Encounter
Once again, the same pervert followed me in the darkest streets of my nights but he’d never managed to catch
me yet. When I run out of breath and the split second before he lays a hand on me, I usually trip and hit my
head on a curb or crash into traffic light pole on the street corner and wake up in cold sweat. The minute I fall
asleep, I have to run for my life. I’m living a rerun episode of the same nightmare over and again.
Last time as I was escaping from this maniac, I thought, “I can’t run forever, especially in my sleep. The main
purpose of sleep is to rest, not to run! A rapist or a murderer he might be, I’ll face him.” Then I stumbled and
fell. As soon as I woke, I rushed to my brother’s bedroom and grabbed the baseball bat from under his bed and
the pepper spray from my purse and anxiously closed my eyes meet him again. I put the spray in my blouse
pocket and hid the bat in the next street corner by the newsstand where I’d planned to make a right turn during
the chase.
Sure enough he was waiting for my arrival exactly where I expected. I paused to give him a chance to recognize
his victim and to start his routine. He noticed my presence but made no move. Now that I was in control, he’d
got cold feet. But I was determined to put an end to this charade. He had his hands in his pockets and
whispered words I could not hear. Since he was reluctant to agonize me, I took the first step toward my night
stalker, “So, what’s next you bastard? I don’t interest you anymore?” I shouted fearlessly.
His lack of response worried me. He either knew what I was up to or had lost interest in tormenting an easy
target like me.
“What the hell are you waiting for? Don’t chicken out! Not tonight,” He was feverishly trying to tell my
something without uttering a word. I walked closer not to listen but to further tempt him to commit his sadistic
act of violence. As I got dangerously close to my predator, he took his hand out of his pocket and the
switchblade clutched in his fist flickered.
I rushed toward the street corner where I had my weapon stashed and he ran after me like never before. He
was about ten yards behind me when I made the turn and swiftly grabbed the baseball bat, suddenly stopped,
turned back and faced him. He was now within my striking distance still flinging his hands in the air. Tonight, I
was more interested in shedding his blood than to hearing his words. Before he got a chance to make a move,
I struck him in his kneecap causing him to slouch to reach his shattered knee, and to give me another
opportunity to take a swing and hit smash his face. He collapsed at my feet squealing like a wounded animal
loud enough to wake me up and ruin the experience, but he didn’t. For a moment, I decided to wake up and
leave this agonizing dream behind me but the terror of the previous episodes trembled my entire being. So I
walked back to him and viciously crushed the same fingers clamping tightly on his injured knee.
His suffering was bound to turn into vengeance and I could feel his haunting return to my nightmares forever.
So I sat down next to my predator and carefully opened his squinted eyes filled with tears, trying to understand
his perverse pleasure in tormenting an innocent girl. The deeper I probed, the darker my nightmare became.
He seemed like a helpless child taking refuge in his mother’s lap and I was reflecting his bizarre mélange of
wickedness and vulnerability on the tarnished mirror of my being. He’d turned into my defenseless victim and I’
d become his ruthless torturer, we’d morphed into a single being.
I desperately waited for him to tell me anything, anything at all to set me free from this everlasting labyrinth of
perdition. I shook his head violently and threatened him with a harsher punishment for his lack of cooperation
but the more I persisted, the less I received. Then I forced his mouth open only to see he had no tongue to
speak.
I felt sorry for him for being the victim in the haunting nightmare he’d created for me and hated him even more
for the same reason. So I forced his eyes wide open and gave him two full blasts of pepper spray, one in each
eye. Seeing him suffer gave me a pleasure beyond my imagination and a pain beyond my tolerance. As much
as I was tempted to stab him in the chest with his knife, I chose not to.
I deserted my battered victim in my hazy streets of reverie and wok. And when I did, I found myself in an
emergency room. A doctor with the help of two nurses was tending to my broken knee and casting my
shattered fingers. I barely opened my burning eyes and noticed my crying mother listening to a police officer
telling her how they heard my screaming in the darkness and found me bleeding in the street corner.