Glass Jar

There was a long pause before he replied.\n\n\nWhat happened [[last time?|Moment]]\n

You try to compose yourself. A moment later you reach out and unlock the door.\n\nHe climbs in. He doesn’t say anything. For a couple of minutes the two of you just sit there, silent.\n\n“The area looks safe,” he tells you. “Empty, actually. It's pretty late. Ready to go [[home?”|Kind]]\n

I’m still here, he [[replies.|Here]]\n\nGo on.\n

You consider yourself lucky. No matter what has happened before. Or what may possibly happen.\n\nYou [[type:|email]]\n

It looked like an old man. Someone hunched. Not a beggar. He looked like a man who lived in the area. Maybe wanted to ask me something.\n\nI rolled down my window.\n\nNext thing I know there was water sprayed on my face.\n\nAt least I thought it was [[water.|House]]\n\n

How peculiar to live in fear, and yet be fear-free online, where everyone is faceless.\n\nYou wonder if he thinks you’re a phony. You wonder if he has been just humoring you for the past two hours.\n\nHe sends a message: [[Are you still there?|Think]]\n

Calm down.\n\nYou are at home and you are safe. That’s what’s important.\n\nDo you think you’d feel safer if you called [[the police?|Scoff]]\n

The raid on that house was all over the news, he replies, and you are grateful.\n\nI’m so sorry, he continues.\n\nI don’t know what else to say.\n\nI don’t know how to [[help|Help]] you.\n\n

You probably think I’m [[crazy.|Him]]

It was a quick walk. Ten minutes later and there is a man, a bit older than you, approaching your car. \n\nYou notice him standing at a distance, hands deep in his jacket pockets, not wanting to spook you.\n\nYou are sitting in the backseat, your heart hammering. You reach up and turn on the interior light. \n\nYou wave. He doesn’t wave back, but he steps closer.\n\nYou roll down the window. He looks in.\n\n“Hello,” he says. He looks a bit confused, a bit [[surprised.|Scar]]\n

You tell him where.\n\n\n\nHe replies, his answers pinging and echoing inside where you are.\n\nThat’s two streets away from me. \n\nI know the area – that place is well-lit. \n\nCan you [[see|Try]] who it was?\n\nWill you be able to describe him?\n

You are sitting in the driver’s seat. You are fixing the rearview mirror.\n\nHe stares at you, wide-eyed. His confusion is fading. The fear is coming now, and when it comes in full force it will hit him like a blow to the head, like a rusty, metal hook pushed through the chin. When the old man tries to tie his hands, he screams and struggles, and the other man restrains him, punches him in the face.\n\nFish in a glass jar, you think, and drive away. \n\n

He is [[taunting|Know]] me.

So they could help me the way they helped me [[last time?|Pause]] you type, surprised at how angry you have become.

You tell him:\n\nTwo years ago. I was sitting in my car. I heard a sound and looked up, and someone was tapping his finger on the [[window.|Window]]\n

[[Hello?|Are]]

Up to this moment he thought you were just having stalker trouble. A frightened soul who stays up too late worrying, finding comfort in the company of [[strangers|Strange]].

He [[knows|Response]] where I live.

I’m in my car, you [[say.|Knock]]

“The police thought I was a woman too the first time I filed a report,” you say, smiling so he won’t feel embarrassed. On the forums – about violence, about stalking – everyone thinks everyone else is a woman, which makes you sad. Predators prowl those places, wanting a woman to protect, a woman to abuse. They are kind enough to listen to your fears until you reveal that you are male. \n\n“I’m a counselor,” he says, “at the high school. Most of the kids I see are female, yes. I assumed you were female. A wrong assumption, of course. How are you holding up? Why are you in the [[backseat?”|Laugh]]\n

Glass Jar

He doesn’t look rattled. He must have heard worse things from all those high school students. “I’m not sure that’s true,” he says.\n\n“If you pour bleach in the glass jar,” you say, “the fish would asphyxiate in a matter of seconds.\n\n“If you shoot me in the head that would be the end of me. No miracle. No turning back.\n\n“In this car right now, you are God.\n\n“Anywhere you are, if you sit with a promise of violence, you are God.\n\n“Should I kill him now, yes or no? Every choice you make is a miracle.\n\n“Isn’t that fascinating?\n\n“Isn’t that [[exhilarating?”|Tap]]\n

He is typing.\n\nYou consider yourself lucky because there is at least one person on this godforsaken forum who still listens to you.\n\nHe hits Enter and you [[read|Calm]]\n

You think you’ve [[lost|Reply1]] him.

