Anxiety

For a little over 5 years I've lived in a college town in southern Indiana. When I first moved here, my at the time girlfriend and I were both working in fast food, so we lived in an embarrassingly small apartment in a dingy and unsettling building. One night we had a run in with someone that shook us so deeply we started looking for a new apartment that very night.

First, I should explain the building a little. We lived on the ground floor, the halls were in the shape of a giant "T" with exits at the ends of two of the three sides. The third side housed the community washer and dryer, directly across from our door. Our usual route in and out of the building was to take the main door, walk the 30-35 feet to the "T", and go left all the way to the end. When standing right outside our door was when the halls looked most unsettling, as it was a straight shot of maybe 70 feet to the other exit. The walls were a yellowish stained white with sterile, harsh overhead lights and plain brown doors with little peep holes lining both sides. It was generally uninviting.

We were aware that the surrounding community was just a little sketchy, given it's reputation and the handful of stories we'd heard, so when the trash needed taken out, the duty fell to me. I didn't mind, I'm a big guy (6'1" and about 300 lbs with a fair amount of muscle) but taking the trash out at night always gave me the creeps anyway. In our year living there, I'd only ever seen two of our neighbors, one at the opposite end of the hall who more often than not resembled a blur as they hurriedly closed and locked their door before slipping out the exit, and a surprisingly nice college aged guy across from us. Getting comfortable in that building feels like a mistake now, looking back.

Six or so months into living there, the trash had gotten full later at night while cooking dinner. My girlfriend said "I'll get the tacos ready, you run the trash out." I absolutely despised walking down that nightmare of a hallway into the darkness, but at the promise of tacos I slipped my flip flops on and stepped out into the hall with the bag. I closed the door behind me, and when I looked up my heart stopped. At the other end of the hallway stood a large man (even by my standards), he didn't look very heavy, but he was certainly taller than me. He wore a large coat over a hoodie, and sweat pants. He was standing perfectly centered with the exit at the end of the hall, shoulders squared, staring directly at me. I thought to myself "well... that's pretty fucking weird but surely it's nothing." I tried to avoid eye contact as I walked toward him, taking the right turn out the main exit as I usually would. I took maybe 15 steps, hurled the bag into the dumpster and turned to find the man standing directly inside the door, staring at me through the large glass pane. I froze. "Shit, I'm going to get stabbed" I thought to myself. I had no idea why this man would be interested in me, but now he was blocking my only sensible reentry, unless I wanted to dive through my living room window. I swallowed my fear and walked toward the door. As I neared, he opened it for me. "Oh, you coming out?" I instinctively grabbed the door and stepped to the side for him to leave. "No." he said. We sat there for a second, staring each other down uncomfortably. "OK" I said, forcing an insincere smile, I slipped past him and started walking down the hall. To clarify, it didn't seem like there was anything wrong with this man. He didn't seem at this point to be on drugs or anything that I could chalk all this weird behavior up to.

I'd almost made it to the turn at the end of the hall when I heard him say "Hey" from behind me. He'd followed me just a few steps. "I'm waiting for my friend in 15, she said she'd be here in about 10 minutes. Do you mind if I wait in your apartment with you?" My heart started racing again. I don't know what he wanted but he was NOT getting it. "Oh I don't know man, my girlfriend is kind of weird about strangers and I'm sure you're not bothering anyone out here." I said, trying to sound like I wasn't freaking the hell out on the inside.. Silence for a couple seconds. "What's your girlfriend's name? I think I know her" he said flatly. At this point I was physically tensing, preparing to fight this guy off if I needed to, and I think my discomfort was beginning to show on my face. Against my better judgement I said only her first name, almost as a test "Ashley". He responded immediately with "Oh yeah I know her! She's friends with my friend in 15!" That wasn't true. I knew that wasn't true, we'd never met whoever lived in that apartment. I decided that it was best just to go, even if it meant upsetting this guy. I just started walking toward the apartment "Well I'll see ya later dude don't worry you aren't going to upset anyone by chilling out here have a good night." I said picking up speed until I was practically running for the door. I made my way inside and locked it behind me, the panic plain on my face.

"What's wrong?" Ashley asked. I looked out the peep hole and whispered "I just ran into the weirdest guy." and started explaining what had happened. Halfway through my explanation I heard a loud BANG on our door, we both jumped and Ashley let out a little noise. I looked through the peep hole again and to my shock and absolute horror, the man was standing outside our door, staring into the peep hole only inches away. I could see him mouthing something but couldn't tell what. I grabbed a kitchen knife and mouthed for Ashley to call the police. She did and handed the phone to me, and I began explaining what had/was currently happening. They asked me to describe what he was wearing but I was drawing a blank so I looked through the peep hole again to see. My heart once again stopped. I couldn't see anything, it was pitch black. I told the officer and they rushed someone out just in case this man meant us harm. Almost a half hour later, things were quiet until there was a knock at the door, a police officer made himself known so I opened up. I could then tell why I couldn't see anything. The man had climbed on top of the dryer, taken down the panel in the ceiling and taken the bulbs out of the fixture in front of our door. They said they'd searched the entire property and found no sign of anyone that didn't belong there.

Now, my wife and I live in a much better, safer community, and I still always, always wear my gun when I take out the trash.

tl;dr: Creepy man creeps, taking out the trash at night is always a bad idea.