A (0:05)

This happened when I was a kid, about 12 years old. My family and I lived in the back bayous of South Louisiana and we didn't have a lot of neighbors, so there were long stretches of woods and water with no people around. One day my best friend and I were playing between our houses. They were about a half mile apart and we were walking on the main road, which was really just a single lane gravel road. And that's when a large red truck came rolling down the road. Huge tires, double extended cab. We knew he wasn't local because there were only a handful of people living back there and we knew them by sight and their vehicles too. The truck had slowed as it reached us and we were smart enough to back up away from the road, out of arm's reach. The man in the truck was your typical redneck mullet, scraggly beard, wife beater and jeans. But he seemed friendly enough as he explained that he was lost and looking for the way back towards town. Since getting lost in the depths of the Louisiana bayous happens more often than you'd imagine, we didn't think much of it. Politely, from a distance, we gave him directions back towards town. He thanked us and he drove off around a curve and we continued walking on the road. Suddenly we heard the sound of a truck spinning out on the gravel road and revving its engine. We looked at each other and then as we had heard the crunch of tires coming at us quickly, we broke into an all out run. At top speed we rounded another curve and there we saw the wooden bridge that had flowed over the bayou channel. Without hesitation we dove over the side and crawled up under the bridge where it nearly met with the road. Huddling as tightly as we could, ignoring the spiders and ants that we disturbed, the truck came roaring up and over the bridge and then turned around and came back. The man stopped the truck on the bridge and got out, coming to stand by the railing. He then walked the length of the bridge on both sides, frequently looking over the edge and stopping to peer between the slats of the bridge. Fortunately, we were deep into the shadows that he couldn't have seen us without physically climbing down. After what seemed like forever, he spit, swore, and then he got into his truck and drove off. We waited for a long time before we eventually crawled out from under that bridge. To this day, I'm convinced he had bad intentions. My mother and I were driving through our small town in southwest Virginia. My mother and father are divorced and he lived in Tennessee. Anyways, they had very different viewpoints on helping out hitchhikers as my dad was very much into hiking, camping, etc. But there was a woman walking down the road. Mind you, it's very hot outside and it's the summertime and I noticed she was carrying a child swaddled up in a blanket, which struck me as a poor choice considering it was the middle of summer. It just seemed way too warm for a swaddle. So I said to my mom, we really need to go pick that woman up. Surely she isn't too far from where she needs to go. But she has a baby and to my surprise, my mom pulls into the gas station parking lot and she tells me to go in and get a large bottle of water and we'll ask her if she needs a ride. So we pull out of the gas station and approach the thin, almost sickly looking woman and she very quietly just grabbed the door handle and got inside, not saying anything at all, not even a thank you, which really didn't sit right with me because this is the south and everyone is friendly and approachable. Well, for the most part. So we ask where she's needing to go and me being in the passenger seat, I turn to look at her and she's looking down at her baby and cooing at it. She replies without ever looking up from the swaddled about two miles past the Dollar General on Jeb Stewart. We were very close to that area. I had decided to turn and speak to the woman and maybe get a conversation going. But as I got a better look at her baby, it actually was a drywall hammer wrapped up in a blanket. Inside another blanket, I froze. It was like I had just walked into a deep freezer. I told my mom that I really think we should stop because I heard what sounded like knocking and was very adamant we needed to stop at the upcoming Dollar General. As we pull in, I told my mom to get out of the car, that I needed her help locating the noise, and we met each other at the hood of the car where I told her, mom, that's not a baby, she has a hammer in that blanket. To which my mother advised me that we should walk inside to see if they have anything to close that up, and told the woman we would be right back. We walked inside and we had told them to call the police so they could help this woman, that we could no longer have her in our vehicle and explained why. My mom gave her some vague reason as to why we couldn't take her further and she got out of the vehicle very angrily but almost confused and we pretty much just left her in the parking lot. She very well could have just been a really