I was just about to step out when someone tapped on the window.\n\nThree times now.\n\nLeft window.\n\nRight window.\n\nLeft window.\n\nI’ve been sitting here for [[two hours.|Questions]]\n\n

He has a kind voice. A voice you can trust.\n\nYou say, “I have this recurring dream.”\n\nYou say, “I am in this old, dusty storeroom. The windows have been boarded up.”\n\nYou picture it then, the thin slashes of yellow light leaking through the slats in the boards. \n\n“There are all sorts of things on the shelves,” you continue. “And they are all rotting."\n\nBread dark-green and fuzzy with mold, you think. Tomatoes liquefied with decay. Chunks of meat crawling with maggots. Chicken breasts black with flies. \n\n"On one shelf, I lift a big glass jar filled with water," you continue. "Small, silver fish swim inside the jar. And it hits me – as it hits me, night after night – that the world is just a repository of things that rot. We are fish in a [[glass jar.|True]] Fascinating, interesting, beautiful, but we rot in the end, just the same.”\n

He says, I could walk over there and scout the area.\n\nKeep you [[company.|Heart]]\n

You chuckle. “When I heard the knock on the door I dove back here,” you say. You laugh, nervous, relieved, and suddenly you start to cry.\n\n\nHis face softens. “Would you like me to [[sit|Compose]] with you for a moment?”\n

I was [[bleeding|Place]] in places I couldn’t tell you.

Months after that, the police raided a house in the area where I was taken. The house smelled like rotting meat.\n\nThey went to the kitchen and found naked boys and girls hanging from hooks by their chins. \n\nTethered like goats for [[slaughter.|Contact]]\n

I am not at home, you say, and your hands [[tremble.|Car]]\n\n\nWhat? he responds.\n

You try to compose your thoughts.\n\nYou know what -- \n\n\nYou stop. Breathe. Think.\n\n\nI am parked right beside a lamppost.\n\nBut I can’t see anyone – \n\nBut the noises are – \n\nYou stop again.\n\n\nI’m so sorry.\n\n\nI am scared of my own [[shadow.|Drop]]\n\n

A man peers in. An old man. His gray eyebrows disappear into the shadow of his cap as he lifts them in surprise, or amusement. \n\nHe looks at you, looks at him, and [[laughs.|Open]]

Sometimes I think I’m going [[crazy.|Hello]]

The messages began last year. \n\nI would get them every day, then they would stop for several months, then I would get them again.\n\nOf course I told the police. But they couldn’t do anything about it. He changes his number every time he texts me. \n\nEventually the police got bored of my panic-stricken calls, and I grew sick of their indifference.\n\nThere is nothing I can do. There is no one out there who could help me.\n\n [[So.|So]]\n

I don’t know exactly how long I stayed in that room. It felt like years. I blacked out again, and when I opened my eyes I was back in my [[car.|Back]]

Am I? you think.\n\nYou type: I need to tell you [[something.|Something]]\n

Your heart race.\n\nYou would do that?\n\n\nHe says: It’s a quick walk from where I am.\n\nJust so you could leave the car and enter your apartment.\n\nWhat color is your [[car?|Color]]\n

Minutes [[pass.|Reply]]\n

Someone taps on the window of your car, on the side where you are sitting. You hear a gasp come from him. His hand shoots out to stop you.\n\n"No!" he shouts. "What are you doing?" But you are already rolling down your [[window.|Peer]]\n

You are [[helping,|Sleep]] you say.

Are you [[there?|You]]

When I woke up, I had my cheek pressed against the floor. I was in a dark room. Single window, boarded up. Little threads of yellow [[light|Light]] leaking through the slats in the boards.

I was gone for less than four hours.\n\nNo one at home even noticed I had been [[missing.|Later]]\n

He sent me a [[message|Message]] again.

You tell him.\n\nI don’t want to inconvenience you, you add, and realize how ridiculously formal it sounds, considering how ridiculously bizarre the situation is.\n\nYou are not, he says. I’ll be wearing a blue jacket. See you [[soon.|Walk]]\n\n

You should probably sleep, if you can, he says. Get some [[rest.|Bed]]

But please promise me that you’ll say anything but Call the police. Because they are useless.\nYou type: [[Are you still there?|There]]\n

Oh my god, he says.\n\nWhere are you parked right [[now?|Tell]]\n

Eliza Victoria

He said I left a chocolate bar and a bottle of shampoo on the counter.\n\nHe said I should come back and scold the boy who bagged my groceries.\n\nHe said I should take better care of myself. Be more observant. Pay more [[attention.|Taunt]]\n

You’d like to believe the surprise comes from the sight of the scar on your face traveling up to your right cheek, its origin the puckered skin on the underside of your chin, a blossom, an explosion, radiating outward and upward. Where the hook was, where the hook traveled as you were lifted and brought down, an afterthought, the scar left by a changed mind. \n\n\nBut you bet your good money the surprise comes from the fact that you are [[not a woman.|Not]]\n

You open the car door, and the old man takes your place in the backseat. Another man, big and hard as a boulder, enters through the other side and sits in the back as well.\n\nHe looks around, sandwiched between the newcomers, too shocked, like all the others, to even feel fear, to even form words to ask the questions.\n\nThe questions usually are: Who are these people? What is happening? What are you [[doing?|Do]]\n\n