14x23: Shady Teenage Best Friend

[00:00:00] This podcast contains adult language and content. Listener discretion is advised. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. Enjoy the show.

[00:00:41] I'm a 22-year-old female, and I was weeks away from college graduation and getting my bachelor's in theater arts. I only had a quarter credit left to get, so I was doing work in the theater department's costume shop to get that credit. It wasn't too hard for me to do this, since I know how to both hand-sew and use a sewing machine. I've spent time doing both things to mend or otherwise adjust garments for the actors.

[00:01:11] The show that I was working on was a musical with some pretty intricate costumes, so I was excited to have this challenge to help me with getting that financial bit of credit that I needed to graduate. The costume shop opened at around noon on the weekends, but I stayed up late on a Friday and woke up at around 1. After I woke up, I got dressed and went to the costume shop as quickly as I could, since I wanted to get every hour that I was able to.

[00:01:40] Nothing seemed to be out of the ordinary when I got there, but as I was approaching the theater building, something caught my eye. There was a man standing off to the side of the front entrance. The entrance was pretty open. There were some steps that led up to three sets of glass doors, which were flanked by two pillars. The building is an old one with an addition attached.

[00:02:04] The addition contained the actual theater, while the older part of the building contained mostly classrooms. The main entrance was closest to the way that I used to get backstage and into the costume shop. Anyway, this guy was kind of leaning against the stone side of the staircase. What caught my attention was that I didn't recognize this guy at all.

[00:02:28] I go to school on a very small campus, so when I see someone, I recognize their face, even if I don't know their name. He appeared to be college-aged, just like me. Physically, he was pretty ordinary looking, maybe a bit disheveled. His hair was kind of greasy, and he had on a t-shirt and some tattered jeans.

[00:02:51] But what was even weirder was that he was wearing this heavy winter parka, as well as snow boots, even though it was about 65 degrees. We made eye contact and nothing immediately skeeved me out. I'm an awkward person, so I just kind of gave a polite nod and a smile, and I think that was my first mistake. He didn't even smile back as his eyes followed me while I walked up the stairs and into the building.

[00:03:20] I thought that was strange, but tried to quickly brush it off as my campus most certainly had some weirdos on it. I found that my school in particular seemed to attract them. But as a senior, I was pretty sure I had all of the weirdos catalogued, and parka guy was not among my mental catalog of campus oddities.

[00:03:44] By the time I got down to the costume shop, I must have looked troubled because the person who was already down there, someone that I knew on a somewhat personal level, greeted me and then asked if something was wrong. I told them about the guy which amused them, and we speculated on who he could be for a while before they went up to check. However, he was gone by then. They informed me when they came back.

[00:04:10] So, I got to work and started sewing beach balls that had all been halved into bikini tops while I listened to the podcast. About three and a half hours later, the person who was there with me left, leaving me all by myself. By this point, I had moved on from the tops and was sewing some snaps onto the back of a blouse to make it fasten better. Then I took a break to work on a project that was due the upcoming Monday before getting back to sewing.

[00:04:40] I left my headphones off this time, as it was just me down there in the shop. For the next part, I'm going to have to give you a bit of an idea of the layout of the shop. It's in the basement of the building, and it's a bit hard to get to if you don't know your way around. The room is relatively large. It's sort of shaped like an irregular rectangle, but it's separated by the tables that are set up in the middle of the room, with the sewing machines on them.

[00:05:09] One side is the way in from the backstage behind the building's black box theater, as well as the dressing rooms, and then the other side leads out into this hallway that has doors leading into the auditorium, as well as an exit out of the building. Going in that direction also leads to the main costume storage room. Near the sewing machine tables is the door that leads outside and into what the costume director refers to as the weird little courtyard.

[00:05:38] When I was a freshman, I took a class with her, and she warned us not to go out there, since the door is locked from the outside. This means that if we go out there, we won't be able to get back into the building. The courtyard is less of a courtyard, as this is where the building's machinery for heating, cooling, and electricity is stored. It's all fenced in with chain-link fence about 15 feet high. The last thing I should mention is that the door leading out there

[00:06:07] is one of those doors that has a window. In this situation, I was sitting in a chair directly opposite this door, close to the wall across from it, so there was about 20 feet or so of space between me and this door. It was nearing 6, but since the show's dress rehearsal started that Monday, I wanted to get as much done as I could before I finished up and went to grab some dinner. I was working on sewing snaps onto a shirt when I heard a noise.