confused woman, maybe with some mental issues. I don't know what was going on with her, but what I do know is that I don't think she had good intentions for us. Some Backstory I'm a 20 year old female from South Florida. I lived in Mississippi most of my life, right in the middle of the woods up until Hurricane Katrina. So I was used to very simple quiet places. When I moved here with my mom fall 2005, I was 10 and we moved to a small neighborhood. It was near two main roads so it wasn't very quiet. The house was sitting on the first corner in the neighborhood entrance. There's a small corner store at the entrance that many people walked and blanked to, so you can say we saw a lot of traffic. My room was very small, like I think 9x10, but pretty suitable for a 10 year old little girl. There were two windows in the room, one small one on the left side of the room and one large on the wall parallel to the door. The window was mostly covered by a very large tree which is actually still standing to this day, but you can see a small part of the sidewalk. Basically, if you were passing and could see into my room, you'd have to know exactly where to look. The events that took place are the very reasons why I can't have uncovered windows ever. And I can't look out of a window at night without becoming so fearful. I cry. It was maybe a year or so after we had moved into the house and my family and I were all becoming very accustomed to the life South Florida had offered. I had always been an outgoing pretty girl. At least many people told me. So many people that were walking to and from the corner store would stop and talk to me and my friends about how cute we were. We were pretty adorable and no one ever stuck out as being creepy or having bad intentions. One afternoon I was outside by myself. It was just about to be dusk so the sky was turning orange and I knew that it was almost time to go inside. I stood to go inside when I noticed a man standing across the street just staring at me. I didn't recognize him, but I had smiled and waved at him anyway. He just smiled at me like something I had never seen before. He seemed like he was so happy to finally get attention from me, like he had been watching me for weeks and I had just now noticed him. I had never been very judgmental, so I just waved again and Skipped inside. This went on almost every time that I was playing outside, always around the same time in the evening. And I never really saw him leave. I always skipped back inside before he left. I ended up telling my mom about him, and the next day she had told him not to come back. I didn't see him for a few days, so I really didn't think anything was strange, so I forgot. I rearranged my room so that my bed was on the other side of the wall near the door, so that the window overlooked my bed. I always had curtains so I couldn't hardly see anything outside unless I just looked really hard. I always loved looking at the moon and stars at night back in Mississippi. It's really amazing if you're out in the middle of nowhere. So I decided tonight I'll sleep with my curtains open so I can actually see the moon and stars. And I did. Little did I know that night would be burned into my memory for the rest of my life. I was eating supper with my mom and brother, and I had asked my mom if it was okay if I could sleep with my curtain open. She said yes, seeing as you can't really see the window from the road and sidewalk, and it should be fine. I was so excited, I even went to bed early that night. I watched TV until I was sleepy enough to drift off to sleep. I woke up and automatically felt a sense of fear. I don't know why, so I didn't move. My back was to the window so I could see the light that was cast by the moon. My breath caught immediately and I'd never been so terrified in my life. The silhouette of a man was standing just outside of my window. Just typing this out right now is giving me chills and makes me want to throw up. I rolled over to see the man that I had seen outside my house for so many days. I gasped, I screamed, and ran to my mom's room, frantically telling her what had happened. She shushed me and told me it was all just a bad dream. I told her that it wasn't, that I wasn't just dreaming. She got out of bed and went to search outside, but found nobody there. I slept in my mom's room with her for the rest of the night. The next day, after school, I went to my window with my friends. They didn't know and still don't, and we had found a piece of fabric that looked like a makeshift handkerchief. It didn't belong to my brother or my mom, and it definitely wasn't mine. Before we get Started on this story. The story mentions domestic violence, sexual assault, and the loss of an unborn child. If that's too dark for you, go ahead and stop listening right now. I'm going to give you some time to decide. Okay? For all those who want to continue listening, let's begin. I was 19 years old. I was always hanging out with my best friend Jamie and her