A morning walk in the courtyards

The story I want to tell is absolutely true and happened to me more than 10 years ago. As fate would have it, I found myself temporarily unemployed and went for interviews at various organizations. There were days when I did not have to go anywhere and those days were the hardest for me because I was not used to sit idly by and needed the money. I was slowly getting depressed or had already had a good night’s sleep, so I had a hard time falling asleep and waking up at dawn or dusk.

That’s the preface, but here’s the story itself. It was summer, a day off from looking for work. I woke up early again and, not knowing what to do with myself (at home I had done almost everything and had no money to please myself with shopping), I decided to just go for a walk “wherever you can see”.

It was about 7:00 a.m. when I came out of the house. The weather was nice and warm, and I took my time walking. And I felt compelled to walk through the courtyards – the area to the colicky native, all bored, so I decided to turn in yards, to please the eye with new “views”. I go, silence, no one, and then noticed out of the corner of my eye, that a guy is following me. Well, he goes and goes, tell you, I’m not paranoid! But have you ever had the feeling that it was from this man that danger was coming, and not from another man walking behind you or past you in the same way?

It was about 7:00 a.m. when I came out of the house. The weather was nice and warm, and I took my time walking. And I felt compelled to walk through the courtyards – the area to the colicky native, all bored, so I decided to turn in yards, to please the eye with new “views”. I go, silence, no one, and then noticed out of the corner of my eye, that a guy is following me. Well, he goes and goes, tell you, I’m not paranoid! But have you ever had the feeling that it was from this man that danger was coming, and not from another man walking behind you or past you in the same way?

I decided not to pay attention to him yet, but after a while I noticed that he was really following me. I wandered around the courtyard completely aimlessly, and he follows me, the same way, for half an hour now.

Then I decided to check it out – I dropped something from my pocket and stopped to pick it up. I turned around a little, and out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that he had stopped, too. And the rest was classic: I sped up my steps, he sped up, I slowed down, he slowed down. And as a sensible person, I knew that I had to end it, to get out of the courtyard, and he was already beginning to shorten the distance between us.

And it should be noted that our neighborhood is green, every yard is overgrown, there are few roads, and those that are, you can jump over in three jumps.

I roughly oriented myself as to where I was and how much further I had to go to the road, at least some road, but still… I had to walk another ten minutes. But, as it turned out, I had to walk in a fairly “green” yard with lots of trees and bushes – everything, as it should be. So I turned toward the road, and then the guy who had been following me must have figured out my maneuver and sped up. Apparently, he’s a local, too. Yes, I knew how to walk theoretically, but practically, I’d never walked these yards before. And what I saw before my eyes shocked me. No, I hadn’t reached a dead end, but ahead of me I saw an incomprehensible structure, a kind of one-story brick house, but standing so awkwardly in my way, and so neatly shrouded in trees and bushes, that I was really, to put it mildly, frightened. I even hesitated for a few seconds, stopping and turning around. The guy was walking defiantly toward me. Not only that, but I didn’t even know what was behind the cabin or where the path around it would take me. I could hear the sound of passing cars, and I knew that I was going the right way, but I had no idea what other obstacles were waiting for me.

And the guy, meanwhile, apparently realized that I’m just a rush and that I do not know where to go, accelerated his step and was literally 10 meters away from me.

I, on cotton legs that wouldn’t listen to me when I wanted to run and that literally shook for some reason, could barely make it down the path and was afraid to even imagine what was behind the damn house. I turned around from the heavy breathing of the guy behind me and saw that he was already 5 meters away from me, and my legs still do not obey, and I can not even speed up my step.

Already when I reached the corner of the building I finally saw such a picture: it turned out that we were in the courtyard of the store, which was located on the first floor of an apartment building. There was a bench, literally fifteen meters away from the damn house, facing the same house, on which three strong uniformed guards were sitting, smoking peacefully. They stared at me coming out of the corner with dazed eyes.

At that moment I turned around for the last time to see “my” maniac. He, not yet seeing what I had seen, thought he had finally caught up with me, and reached out his hand to grab me by the collar of my jeans. But he missed me, quickened his pace, and followed me to the bench with the guards.

With the words”… mother!” he turned around and ran away so fast that only his heels were flashing.

I finally got out on a busy road, didn’t tempt fate anymore, and got on a bus to get home.

Sophie Hayes Member since 12/02/2020

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