[00:06:35] It startled me, since I had settled into the rhythm of my task while focusing on what the host of the podcast that I was listening to was talking about. This made me drop my needle. It was still connected to the thread, so it wasn't lost. I bent over to pick it up from where it had fallen to the floor near my feet. When I lifted my head up from that bent position, I saw the source of the noise. My vision was a little obscured,

[00:07:04] because the space between me and the door was cluttered with a bunch of mannequins that the other members from the crew and I had been using to put costume pieces on. Even so, I saw through the window on the courtyard door that the courtyard was empty. I shifted to the side to get a better look, and there at the door was this parka guy. The noise that I heard was him trying to open the door. However, I have no idea how he got in there.

[00:07:33] That door was the only way into the courtyard. Somehow, he had to have scaled a fifteen-foot fence. I froze like a deer in the headlights, and for a moment time stood still as he stared at me, and I stared at him. His face was expressionless as he stared. That was when I realized that this entire situation was wrong. So I sort of settled back into my chair, unsure of what to do.

[00:08:04] During that handful of seconds, this parka guy started trying to open the door, which was, as I said before, locked, so he wasn't able to open it, thank God. It's puzzling to me now that he didn't just come in through the main entrance, as none of the doors leading down to the costume studio were locked. But maybe he tried that, and couldn't find it, since it was a little tricky to locate. Especially if you don't know your way around the building.

[00:08:32] In any case, I was beginning to get scared. The door leading into the studio was to my left, and on instinct, I got up close to it, since it locks from the inside, and you need a key to open it. Now, as I was moving close to the door, the guy began to pound on the courtyard door. My first instinct was to hide, instead of opening the fucking door that I had just closed, to book it out of there.

[00:09:00] So, I went into the small fabric storage room directly behind me, shut the door, and called the campus security. I'm not sure why I called them, and not the police, but that's what I did. Campus security ended up calling the police later. By the time security came to investigate, which was pretty fast, since I was terrified on the phone, the man had disappeared. I have no idea how he scaled that fence again in the time that it took them to arrive,

[00:09:29] but he was out of there by the time they came. Campus security escorted me back to my dorm, and even went to the dining hall with me while I picked up some dinner, since I was pretty shaken up, which I appreciated. A while later, an officer came to take my statement after being called by campus security, but as you can imagine, there wasn't much that they could do apart from keep an eye out for the guy. I still have no idea who he was, or why he was on campus, but it couldn't have been for a good reason.

[00:09:59] So, to the parka guy, who tried to break into the costume shop, let's not meet again. An investment in your hair is an investment in yourself, just like hitting the gym or upgrading your wardrobe.

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[00:12:23] We both worked at the same chemical manufacturing company. I was the night shift lead on my team, and we hired this guy, who I'll call Gabe. Gabe was somewhere around his late 50s or early 60s. I had to interact with him as the shift lead and trainer no matter what. At night, there was pretty much no one else on the premises besides my team and my fiancé's team on the other side of the building.

[00:12:51] Everyone else was gone after 2pm. So, I was in charge of my team and everything that had to get done. This is for context to demonstrate why my ability to avoid Gabe was extremely limited. And with that, let's get back to the main story. So, Gabe started talking to me about his type and preferences and women. I didn't see how this was relevant to me and made it clear that I didn't care

[00:13:20] what his preferences were while mentioning that I accepted that everyone had their own. I didn't want to make a big deal out of a seemingly small topic at the time. He proceeded to share his ideologies with me, and I remained aloof about the whole subject. His philosophy was along the lines of it's fine if women work temporarily, but eventually the goal is to settle down and have children. It works better

[00:13:47] to have one person working to pay bills while the other manages, all the household work. I'm quite aware that this is a life people are comfortable with, and I respect it. However, I don't personally agree that every household requires someone to stay at home to manage it at all times, nor do I think that if someone does that, it has to be a woman. But as far as these conversations went with Gabe, I didn't see any connection between them and me.