boyfriend Bobby, his fraternal twin brother Billy, and Billy's girlfriend Sarah, all the time, everywhere. We usually hung out at Billy and Bobby's house. Cable, video games, and food galore. I always felt like a fifth wheel, though. I was slightly depressed and lonely and I just wanted a man of my own. I learned the hard way to be careful what you wish for. I lived in a duplex community, and I was walking down the street to the cluster of mailboxes with Jamie, and I had started hearing whistling. I looked over and saw my neighbor sitting on their porch. But there was a guy with them that I didn't know, and he was the one whistling at us. He was hot. He had curly blonde hair, blue eyes, and dimples in both cheeks when he smiled. And he had muscles for days. I was immediately smitten. He walked right over to us and started a conversation. He went with us to check the mailbox and accompanied us back to my place. We talked for a while and he asked me out. Of course, I said yes. The very first day went gray. Needless to say, we started dating. It wasn't long before I'd started noticing things that had kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I won't go into extravagant details, except to say that he was really clingy and possessive. He would always say things like, you're my dream girl. I can't imagine my life without you. After only being officially boyfriend and girlfriend for about a week, he would read my text messages and delete numbers from my phone. He eventually started trying to alienate me from my friends, but we had all been friends since freshman year and we were really tight. I knew that he was frustrated because he couldn't separate us. So he would find other ways to try and come between us. Like being really rude and obnoxious whenever they came over, or turning off the ringer on my phone so that when they called, I wouldn't know about it. He would send messages from my cell to theirs and say awful things, but my friends knew it was him. Not long after we got together, I found out he didn't have a job, didn't have his own place, was living with different friends. Until they got tired of him being there and asked him to leave. And a lot of the things that he had told me about himself were lies. Three months into the relationship, I was ready to call it quits. The final nail in the coffin was when we were being intimate and he had started getting really rough with me. Apparently, he had overheard a conversation that I had with Jamie a few days before where she was urging me to dump Shane and get with Billy. Since Billy had broken up with Sarah and wanted to be with me. He was yelling, saying I belonged to him and that he wouldn't let me be with anyone else. How I was slutting it around with Billy behind his back, and how he would do whatever he had to do to make sure that I stayed away from Billy. He would slap me or bite me, pull my hair. I was getting hysterical and crying and screaming. Now, during the conversation with Jamie, I had never said one way or the other that I wanted to be with Billy or that I was even gonna dump Shane. Although I was certainly thinking about it, Shane never actually heard me respond in any way that would have made it seem like I was gonna dump him. But that night, Shane was horrible to me. He talked about maiming Billy, crippling him, all during sex. I pushed him off of me and ran into the bathroom and locked the door. He was standing in the hallway, banging on the door and screaming at me, butt naked. Jamie and Bobby were spending the night and they heard everything. Bobby got up and told him he needed to leave or else he was gonna really hurt him. Shane finally put his clothes on and left. We then called the police and they took a report. They never even spoke to Shane about that incident. Twenty minutes later, after the cops left, Billy showed up with a co worker named Danny. Danny and Bobby sat in the living room with the lights off, waiting to see if Shane would come back. Billy stayed in the bedroom with me and Jamie. Shane didn't come back that night, but he called me the next day and tried to apologize. I told him to never call me or try to see me again. Well, about two weeks later, we were all in a bar down the street from my house. But when Shane walked in, Billy and I were slow dancing when all of a sudden, Jamie ran up to us and pulled me away, saying she wanted me to come to the bathroom with her. She said that she had seen Shane come in and he was staring at Billy and me and he looked pissed when she grabbed me. He had been walking towards the dance floor, and since our table was right next to the Dance floor. She got to me first. As I'm trying to figure out what to do, we heard this loud roar coming from the bar. We ran back out and there they were, Shane and Billy fighting. The bouncers pulled them apart before any real damage was done. And they were hauling Shane out. He just kept yelling, you'll never have her. She's mine. I'll kill you. You're dead. I was shaking. I looked at