Chapter 52 : Creepy apartment chase

This happened over ten years ago, so excuse me if the details are a little fuzzy.

When I was in highschool my friend Claire came to sleep over. We made some plans to sneak out and hang out with some guys, and then one of them would drive us home.

We go out to our friends' apartment, have some fun, and around midnight we decide it's time for us to head back. But when we ask to be taken back, everyone says no, despite previously agreeing to bring us back. Everyone said they were too drunk or too high, so we eventually decide to just start walking back and we would make some phone calls to see if anyone could pick us up and bring us the rest of the way back. My house was a good 20 minutes away by car on the highway so there was no way we were walking all the way back.

The apartment was towards the back of the complex, so we start making our way to the entrance. We don't even get halfway there before a car slowly starts rolling up behind us.

I was 15 or 16 at the time, and very naive to the ways of the world, so I wasn't too concerned, but Claire was a little smarter than me on this night. She tells me to start walking faster. So we start walking faster. The car also picks up their pace behind us. Again, she tells me to walk faster. So we start moving as fast as we can, and that's when the car pulled slightly in front of us and two of the passenger doors open and two men get out.

Realizing there's no "walking faster" to get out of this situation, she instructs me to "Run NOW" so she takes off running and I follow her. She runs towards a group of parked cars and jumps behind a pickup truck, and for a minute we hope and pray that we weren't spotted. This is where details get a little fuzzy, one of them must have gotten back in the car at some point, as there's only one of them following us behind the truck.

We hear a set of footsteps quickly approaching and she quietly indicates that we're now going into stealth mode. This man is on the other side of the truck that we're hiding behind. He's circling the truck looking for us, and we're slowly and quietly circling it on the opposite side to avoid being spotted. It felt like a scene from a movie or video game. We somehow managed to do two or three circles around the vehicle without being detected, and by the grace of the gods, he gives up and decides to go back to the car with his friends.

This is our one shot to get away. She tells me to run again, so we run for what felt like an eternity, but in reality was probably only 15-20 seconds. We find the pool house area and find a spot to hide. We were hidden behind some fences and bushes and we're anxiously waiting to see if they discover us.

Their car pulls around to the pool house and we're biting our nails hoping they don't stop and get out. The car slowly drives away and we realize we haven't been spotted! We were safe for now. But the car circled around the apartment complex for hours and hours and hours. They weren't giving up on looking for us.

We were safe for the time being, but now we needed to find a way out of there. It was the middle of winter, and of course we were dressed to impress the guys we went to hang out with, so short shorts and revealing tops. We were FREEZING. We found a dirty disgusting captain America blanket that we huddled up under while making phone calls to find someone to pick us up. We tried contacting the guys at the apartment but no one answered our calls. None of our friends answered our calls. We felt completely alone and hopeless. But around 5am someone finally answered and said they would pick us up. The best news I had ever heard in my life.

Our friend gets to the apartment complex but can't find the pool house. The group of men is STILL constantly circling around, so there's no way we're coming out of hiding. We manage to figure out where our friend is at with a little detective work, figuring out what building they're facing, what's in front of them, are there dumpsters nearby, etc etc.

We figure out where they're at so we make a run for it. We spot their car and hop in as fast as we can. "GO GO GO," we tell them and our friend speeds off towards the entrance. We pass the group of men on the way out and that was the last we saw of them.

We made it back around 6am, just in time to sneak back in without my parents ever knowing we even left. If Claire hadn't been with me that night I definitely would have been abducted, raped, and possibly killed.

So thankful for Claire and our friend that picked us up, but a big 'fuck you' to the adult men we went to hang out with as teenagers, and especially 'fuck you' to the guys that intended to harm us.

On a happier note, I'm now very diligent and aware of my surroundings, and we washed the dirty captain America blanket and shared custody of it for years after this encounter.

So to the men who terrorized me and my friend in a shitty apartment complex, let's not meet again