[00:14:17] I mostly just let him prattle on about whatever he wanted to get off of his chest. I treated it as if it weren't my business, as I genuinely believed that it wasn't. I'm not a traditional woman, and I figured, if anything, I was the opposite of his description of one anyway. As time went on, my fiancé was eventually let go for health reasons, and he had to go on unemployment. We only shared one vehicle, and I only had my driver's permit at the time,

[00:14:47] so I wasn't comfortable driving back home by myself at 1am. I gave my boss a three weeks notice just to ensure that I could bring everyone up to speed so they weren't screwed over in my absence. This was a notion that my boss very much appreciated, and when I told the team, Gabe started behaving in this disagreeable manner. During the first week of my three-week notice, I had a hickey on my neck. My boss knew about it

[00:15:17] and never made any complaint or anything against it. It wasn't overly common for me to have one, but it happened. I think that considering we didn't deal with customers directly, he didn't really care. But Gabe did. While I was working, he tapped on my shoulder. I assumed he had some kind of question, so I paused to listen. But he decided to address my hickey.

[00:15:45] Don't you think that's a little unprofessional? He said. I replied, No one that works here needs to put on a show for anyone. This isn't hindering my ability to work in any fashion. Well, he argued, what if it bothers other workers or our boss to have you parading your personal life around like that? I told him that if my boss found it unacceptable, I would make the extra effort to ensure that it didn't happen again. But considering no one has said anything to me before,

[00:16:15] led me to believe that no one cares, and neither did I. So you don't care if it hurts someone's feelings? He asked. No, I don't. Not really. I said. Anyone's feelings about my life, they aren't my concern. Anything they think about it is based on their own assumption. Whatever they're getting hurt by is essentially coming from their imagination. I thought that last question was such a strange one for him to ask.

[00:16:43] I felt that there was no reason that my hickey should hurt someone's feelings at work. But it didn't matter, as Gabe did not understand my point of view, and he just walked away. Then, while we were all on lunch break, Gabe sat across from me at the table. I was talking with the person who was next in line to be the lead when I noticed Gabe was holding his phone at a weird angle. I didn't want to accuse him of anything

[00:17:11] since I wasn't 100% sure about what he was doing, but my instincts told me that he was taking a picture of me while at work. This was later confirmed. During my last week on the job, I was officially fed up with Gabe. I had trained the girl who was going to take over as lead. I trained her in everything I knew as a lead during the first two weeks of my notice, so I told her that she would be calling all the shots during my final week. I told her to take over

[00:17:40] while I simply supported her if she needed it. I also informed her privately that I would not be conducting any verbal interaction with Gabe as I no longer needed to, and I said that I would appreciate it if she took charge of that, and she agreed. Unfortunately, Gabe took a different stance on this. He ultimately forced all kinds of conversation on me during my last week. I just don't think I can take orders from a woman, Gabe said.

[00:18:09] She can't be my boss. I reminded him that I had been his boss previously, and that the boss above me was also a woman. He simply just refused to accept it. I then told him that it didn't matter how he felt because I was leaving, and someone else was going to be in charge. So I told him that he could either accept that another woman was going to be in charge, or quit. It didn't matter to me. I also told him that I would no longer be answering his questions,

[00:18:38] and he would have to go to the new lead. Fate seemed to have it out for me after that, since on my last day, the new lead had an emergency, and she needed to leave early. We were also down another person, so it was just me and Gabe working that night, much to my displeasure. So, I was left with no choice but to direct him around during that shift. As we were leaving, he stopped me on my way out and asked me a question

[00:19:07] that glued all the pieces together. I know your boyfriend is unemployed right now, so how would you feel if someone asked you to leave your boyfriend for someone who could provide you with a house, a car, and everything you need? This made me lose it momentarily for two reasons. One, I love my fiancé, and we're currently going on six years together. And two, I've always worked hard for everything I have with my own two hands, so I took offense at being treated