Billy and the look on his face. If looks could kill, Shane would have been obliterated. We spent the night at Billy and Bobby's mom's house. I thought for sure that my budding romance with Billy was kaput. But that night, he had actually kissed me. And he told me that he had feelings for me since junior year, but that he didn't think I dated white guys. So he never said anything. Up until Shane and then Billy, I had actually only dated black guys. I really cried that night because even though Billy and I were now together, I realized that Shane wasn't going to go away. And he didn't. He started blowing up my cell phone with calls and texts. And if I turned the phone off, he would call my house phone, bombarding me with emails. I had started seeing him everywhere I went. But it really got bad when Billy and Bobby had to go away for work. They worked construction, and the company they worked for landed a contract in Mississippi. I would wake up in the middle of the night and see Shane standing outside my bedroom window. I would find notes on my door from Shane telling me what a whore I was and how he would get even. To make matters worse for me, I found out that I was almost 12 weeks pregnant when I got the results. I immediately called Billy and told him. I knew that if Shane found out, there would be no getting rid of him. And I was right. To this day, I don't know how Shane found out, but he did. He left a suitcase full of baby stuff on my porch, along with a note that said, I've got you for life now. Okay, so this is part two. I tried to get a restraining order, but me being black and Shane being white, I was pregnant with this kid in a small Southern hick town, which didn't bode well for me. I was denied the restraining order. Shane would show up to my prenatal visits and sit in the parking lot staring at me. He just generally made my life a living hell. He harassed Jamie and Bobby, but he didn't really bother Billy all that much, you know, since Billy laid the smackdown on him at the bar. Anyways, every time I had a run in with them, I would report it to the police hoping it would result in me being able to get the restraining order. No dice. It eventually got to the point where the police would come, write stuff down and just look at me as though I was crazy. It all came to a head when I was about five months along. Billy and Bobby had come home from Mississippi for a visit. So of course Jamie and I spent the weekend with them. They had to drive back to Mississippi Sunday afternoon and Jamie had to work. So that night I was alone. As I was setting in for the night, I heard a knock on the front door. I looked through the peephole, no one was there. I went back to my bedroom and I had heard a knock again and again. No one was there. I was starting to freak out. I called Jamie to see when she would be leaving for work and she said she got off at 11pm it was right around 8:30 when this happened. I didn't want to be by myself anymore. So after I got off the phone with her, I called Billy's mom and I asked if it would be okay for me to come over until Jamie's shift had ended. She said yes. So I set about getting ready to leave. I called Jamie back and told her I would be at Linda's, the guy's mom. I hung up the phone, sat on the bed and put on my shoes. As I walked away from the bed, I felt a hand grab my ankle. I fell hard on the floor and immediately started cramping. I was trying to get up and I could feel hands on me. Shane was under my bed. Apparently the second time he knocked while I was checking to see who was there. He had entered the house through my bedroom window and hid under the bed. I crawled into the hallway with Shane right behind me. I made it to the front door but Shane had yanked me back. Before I could open it, I was on the floor again. He got me on my back and straddled my legs. He pulled up my shirt just below my breasts. And then he did the oddest thing ever. He just stared at my belly. I was showing pretty good by this time. He just stared for a few minutes. Then he started rubbing my belly. I was shaking, scared of what he was thinking, scared of what he was gonna do. But for what seemed like forever, he just stared at and rubbed my belly. Then he looked me in the face. He grabbed my arms and held them over my head. I had started to struggle, but he squeezed my wrists. I really hated Shane at this point. But I had really come to love my baby and all I could think about was getting him off me and getting out of the house so he couldn't hurt me and the baby. He leaned over me until his face was an inch or two away from mine, then just said stop. The look on his face, coupled with the quiet way in which he said it made my blood run cold. Still holding my wrists with one hand, he reached into his bag pocket with the other and he pulled out a pair of handcuffs. I'd started screaming and trying to fight harder. He was so much stronger than me and within a minute or so I was handcuffed, both cuffs around my wrists and the little