I am afraid I am being stalked 1

Hey, folks. Long-time lurker here. Making my first post because something weird’s started happening to me recently and I’m not really sure what’s going on. I’m not ashamed to admit I’m getting a little freaked out. Please let me know if you have any ideas on what this all is.

I was coming home from work Monday night when things first started to be odd. I’m a web editor for my city newspaper and work the evening shift. Usually that’s about 4 p.m. to midnight, but I often stay late if there’s advance work I can do. The city’s a bit of a sprawl, but I live only maybe two miles away from my work, so I just bike to get around.

Monday night I left work around 2 a.m. (technically Tuesday morning) and started riding home. I live in a quiet, residential part of town, so it’s unusual for me to see people on my commute home. In a neighborhood of morning office workers, everyone’s home is shuttered and all lights are off by eleven. It’s actually a little eerie sometimes. No cars ever pass through at night and the silence can put you on edge. The heavy trees lining the street block a lot of the moonlight and the streetlamps here are few and far between.

I was about three-quarters of a mile from my apartment when I saw a girl standing at an intersection I was approaching. I mean, she was literally standing in the middle of the road. She was wearing a long white dress (my ex used to have one like it to wear to the beach) so she was easy to see in the darkness.

As I got closer, I could see that she was leaning forward on two canes and looking around as if she were trying to make out the street signs. The streets around where I live can be confusing, so I braked near her and asked her if she was lost.

She used her canes to slowly turn herself to face me and smile. She was actually astonishingly pretty. Really dark eyes and long black hair. But she was weirdly pallid and her arms on the canes were really thin. Like, really thin.

I had been guessing she had some sort of disease or disorder from her use of the canes, but as she turned, her dress swept up a bit and I saw that her feet (in sandals) were facing the opposite direction than usual.

“No, I’m fine,” she said. Her voice was high and nasal, like someone was pinching her nose. She turned back, her motions kind of robotic and sharp like a bird’s, and started looking up at the street signs again.

I was feeling really bad for her at this point. Clearly, this girl had some sort of deformity and was lost alone in the middle of the night. I was hesitant to just leave her in the middle of the street but didn’t want to seem like that creepy guy insisting on talking to her.

“Well, you should get out of the street so you don’t get hit by a car,” I said as I got ready to pedal off.

“There are never any cars around here at night,” she replied. That made me feel better, that she at least knew where she was. So maybe she was just crazy and not lost.

I looked over my shoulder as I biked away, but she was just there in the intersection still, looking around. I didn’t really think much more of it.

I was pretty tired when I got home, so I locked my bike up to a sign outside of my building instead of carrying it up the stairs to my apartment like I usually do. (Not typically a good idea in my city, as there are a lot of bike thieves, but I was tired and lazy.)

I got up early on Tuesday morning to go meet a friend for breakfast when I saw there was something weird on my bike. I thought it was just that someone had balanced some trash on the seat, but it turned out to these white flowers. Just the top parts, not the stems. I brushed them off and looked down and saw a little pile of uncooked rice by my kickstand.

I was kind of grossed out because it looked like a mouse was hoarding it or something (that happened a few times in my parents’ house.) I checked my bike and, once I was convinced that it was mouse-free, I went on my way.

Nothing else weird happened on Tuesday.

Last night, though, these really random things happened in my apartment. I got home a bit early for me, maybe 11:30, and the doorknob lock on my apartment door was undone. Instead, the deadbolt was locked. I always do the reverse; my deadbolt can be sticky and hard to open. But I assumed I had just subconsciously done it differently that afternoon.

When I put my bike down and went into the kitchen for a beer… shit was weird.

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