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I often sit and think of my time growing up outside of New Orleans, Louisiana. Living in such a place of diversity, both human and natural, is bound to create experiences that are unforgettable. These memories range along a sliding scale of euphoric to downright frightening. I could tell you about the time that my neighbors accused me of wearing a mask and peeping in their windows at night. Apparently their son, my age, about 13, then, swears that someone looks in his window every single night. I became somewhat of a pariah until they actually caught the dude that was doing it. I can tell you about the time that my father got the phone bill that had upwards of $1,000 in phone sex charges on it. Needless to say, as the only son, I was the accused. After a week or so of proclaiming my innocence, my father calls the company, only to discover that the calls were actually made while we were out of town on vacation. This isn't that creepy. Except that with further investigation, we discovered that someone had broken into our house to do it. This story though, is about something even creepier, at least to me. Our neighborhood was on the outskirts of a suburb of New Orleans. We were effectively the last bastion of humanity before the 70,000 acre Honey Island Swamp. In fact, our house was the last row of houses before the wilderness began. The rear of our house faced into the fringe of shrubbery and brambles that was the doorway to this pristine and largely unexplored wilderness. I spent many of my days exploring an ever increasing concentric circle of this jungle. It was amazing to be a young boy who had fancied himself a soldier and in fact grew up to be one. Always at my side was my trusty dog, a golden retriever who was a year older than me. He was my parents first child before me. He was very old but still very spry. He would never let me out of his sight. After about a year or so of exploration, my domain had expanded to about a mile in any direction from my backyard due to the terrain, the marshy land, the sometimes thick undergrowth. Even getting that far out sometimes took a hike of a couple of hours. Summer was nearing an end and I decided to push further out. I wanted to try and wake up early, pack a little lunch and see how far I could go. So I did. My trusty dog, my bagged lunch and myself began out one morning right after dawn. By mid morning we were breaching into territory that I had not seen. We came upon a finger of a shallow stagnant river covered in green algae. It took about an hour to find a relatively easy crossing. We waded through the muck and ended up sitting down under a sprawling oak tree, the first patch of dry land that we could find to dry out and eat some of the snacks that I'd taken along with us. We didn't rest long before I looked around to find that I wasn't exactly sure which way I'd come from. That bothered me a bit, but more concerning was the fact that the sky was turning black as the not so unusual summer thunderstorm was rolling in. The standard noises of the marsh had stopped. There were no more insects humming or chirping, no more tree frogs croaking, only the sound of the rising wind in the foliage. Nature knew that it was time to find shelter and I was feeling a bit lost in the swamp. We packed up and pushed on, looking for something familiar to help me get my bearings. Unlike Tennessee, where I now reside, LA is so flat that orienteering in the wilderness is almost impossible. We walked for about another 10, 15 minutes or so in some direction that felt like it was generally back towards home. And we came upon a clearing. This clearing was obviously man made due to the chop marks on the tree stumps, but there was no obvious ingress. Regress for wheeled vehicles. When I say clearing, I mean that the underbrush and saplings were cleared. The tree canopy was very much unbroken. This gave the area a somewhat cathedral type feeling, with only the trunks of massive live oaks standing like pillars. As I had made my way around this anomaly, I got a very bad feeling. I start to notice animal bones strewn about. I notice that the whole place has an odd smell. In the middle of this clearing are three crosses made from timber lashed together. The crosses were charred and appeared to have been recently burned. The hair on the back of my neck stood up and I froze in my tracks, the bottom drops of the sinister clouds overhead. This was the type of pouring rain that can't really be described to someone who's never experienced it. It is like a wall of water with raindrops that are so big that they splash instead of pelt. I'm slowly backing away from the clearing and call my dog who had wandered off to chew on a bone that was lying about. He doesn't come, but I call him again, yelling loudly to overcome the crescendo of noise that the rain and foliage is making in unison. As soon as the last syllable