chain in the middle was kind of around the leg of the couch. He sat on the floor next to me, raised my shirt and once again it started rubbing my belly. This went on for about 15 minutes. He went into the kitchen, grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and sat down again. After finishing the water, he put the empty bottle on the couch and got on his knees. He had started touching me inappropriately and I was wetting myself. I tried to pull away but couldn't. And to make matters worse, he was getting aroused. It was by this time that the cramping became even more intense. I groaned. Unfortunately, he misinterpreted this to me, also getting excited. So he kissed me and proceeded to put his hands between my legs. The cramps then turned into full blown pain and I arched my back. I knew what was happening at this point. I was mumbling against Shane's lips as he was still kissing me and wouldn't stop. So I did the only thing I could think to do. I bit his lip. He reared back and raised his hand and slapped me. But when he did, it had left a blood smear on my cheek. He then looked at his own hand. The one that he slapped me with was between my legs. It was covered in blood. My face was stinging. I begged him to call an ambulance. I'm losing the baby. I screamed at him. He jumped to his feet, but Instead of calling 911, he just ran out the door and left me there. I couldn't get my hands free and the pain was unbearable. I realized that when he ran out, he'd left the front door open. So I started screaming for help. Thank God my next door neighbor was coming home right at that moment from a doctor's appointment with our little girl. She heard me and ran right over. Seeing my predicament, she pulled out her cell phone and called 911. She wasn't able to get the handcuffs off, but she was able to detach me from the couch. The ambulance arrived maybe 10 minutes after the call, but it was too late. I lost my daughter. The police came to the hospital and I told them what happened. They went looking for Shane, but when they found him again, it was too late. He had committed suicide. Jamie showed up at the hospital later that night. Billy and Bobby came the next day. For almost a year, I suffered from PTSD and grieved the loss of my child. But through all of it, Billy was by my side. Three years after this incident, we got married. And today we have a four year old and another one on the way. So my story has somewhat of a happy ending. But I do still grapple with the fact that my decision to get involved with Shane simply because I was just lonely and desperate has caused me tremendous pain and guilt. And it's gonna be a while before it all fades for good. Most of my extended family lives in Virginia, spread out all over the place, deep in the literal middle of nowhere. As a matter of fact, the first time I had visited my aunt's house, apparently I cried because of how long the dirt road was. My mom will never be able to find me out here, I said. My granny always tells me that story whenever I visit. And she gets a crack out of us city folk. This particular incident happened in Farmville. Yes, you read that right. It's not just a Facebook game. It's an actual place right in between Tobaccosville and Mechanicsville. Rednecks are creative, to say the least. I had surprised my family for Christmas by flying up to see them. Side note, it was the first and only time all six of my groups Granny's grandchildren were in the same room at the same time. Cue the feels. My aunt and I stayed up late watching old reruns of Mr. Bean. At about 2am we were going to bed, except Sadie, her pit bull, needed to go to the bathroom. Of course, because it's only 12 degrees outside. I had left my jacket in the car, which was parked in the garage, so I went outside real quick to grab it. The garage is an addition to the house. On the other side, there's a back door that overlooks the backyard and lots and lots of trees. My cousin had accidentally driven into and subsequently broken the garage door, so it had to be taken down. We're out in the middle of backwoods country land and there's only a very dim light at the end of the driveway and a small light on the ceiling. Basically, it's almost pitch black as I'm opening the door to the car, I can't help but feel as if I'm being watched and I glance over my shoulder to the door overlooking the yard and I see a man. It was dark and I couldn't see his face, but he was wearing a hat and a hoodie zipped up to his chest. His hands were in his pockets and he seemed like he was almost peering down. I got a lump in my throat. Already freezing, my goosebumps just intensified. I reached into the car, grabbing my jacket but keeping a visual, slammed the car door and just ran. When I ran back to the door to the house, it must have accidentally locked me out. I turned around and I see it standing on the opposite end of where the garage door would have been. At this point, all that's standing between me and this person is a car, truck and