A car followed me for six blocks at night. I was terrified, my knuckles white against the steering wheel of my old sedan. It was a Tuesday in October, and the suburban streets of Bristol felt unusually empty, shrouded in a thick, damp fog. Every time I turned, the headlights behind me mimicked my move with predatory precision. I tried to tell myself I was being paranoid, but when I took a random detour through a quiet residential loop and the black SUV stayed glued to my bumper, I knew this wasn’t a coincidence.
My heart was thumping against my ribs like a trapped bird, and the silence in my car felt suffocating. I didn’t want to lead this person to my house where I lived alone, so I decided to pull over on a well-lit stretch near a closed-up petrol station. I reached for my phone, my thumb hovering over the keypad, ready to call 911. The man in the SUV didn’t even wait for me to fully stop before he slammed his door open and jumped out.
He was a tall guy, maybe in his fifties, wearing a high-visibility work jacket that flickered under the streetlights. He ran toward my car with a frantic energy that made me scream and scramble to ensure my doors were locked. He banged on my window with the side of his fist, his face contorted in what I thought was rage, yelling, “Get out NOW! Unlock the door and get out!” I huddled in the driver’s seat, my phone finally dialing the emergency operator, convinced these were the last seconds of my life.
My blood ran cold when I looked in my mirror, but I wasn’t looking at the man. I was looking at the back seat of my car, and for a split second, I didn’t see anything but the dark fabric of the upholstery. Then, I saw the silhouette of a head rising slowly from the footwell behind my seat, a pale face obscured by a dark hoodie. The person in the back seat had a hand raised, clutching something that glinted with a sharp, metallic edge in the reflection of the streetlamps.