leaves my lips, a figure steps out from behind the tree about a hundred yards away. The rain makes details at that distance almost imperceptible, but I swear to you. He was wearing a tall, peaked white hood and gown. I could feel the ice searing into me through the black holes cut in his garment. I felt evil all around me. I froze. I didn't know what to do. But as soon as he lunged forward, as if he was about to sprint in my direction, my body took over. I ran. I ran with such force that I made it out of the clearing and into the brambles faster than seemed humanly possible. I reached the green algae covered finger on the river and instead of finding a crossing, I dove right in. I ran until I couldn't run. I ran until my body was soaked with sweat and rain. I ran until I realized that I was totally lost and my dog was nowhere near. His old legs couldn't have kept up with me this long in a dead sprint. I didn't stop running for what seemed like hours. At about dusk, the rain had stopped and my run had turned to more of a clumsy stumbling. Call it luck, but right about that time the panic of being lost was about to set its icy coals in me and I came upon a two lane asphalt road. Surprisingly, I had recognized this stretch of road and I knew that I was about two miles away from my house. I made my way home and breathlessly told my parents what I had experienced. I don't think they believed me, but they were very concerned about why our dog wasn't with me. For several tense days. I canvassed the neighborhood hoping that he would find me. We called the animal shelters and vet's offices hoping that if someone picked him up, they would call us. He showed up at our house almost a week after we had parted ways. I ran up to him and hugged him. The old boy collapsed when we got him inside. He was dirty and matted with filth. He smelled awful. But there he was and I was never happier. The strangest thing about it all wasn't his weight loss, as that would be completely explainable with him having to forage for food in the wilderness. But it was that he was missing an eye. That is no metaphor or euphemism. He was quite literally missing his left eye. I didn't notice it at first because he was so covered in muck, but somehow he had lost an eye. It's a happy ending of sorts. We took him to the vet who examined him and proclaimed that he probably got it poked out by a branch or stick as he was running through the woods. The vet acted like that sort of injury wasn't terribly unusual. He lived about another year or so and we put down our faithful companion at the ripe old age of 15. About 20 years after that, I still feel regret for leaving him behind as I ran, and I still get goosebumps picturing that man in the hood and cloak lunging towards me in the pouring rain deep in the Louisiana woods. In early 2007, I was freshly 18 and newly married, living in Fort Polk, Louisiana while my husband was training at Fort Benning. I was born and raised in Alaska, so living in the continental US was a vastly new experience for me. My husband had a weekend off, though he wasn't allowed to leave the base, so we bought a Greyhound bus ticket for me to visit him and meet the soldiers that he became friends with. I had never been on a Greyhound bus before, but I was excited to drive through the south and see new places and have my own little adventure. Sure, plenty of creeps bothered me on the bus and the stations, but I still had interesting conversations, met new people, and generally enjoyed the experience regardless of the time. Each station we stopped at was open and offered food, outlets for charging and bathrooms. So when we arrived in Columbus, Georgia at about 2:00am I expected the station to be open. It wasn't. Everyone else who had ended their journey there had a ride waiting for them and suddenly I was completely alone outside a locked building in the middle of downtown Columbus, full dark and terrified. I didn't know what to do and my phone was nearly dead from the last leg of travel. I thought about walking to a gas station, but I had no idea which direction to go to and I couldn't see any nearby lit buildings. I truly expected the station to be open, thinking I would stay there for a bit while my phone charged and I had something to eat and I could have access to a phone book so I could call a cab. All I had was an old sign hanging on the side of the building with incomplete phone numbers for taxi companies. The numbers had faded, been scraped off and defaced. There was only one complete phone number and it was handwritten in Sharpie at the top of the list. Better than nothing, right? Wrong. I called the number and a guy answered, casual and sleepy, asking who I was. I apologized, explaining I was trying to call a cab when the guy perked up immediately and then said oh yeah, that's me, I'm on my way. My phone died 10 minutes after I made the call and it was another 15 minutes before the