a couple of bikes. I start screaming bloody murder. At first my voice wouldn't work. It was clogged by that lump that welled up in my throat when I first saw him. I banged and banged on the door. I hit the door so hard I actually ended up busting the door in. My aunt freaked out. She was still sitting in the living room and it only truly heard me. When I broke the door, Sadie started to growl and had her hair stood up. My aunt woke up her boyfriend. He ran outside in his boxers with a baseball bat. He did a couple of circles all around the house, cursing to high heavens. The hooded man was nowhere to be found. Still, to this day I get anxious when visiting my family. There's lots of woods and nothingness for someone to get lost in. It's creepy. This happened sometime during my high school years. The exact year and time escaped me. At this point I found myself in a nearby town on a date, attempting to impress a girl who I'd been secretly crushing on for quite some time. We'll call her Anna. Anna and I had just had a really nice evening and we were winding down, getting ready to go home. This takes place in rural southeast Oklahoma, so we had about another hour or so of travel time together in order for me to get her to her house, and I was quite looking forward to the conversation and anything else that might transpire on the way home. The night ended with our hearts racing and us struggling to catch our breath, but not in a way that you might expect from two hormonal teenagers on a Friday night. After our dinner and Dumouvie, basically all there was to do in the small town I had stopped At a local Love's gas station to fill up my truck with gas. I didn't have a credit card at the time, so I pulled up to the pump, left Anna in the truck and then went inside to pay for my gas. On the way inside, I had noticed this old beaten up Ford F250 with two, dare I say, rednecks staring right at me. The beaten up Ford wasn't an uncommon sight in rural Oklahoma, but the constant staring made me uneasy. When I returned to my truck and filled up, Anna informed me that they had been staring at her too and they were giving her the creeps. I told her they were probably just bored and messing with us and we didn't think much of it. I pulled out into the street, pulled my truck into the turn lane and began to turn on Highway 3, which would take me all the way to Anna's house. The light was red and taking ages to turn. Everything in small town Oklahoma seems to move slower than a snail in molasses. And as we're waiting, we had noticed a truck pull up next to us. At first we had paid the truck no mind, but something was off. Out of the corner of my eye I see something off putting. We turn and look and to our dismay, we see the same beaten up Ford F250 with now two to three people in the cab all intently looking at us. Of course, us being the zealous teenagers that we were, had decided to show these guys what we're made of. And as the light turned green, we rolled down our window and flashed a big smile across our faces. And we gave them the biggest middle fingers that we could to show them what we thought of their mindless staring. We then hit the gas and continued on our way home. A few moments passed by with Anna and I laughing at what we had just did to those creepy idiots. But eventually the moment fades and we just begin talking about something else. We got down the road a few miles and I noticed a set of headlights coming from behind us. The road wasn't super busy, but we had just come from a larger town, so there wasn't anything off putting about the lights at this point. At least not yet. However, after a few more moments pass, we realize that something is really wrong. The headlights begin flashing and blinding us. The car begins swerving and eventually pulls over to the left lane to try and get beside us. We quickly realized exactly who this was. I'm by no means a car guy, but I recognized the shape of the hood of the truck. This was the Same beaten up F250 that we had just flipped off a few miles back and now they were pissed and coming for us. At this point in my life, I was about 5 foot 8 and weighed about 115 pounds soaking wet. I was a little guy and I knew that I stood no chance against three larger guys. I was gonna get pummeled into oblivion or worse. And we had no idea what they were going to do with Anna. I slammed on the gas and began traveling as fast as I could down the winding back roads of southeast Oklahoma, trying to come up with an idea to get us out of this mess. As we sped down the highway, I began to look for common landmarks that I knew on Highway 3. I didn't see them. I knew that we had been traveling for quite some time down this road, but it didn't seem the same. We slowly realized that we weren't on the right road. We had taken the wrong turn. Blinded by our hubris, we turned on a narrow country road that was certain to lead us to our death. We didn't know what to do. Of course, when I told this to my parents, they just said things