle of the unit was an old bed that was used to restrain mental patients, so it had wrist and ankle straps. And the entire inside of the unit was covered in plastic wrap.

My mom said he was in a high security mental institution for the criminally insane last she heard.

Soooo that's pretty creepy to me and I figured I'd share!