guy showed up in a traditional yellow looking taxi. I noticed the cab wasn't marked, no logo, number, rates or anything, but it did have the taxi light thing on the top, and in my young naive mind it seemed totally legit. It waved me over and I got in and asked him to take me to Fort Benning, finally feeling some relief. The door is auto locked and I will never forget the first thing he said to me. He was silent until we got onto the main road, then said, did you really think it was a good idea to call a number written in Sharpie? I froze. In retrospect, no. It wasn't the best idea I've ever had, but I had so few options and I didn't want to be stranded in a huge foreign city in the middle of the night. I don't know what else I could have done. After a minute I had tried to laugh it off and hoped that he didn't notice I was shaking. I reached for my phone before remembering it was dead and realized that if something happened to me, no one would know that I had even made it to Georgia. Staring at me in the rearview mirror, the driver had told me what was going to happen. There's no use in getting to Benning this early. The Post Hotel isn't even open. Drive around with me for a while. Hang out and I won't even charge you. I told him. No thanks. I really needed to get to Fort Benning right away. Nah, he said, and that was that. We drove to a worn down apartment complex where he told me he was picking up a regular to keep me company. I didn't reply. What could I even say? I wasn't raised religious, but I was praying to God for some kind of miracle. Out came a woman who looked a bit like a cliche prostitute. Tube top, miniskirt, smudged mascara and an unlit cigarette hanging from her lips. Short but ratty. Unbleached hair, pockmarked face, cheap purse. I have no idea who or what she truly was, but she got in the front passenger seat and lit her cigarette. She turned to look at me. Don't worry, he's cool. We're cool. Uh huh. That definitely helped. I had never considered jumping from a moving vehicle before, but even if I wanted to, the back doors were child safety locked and I couldn't open them. Trust me, I tried. I was trapped like a caged animal just wanting to die. I felt so stupid, so foolish sitting in the backseat of the cab. No idea what to do and no idea what was going to happen to me. I kept trying to rationalize it, downplaying the situation in my mind. I was too afraid and frozen to actually do anything Anyway, as we were driving around the girl was telling me about the driver, how he was ex military and had just started this cab business, what a down to earth fun guy he was and how lucky I was to be picked up by him. Also how I was cute and young and everything was cool, cool, cool. Her words were a bit slurred and I knew that she was either drunk or high on something. I really didn't want to know either way. We pulled up outside a small blue house sometime later about an hour before the break of dawn and the driver told the girl to keep an eye on me while he went inside. I'm in full blown panic mode at this point, the suspense of it all making it so much worse. So the girl offered me a cigarette to calm my nerves. I wasn't even a smoker but I said yes. She got out of the cab and opened my door, stumbling a bit before sitting on the curb and lighting another cigarette. She lit mine as I sat next to her and I had started thinking about whether or not I could outrun her with my heavy backpack and how long the driver would be inside for without me asking. The girl told me the driver was inside showering in preparation. I asked what he would be showering and preparing for but she just kept repeating on how he was cool, how much fun we were going to have and how cute I was. Then she said ranger Cab because he was like a ranger or something. Or maybe that was his dad. He's a good looking guy, military muscles. God finally answered my prayer when the girl slumped over and passed out in the grass. I saw the track marks on her arms and I guessed it was heroin. And apparently the driver was inside taking a shower and he wasn't about to come back. In the next few moments I grabbed my backpack and ran like hell. I don't remember exactly what happened after I had started running. I just know I took off as fast as my feet would carry me and that I didn't dare stop to even catch my breath. One minute I was sprinting for my life, lungs on fire, and then I was trudging along with tears in my eyes as I walked through the Fort Benning gate with my military spouse ID asking how to get to the base hotel. Honestly, I wish I knew how I got there. I was in deep survival mode and I didn't stop to process any of it until I made it to my room. I don't know if someone gave me a ride, if I followed a map or what. I've never blocked a memory out like that before or ever again. I told my husband everything. When I finally saw him, he didn't believe me. I probably wouldn't have believed me