like, you should have called 911 or you should have driven to the nearest police station. However, we didn't think to call 911 and we didn't know where the police station was because we were lost. So we took matters into our own hands and continued traveling as fast as we could down the small winding back road. We had a few near misses with the truck as they were attempting to rear end us, or at least make us believe they were. But finally, after what seemed like a lifetime, we saw our shining beacon of light. I can't remember the specifics, but somehow we got far enough ahead of them that we began to think we might lose them. Out of the corner of my eye, we spotted a small local church. Anna checked behind us and couldn't see their headlights. So I slammed on the brakes, killed the lights in my truck, and in the pitch darkness, drove off the road, through the lawn of the church and behind the building. We sat there panicking and wondering if they'd seen us. It was a risky move. For all we know, we could be stuck and if they saw us, we might not have a chance to escape. We sat and watched as the beat up truck passed down the road at incredible speed. They hadn't seen us. We breathed a sigh of relief as we waited to see if they turned around. After a few moments passed, we pulled out of the parking lot, kicked it into high gear and got back to town as quickly as we could. We both learned a lesson in flipping off shady rednecks that night, and to my knowledge, we haven't done so since. Okay, so I should start off by giving a bit of background so that you understand the situation a bit better. I, a 4 foot 916 year old female at the time, had two dogs who were brothers from the same litter. Now, being boxers, they were relatively big and quite protective when need be. Vince was longer and much taller than his brother and is usually the kind to sleep through a hurricane if we had one. His brother Maury was shorter but more muscled and much stronger. Usually these two were with me 24 7. As my mother used to work a lot and I was usually alone most of the day, sometimes even until after dark, this never really bothered me. I'd been left alone at home like this since I was 11. It never struck me that I had a reason to be worried. One day that my mom was working. Later I was doing some household chores, feeding the dogs, doing dishes, stuff like that. I continued doing what I always had a routine of tidying the house that I'd done every day for years. As I went to take the trash out of the bin, I had started walking towards the door when Maury stepped in front of me. I tried moving around him, telling him to get out of my way and such, but he refused to budge. This was certainly odd and looking back on it now a few years later, I realized he was probably trying to stop me from walking outside. We continued like this for a few moments, me trying to get past him and him of course, never moving from his spot. He was quite heavy as a big dog, it was difficult to lift him and even harder to get him away from something. Now, in the time that we had been going back and forth with this interaction, Vin stayed happily asleep on his dog bed. I should note that from my kitchen you can see the living room and bathroom. Usually we used the side door from the kitchen to enter and exit the house since it was attached to the carport. After a couple more minutes I heard something that I hadn't expected. When I made one last desperate attempt to move Morey from his spot, he growled, which wasn't unusual as he had growled plenty in his life. What was unusual was that he had growled at me. He had never done that before, not once. But for that reason and that reason alone, I had decided not to take the trash out that night. I simply tossed it in another room and left it be. A short time passed, maybe half an hour or so I had gotten settled into my chair to watch some movie while I had waited for my mom to come home. While I was watching the movie, I suddenly heard a quiet knock at the side door. As I mentioned earlier, you can clearly see the living room from the kitchen, so I heard the knock pretty well. It was already after dark, so I figured it was just my mother and she had somehow forgotten her keys or something. I got up and went into the kitchen and out of the corner of my eye I saw the hook near the door. The keys weren't there. To some people that's not a big deal, but to me it meant that the person knocking on my door was in fact not my mother. My mom is a bit of a routine obsessed person, so if she had actually forgotten her keys, they would always be on the hook. I took a breath, preparing myself to just not answer the door or if they didn't leave, to just tell them I wasn't interested in whatever was happening and that they should leave. Thinking about it now, I really wish I hadn't even looked out the window on the door. I wish I had just sat back down, called my mom, and stayed out of sight. But of course I walked in front of the door and immediately came face to