either. His lack of trust made me think that no one would take me seriously. So I never went to the police. I still had the number I dialed saved in my call history. I knew the girl called it the Ranger Cab. What I didn't have was the confidence or support to report it. Sometimes I think back to that day and wonder what would have happened if the girl didn't let me out of the cab. If she hadn't passed out on the ground. If the driver had never stopped for a shower. It's one mystery that I don't need the answer to. I'm around 18 years old at the time, sitting in my bedroom and no bullcrap, watching the Purge for the first time. My bedroom window only had one latch out of the two locked because I would smoke out of it at night, being too afraid to go outside alone at around 1am so during the movie I kept hearing a light scratching and I thought it was probably just another cat under the house. After about five minutes I paused the movie and I hear it again. But this time it's getting louder, getting kind of creeped out. I reached under my curtain and pushed the unlocked side of my window down and locked it. Looking back, the fact that one part of my window was freaking pried open should have alarmed me. I sit back down and hear a loud slam come from the bathroom. I run out to go check and the blinds have fallen off. I ran straight to my parents bedroom and my dad immediately knew something was wrong. He gets up in all of his manly glory with a.45 and his tighty whities and he runs out the back door to search the yard. He didn't see anyone and we decided to call the cops in the morning. My nephew was staying overnight and we figured there was no point in freaking him out over what we felt was nothing. So the next day we took a look around. My window had scratch marks from a freaking crowbar and the ledge was dented as if someone was trying to pry open my freaking window. Whoever it was wore socks on their hands to try and push up the glass because there weren't any handprints. They were just long and dragged out marks the size of adult hands going upward. Mind you, my windows were always very dirty so it was easy to see. We lived in a very small town in Louisiana, so the police chief who knew my parents came to the house for a formal report he kept insisting that it was either a friend or maybe a boyfriend who couldn't get in touch with me. One, everyone I know knew that my dad always was well armed and didn't play that crap. And two, my cell is always on and I always answer, especially for friends at one in the morning. 3. That is the dumbest freaking thing that I've ever heard. Friends don't wear socks on their hands and try to jimmy your window open. At least not without calling your name first. We never did find out who it was or what they wanted. What still scares me even 10 years later is that the house was not quiet. The TV and a lamp or two were on in the living room, the bathroom light was on and my bedroom was very well lit since I was watching a horror movie. Yet this person still tried to get in through two different windows. The worst part is that if our bathroom window weren't so crappy, they would have actually made it in. To keep it open, my mom would use an old broom handle to hold it up and unless there's something keeping it up, it immediately slams back down, which is most likely why the blinds came down and a loud slam was heard. Now it may just be me, but I'm pretty sure whoever it was wanted something from our house so badly that they didn't care who was inside or if they were awake. If I would have opened that curtain before locking my window, it could have either scared them off or even motivated them more to get in if their face was seen. I'm a male and this incident occurred about six years ago when I was about 21 years old. Since I was a young kid, a great interest of mine has been herpetology, the study of reptiles and amphibians. And going out searching for those types of critters or herping is my favorite hobby. South Louisiana, where I live, is a great place for herping and a really good place to find my favorite animals, Snakes. On the day of the incident, I was preparing to search for snakes on a road that ran through a swamp near Lake Poncho Train by slowly driving. The road and catching snakes that were crossing. Was late afternoon and I had stopped at a gas station to fill up my truck before heading out to the herping spot. This particular gas station had a reputation for violent robberies and other unsavory activities, but they also had the cheapest gas in town and it was still light out so I wasn't too worried. I was pumping gas and daydreaming when an old late model sedan that looked like it had seen better days, had pulled up beside me in the car. There were four suspicious looking young men staring at me. The driver, a very big individual in his late 20s or early 30s, wanted my attention out of the open window. I instantly got very nervous as I had no idea what they wanted. After a few seconds, the driver then said, hey little boy, I got that morphine. I then realized that they were trying to sell me drugs, to which I replied, nah man, I'm good. The driver then said again, come on boy, I got that morphine. And again I told him no. The driver tried several more times to push his dope, each time calling me some variant of Lil boy. Now I am a very small young man with a slight build and even to this day could pass as a teenager. And while I'm fine with this, I don't like constantly being reminded of it, and I certainly don't like someone using my small stature to intimidate me into doing something I don't want to do. I finally got fed up and yelled at the driver, no dude, I don't want any dang drugs. Go away and leave me the hell alone. This drew the attention of several other customers which had caused the guy to leave quickly, squealing his tires as he did. I paid for my gas and headed out to the road through the swamp. The road gets little traffic as there's a major interstate next to it. Mostly the traffic consists of people fishing or just launching boats, so it's great for herping. I stopped my truck at the place where I wanted to begin my search and began going through several pillowcases that held the snakes that I had found on a previous trip that I needed to let go. Inside each pillowcase, most of which contained small harmless water snakes, was a scrap of paper that had the mile along the stretch of road they were found, so I knew where to release them. I was making a list of these for efficiency's sake so that I could quickly release each one and get on with my search. I was checking a case which held a greater than 4ft long rat snake, when the same late model sedan pulled up to a stop behind my truck. All four of the occupants piled out and began walking toward me. The driver, who must have weighed a solid 260, was coming straight at me and while the others were fanning out around me, the driver had started yelling, what up lil boy, you don't want my crap. We gon see what yo punk ass does now. I was scared to death and had to work very hard to keep my knees from buckling under. I thought about the tire iron in my truck and I realized that I wouldn't be able to dig it out before they got to me and that fear had drained the strength from me so that I wouldn't be able to use it effectively anyway. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I reached into the pillowcase and pulled out the rat snake. The snake instantly drew itself into a coil and began to gape and hiss. The four thugs, now only a few feet away, realized what was in my hand and immediately stopped their advance. When the driver began to back up. The movement had caught the snake's attention and it lunged out in his direction. At this, the four of them began screaming and cursing loudly and all piled hastily back into their car. They took off so quickly that they hit the median and nearly tore out the bottom of the old car. I stood there shaking, unable to move for a few minutes. The intimidating but harmless rat snake began to squirm around and latched onto my hands so that I had to come out of my fear induced coma. I quickly drove to the release points of all of the snakes I had and let them go, thanking the rat snake for saving me as it then slithered into the vegetation. And then I went immediately home without doing any more herping. This event took place in an area of the Kasatchee National Forest in Louisiana in spring of 2010. Myself and four other friends, all males, ages 19 21, decided to go camping for a few weeks before our semester ended. We had looked online and discovered Louisiana's National Forest. Kasatchee was a great place to go camping. Score. We drove for about half an hour to find a spot. Ultimately we had parked along the side of the road and walked out into the woods. About an eighth of a mile, maybe even shorter than that actually. A fire was lit and soon all of us were playing music, smoking and having a good bit of whiskey. No one was wasted, but two of my friends did take it easy with the smoking and whiskey and they were sober when we headed in for the night. We woke up within minutes of each other the next morning. Hard to get around a tent without waking the others up. That's when I noticed that the two guys who actually didn't smoke or drink much were looking worried. I asked what was up and they had told us something happened last night. My two friends had heard some noise outside of the tent and woke up to investigate. As they had pulled the zipper down the front flap, they had saw two guys with flashlights close to the Tent. One of the men asked how many of you were in the tent. My friend had told him six or seven guys were in the tent. While telling the story, he wasn't sure where that light came from, but he just stuck with it. The two men lowered their lights, said they were park