face with a figure on the other side of the window. Now it was really dark with just my neighbor's light shining from his porch, so I could only make out a couple of things on this guy. He was tall, me having to peer up at him through the window to look at his face. He had long hair that looked like a shadow over his shoulders in the dim light, but the only facial features I could see were his eyes. God, I wish I hadn't seen them. I could see the spark of interest flare in them as he perked up when he saw me. They were wide and staring down at me. He took a step towards my door, stepping on the first of two steps. I heard him say something along the lines of my car broke down nearby. Could I come in and use your phone? Immediately I thought of every bad thing that I had ever heard of happening to a teenager home alone, and I tried to compose my nerves. I'm not sure what it was, but something just told me not to trust this man standing on the other side of my door. I shouted back with a quick no and an apology, hoping he was telling the truth and would just go to the next house over. But he didn't. Instead, he simply just said it again, quite a bit louder. I thought for a quick moment he hadn't heard me. But then again, I know now that he most likely had. So instead I became a bit more confident. I'm sorry I can't help you. Go to the next house. I shouted louder. For a moment he paused, as if contemplating what to do. Then he knocked again, louder than the first time I'd heard it. My heart rate increased as I stared at him. When I didn't react, he had started to loudly bang against the door. I took a step back, praying to God that he would either leave or my mom would be home early. I was usually a quiet girl, but my mom was a tough redneck with a raptor knife she could take him. He had started to bang on the glass after a moment, my mind racing. A thousand miles an hour. Should I hide? Should I run? My phone was in the other room and I was scared to take my eyes off the guy. I was sure he would break through the glass. The banging was vibrating my eardrums, and apparently it was vibrating Mori's, too. I saw him creeping up past the doorway, bending his head, teeth bared. He had started to bark, and loudly. The guy had stopped for a moment, trying to see into the window at the floor where Maury stood. When he stopped barking, the guy mistakenly had tried to jiggle the door handle. That's when Vince woke up. I swear to God, for a dog that was dead asleep five seconds prior, I've never seen him move that fast, ever. In only two seconds, Vince had his paws on the door, growling like a hellhound to the devil's side at this man outside my home. The guy jumped, fell back, and then he bolted it. I heard him say something as he had started to run, and I saw another shadow. My mom came home shortly after I had sprinted across my carport to my neighbors. We had called the police after I explained what happened, and my neighbor had dragged his shotgun out before they even got there. He had insisted on looking for the guy. The police said someone had tried to pick the lock on my front door, but there was a lot of stuff in front of it and it was really old, so it didn't open anymore. I went to bed that night uneasy and so very thankful that I had two dogs who were not only strong and big, but one that was vigilant and one that could practically kill if you let him. A few weeks went by and we had never heard from the cops, so eventually I stopped trying to think about it. Another month went by, and although I was a bit scared of being home alone, nothing else seemed to happen. Then we got another visit from the cops. What they told me made my heart sink in my chest and it still gives me chills to this day. They had caught the guys and they realized they were stalking me. Yes, guys as in plural. There were two guys that had apparently been stalking me without my knowledge for months. They had several photos of me, words they had written over them. Awful words. The police had been fairly adamant that I changed my locks since they caught the two guys, and apparently there was evidence of a third. We moved shortly after that. I still pass by that house sometimes whenever I go to visit friends or do stuff around that area. A chill runs down my spine every time I do. To think that they never caught one of the guys was scary enough. The fact that they tried to break into my house was worse, not to mention that I hadn't even known they were watching me. I still think about it now, even a few years later. I dread what would have happened if my dogs weren't there, and I dread even worse about what they had planned to do if I had opened the door or if they had successfully broken in. I suppose they weren't expecting my dog since our backyard is fenced and they mostly stayed indoors since it was so hot where I lived. I thanked the universe every day that I had them, especially now. My mom never worked until after drunk again after that, which in all honesty was fine by me.