rangers, and simply stated that we couldn't camp in the area, but to just move our sight when the morning came. Then they left. To prevent us from getting in trouble, we decided to pack up and go to a ranger station and ask which areas we could camp. The station wasn't too far and we had talked with the rangers for a good while. We explained what happened and we said we weren't far at all. One of them looked a bit confused. Um, son, can you show me on the map where you boys were camping last night? He said. We quickly pointed out a spot close to the road where we came from. The ranger had walked away to his computer for a good minute or two to check on something, then came back to talk to us. You boys are fine to camp there. We have no zones even close to that road where you couldn't camp at. Also, I just checked our call ins. None of our rangers reported anything from that area of the woods last night. My friend who originally told us what happened had started to look a little pale. Now that I think of it, those two guys weren't even wearing uniforms. It was just black shirts and pants. We left for home shortly after this took place, the winter of 2005 in rural Iowa. I was 18 years old and attending community college. I have always been an outgoing and talkative person and managed in my youth to make friends quite easily. Carrie and I met when we were seated beside each other in a math class we were both enrolled in. We weren't automatically friends because she was a divorced single mom of two small boys and she was in her late 20s. I was a teenager, just out of high school, still living with my grandparents. We just didn't have a lot in common on the surface, and she was usually quiet and just did her work. One day I had a bad case of hiccups. I don't know how long I had been hiccuping for, but I distinctly remember grumbling and being pretty pissed off. But because one, I freaking hate meth, and two, I freaking hate the hiccups, I faintly realized that I was expressing my displeasure with my situation louder than I had thought. When I felt Carrie's eyes on me, I looked up from my desk and continued hiccuping. She smiled and she had started asking me all kinds of questions about my hiccups. Did they hurt? Was it a charm, pain or dull? Was it pissing me off? What did it sound like? This whole time I'm answering her questions thinking she's freaking nuts. When her final question is posed, she says, can you hiccup one more time so I can hear it? I tried, but my hiccups were gone. She was a genius. I had started hanging out with Carrie more and more at school. And then we had started going to her house to smoke bowls and cigarettes until I would finally get tired of her screaming kids or tired of watching her surf through her matches on dating sites all over the web. That was the thing about Kerri that I freaking hated. She was a member of almost every dating site available and was constantly updating and changing these profiles. Her entire days were consumed with checking out matches or chatting with men on Yahoo Messenger. All of this seems innocent enough, but it didn't end with the Internet. It started there. She would decide to meet these men, sometimes having them over to her place or going to their homes. She always slept with these creeps, too. And while she occasionally dated the same guy twice or maybe even three times, she was very clearly not seeking an actual relationship. While I was worried about Carrie's overly sexual behavior and ho hum attitude, I didn't feel like it was my place to say anything to her. She seemed to understand that what she was doing was indeed risky. Because one time she had asked me to come over to her house because a guy was coming to pick her up up and she wasn't sure if he was really who he said he was or not. I told her that I didn't know what the hell I could do to help, but I went ahead and went over to her house to await the arrival of her newest love interest. Right on time. Mr. Internet shows up and my friend leaves. Fast forward a couple of months and Carrie found a new guy in town. I call him Louisiana in my head because he had claimed to be from the swamp somewhere outside of New Orleans. New Orleans, Louisiana, didn't have a vehicle, therefore he was unable to visit. I guess the fact that she couldn't go out with him and have sex with him made this man so much more appealing than the rest. She would literally not shut the hell up about wanting to meet Louisiana. Apparently he had told her that he lived in the biggest house in his small town, about two hours away from the town we lived in. He supposedly had a large amount of money in stocks and bonds somewhere in New Orleans in a safety deposit box. He described his home as being a beautiful three story old Victorian with five bedrooms and three bathrooms. He also spoke in a cute Cajun accent. According to her, Louisiana is all she would talk about and she was driving me freaking crazy about him. One day Carrie is all excited because Louisiana had finally saved up enough money to send her for gas. So she's planning a visit. I don't know why, but I didn't really feel right about her trip. But I was very suspicious of this guy. I told Carrie about how I felt because I had no actual evidence of his creepiness. It was really nothing more than a gut feeling. Well, my gut was not getting in the way of her weekend with Louisiana. Apparently I wasn't the only one who felt that this guy may be a creeper. And Carrie's Aunt Becky decided that she was going to be going with her niece to meet this too good to be true guy. I should mention that this savior aunt was really only three years older than Kerry. So while she was older than both of us, she was only 29 or 30 and a very heavy drinker at that. I look back and have absolutely no idea what the hell possessed me to go with them to meet this man. Did I have a wish to end up dead in a ditch before my 19th birthday? I really don't know. But for some reason I decided to just tag along with Carrie and Aunt Becky to meet a man that I was almost positive was a creeper. I of course lied to my nanny and grandpa, telling them that I was staying the weekend just across the town at Carrie's house. As I'm typing this out, my face is flushed, my hands shaking, and my heart is beating so hard and fast that I feel like I may pass out. The events of this particular evening are fussy and broken. I have never said a word of this to anyone, ever. Carrie, Becky and I have never spoken of it. And I moved to Texas just weeks after this happened. I've kept my mouth shut about the entire thing because I know that I was freaking stupid to go with them. The two hour drive seemed to go by in absolutely no time at all. And I was very obviously anxious about meeting this guy. Kerry and Becky both seemed unconcerned and passed around a joint and a bottle of some alcohol. I hit the joint, hoping to calm down a little before getting to Louisiana's Victorian mansion. I was immediately alarmed upon arriving at the mansion in question. A dilapidated old house was a more accurate description. The house had recently been painted white and it was three stories, so I decided not to judge the house by its street view, Louisiana had promised. It was not a problem that Becky and I had both decided to tag along and invited a friend of his own to stop by for a little while later that evening. He had told Kerry earlier that day that since he slept upstairs in the bedroom, we ladies would have the whole second story to ourselves. When I saw the outside condition of the house, I felt another gut, wrenching feeling that something just wasn't right. I told my friends that I was way too lazy to carry my overnight bag inside, and I said I would get it later. They shrugged it off as nothing, and Becky and I exchanged a quick nervous glance before following a very excited Carrie. The front door opened before we even reached the porch and out stepped a short, doughy white guy with thinning hair. Howdy there y'all little ladies. Must be my ladies friends. I almost laughed out loud at this man's quite obviously fake Cajun accent, as Carrie had called it. I was born and raised most of my life in Texas, so I know a good Southern accent when I hear one, and this was just a really bad one. More alarm bells in the pit of my stomach as I got a good look at Carrie. Seeing her lover boy for the first time. He was obviously aware of her staring, and why? Because he immediately began apologizing for the older pictures that he'd had to send her. He claimed that the pictures she was receiving from him were just from a couple of years ago. He waved us inside and even though he had lied about his mansion and his appearance, for some reason, we all followed. So there we were inside a strange house with a strange man, and I was positive that we were in trouble. I wasn't sure what the threat was yet, but I felt it like acid eating away at my insides. Louisiana ushered us into the living room and had offered us a drink. He was very insistent that we have something, anything to drink. We all declined, but decided to instead smoke a bowl and let Carrie and Louisiana talk a little. I was listening to every single thing he said and I kept looking at him even though I had never contributed to the conversation between him and my friend. I was listening to him describe his life, born and raised a Southern gentleman, and wondering to myself if he had ever even visited a state below Missouri. He seemed to just spew bullcrap. But my friend was oblivious to the lies over everything as simple as the weather in the Southern states to the pronunciation of a typical Southern word. I decided to ask for a tour of the house and he seemed to be irritated with me for asking, but when Carey insisted, he reluctantly decided to give us a very quick tour. We saw the living room, kitchen and one bathroom on the main floor, but all of the other doors were locked. He led us up a short, narrow flight of stairs and he showed us a quick peek through a doorway to what was supposed to be his room. I pretty much immediately felt like he was lying because there was dust all over everything, but brushed it off as nothing. Maybe he hadn't slept in his own bed for a while. Every single other doorway, minus one bathroom, was nailed or painted shut. The tour was making me feel even more sick to my stomach and I really started wanting to leave. But I didn't know how to tell Carrie and Becky without him hearing. He led us back downstairs and into the kitchen where had a big pot of beans on to boil. He had ran to the stove and started ranting and raving about his nan's famous gumbo recipe and demanded that we try it. I walked over to the pot and told him that it just looked like beans to me because gumbo should have some sausage or something like that. At this point, Louisiana decides that he doesn't like me very much. So he just started ignoring me. About an hour goes by and his friend shows up looking all sorts of creepy creepy. He doesn't introduce himself or even make eye contact with any of us. He just walked in, sat down and sparked up a joint. I was okay with that though, because boy was my anxiety. Through the roof, I could tell that Louisiana, Carrie, and Becky were all getting tired of my excessive questions. Sometime during that joint, Louisiana left the room to get all of us some freshly squeezed lemonade. I remember him warning us that it could be bitter because he had used real lemons and he didn't like a lot of sugar. Halfway through my drink, I had noticed the way that he wasn't really engaging in conversation with us ladies anymore. He was watching us? No, watching me like he was waiting for something. I felt like he was waiting for me to say or do something. He went from completely ignoring me to watching my every movement. I became extremely nervous with his gaze so intense on the side of my face that I had kicked Becky's foot and motioned towards him with a what the hell is up with this guy? Kind of look. She saw exactly what I was talking about. After a few more minutes of him just staring at me as Carrie had rambled on about something, I had suddenly decided that I had to get the hell out of that house. And I jumped out of my seat like I had been electrocuted. Oh my God. Sorry, but I left my bag outside. Let me go grab it. Carrie abruptly stopped talking because of my swift movement and scared tone of voice. She looked at Louisiana, seeing his intense glaring in my direction and as if truly seeing danger for the first time, she stood up and followed me towards the door. I quickly and quietly whispered to her that I had to leave. I told her that I wasn't feeling well and that I wanted to go home. I started out the door with Becky and Carrie following close behind. I will never forget walking away from that house and that man. I was absolutely terrified that he was going to follow us. He was asking where we were going and Becky threw him some lame reply about going to the convenience store and that we would be right back. I'm honestly not sure what it was that made both Carrie and Becky blindly following me out of that house. Like I said before, he hadn't left us alone together so I couldn't express my fears to them verbally. They had both seemed irritated with my excessively questioning him. I don't ever remember asking them why they believed me when I said I had to go. Maybe they both felt it too. His sinister stare as if he was trying to incinerate me with his eyes. We were almost 20 minutes away when whatever he had been waiting on took effect. I had started hallucinating and I felt oddly sedated, not connected to my body. My speech became slurred and I drifted in and out of consciousness for the rest of the way home. Both girls assumed that I had simply passed out from exhaustion and had together carried me into her kid's bedroom. I woke often throughout the night, all in different stages of panic. But I couldn't manage to stay awake longer than a few minutes at a time. The next day I had a horrible headache and my body felt like I'd run a marathon. I woke up, wrote Kerry a goodbye note, got in my car and went home. I never spoke to Kerry or Becky again after this incident and I hope to never see them again. I think of how much worse it could have been and I thank my lucky star is I'm not dead. After numerous inquiries about Carrie and her well being, I decided once again to search for her. It's been approximately five years since I attempted to look her up and I couldn't find a single reference for her. She has apparently divorced and gone back to her maiden name. So I was able to find her. Now that I'm searching for the correct person, she looks fine. Just like her old Carrie self, I guess. Apparently she learned her lesson. Well, I hope so, anyways.