[00:19:36] like some desperate damsel in distress who would be with somebody for money. I've never been shallow or materialistic. I answered his question honestly and I told him, I'd be extremely offended because that's not the kind of person I am. For someone to assume that I would leave my fiancé because of money indicates a lack of knowledge about me on their part, and it insults my character. And then I left, ready to never see or talk to him again. It was suddenly clear in the end

[00:20:06] that from the very beginning he was approaching me with romantic intentions. This was a pretty gross realization as our age gap disgusted me as well. I was easily over 30 years younger than this guy. I still had contact with the girl who took my place, and she told me that after I left, he was telling people that he and I were in love and I was going to leave my fiancé for him. He was showing people the picture that he took of me in the lunchroom that day when I suspected him of such. While I was grossed out that he did that,

[00:20:36] I was glad to at least have that confirmed. Three months later, he texted hey to me because I gave my number out to him as his boss. But I gave my number to all of the employees so that they could let me know if they couldn't come in. I told him to never contact me again, and I told him I only ever spoke with him because I was his lead. I told him there was no reason for us to speak to each other anymore. Then I changed my number to ensure that he could never contact me again.

[00:21:19] After hearing and reading all kinds of Let's Not Meet stories, I remembered something that happened to me and my two friends almost 20 years ago. The three of us were at the ripe age of five or six. We were already pretty good friends since our older sisters were in the same class, so we were pretty excited to join in on their school's field trip to Transylvania for a couple of days. When we were there,

[00:21:49] we visited numerous museums and other cultural and historical sites. On one of those days, we visited the ruins of a historical castle which was beside a village on a smaller mountain surrounded by forests and roads leading to bigger towns. Ruins like these are all over Transylvania, so it didn't have much infrastructure except for a parking lot and the roads connected to it. After the mandatory inspection of the ruins, the teacher allowed the class

[00:22:18] and us three kids to have an hour of free time for playing on the condition that we didn't go too far. During this time, we played hide-and-seek with the other kids in my sister's class. Both my friends and I had beef with our older sisters and we thought that this was an opportunity like no other to show them who the superior siblings were in our families. When it was our turn to hide, we came up with the plan to ignore the teenager's request and hide in place

[00:22:48] where they would never find us. So we started to run towards the ruins of the castle and hid in the parking lot behind it. It was a little further away than we were allowed to go from the place where the teachers and my sister's class were and we were definitely out of sight. We planned to scare the shit out of our sisters only to come out victorious after they had multiple panic attacks. As we were hiding, there were only a handful of cars

[00:23:17] and a person or two in the parking lot aside from us. The game had been going on for a while and we were hiding behind a car when an older man who appeared to be in his 40s approached us. He was around 5'7 and he had a mustache and a beer belly. It was obvious that he was listening in on us as we talked and giggled about what a great hiding spot we had found. With a smile, he suggested that we could hide in the back of his car.

[00:23:47] Then he pointed to an old and rather trashy looking car. This was the moment where any kid with a basic set of survival instincts would run back to the teacher and tell them everything. But one of my friends and I didn't meet that criteria. The guy even suggested that he would cover us with a couple of blankets once we were hidden inside the back seat. I was very excited about defeating my sister at this silly game. I didn't even realize how creepy

[00:24:17] all of this sounded. So I enthusiastically said, okay, as did one of my similarly excited friends. Luckily for us, the third kid in our group still had his sanity intact. So he politely declined and suggested that we go back to the teachers and the other students instead. The guy tried to convince us a couple of times, but I guess he didn't want to risk coming off as more aggressive as there was a whole class and teachers in the area nearby.

[00:24:48] So we left and walked back to the others, disappointed and confused as to why our friend didn't want us to opt for the hiding spot that this stranger was offering to us. We thought he was such a buzzkill. Afterwards, we didn't talk about what happened to our teachers nor to anyone else because, despite how weird it was, we didn't know for sure if the stranger was a bad guy or not. Looking back, this was probably a bad call on our part not to say anything,

[00:25:17] but we weren't the sharpest tools in the shed. Honestly, to this day, I'm not entirely sure if the guy wanted to do something horrible to us or if he was just being friendly, but looking back, his offer to let us hide in his car under the blankets was definitely creepy. Long story short, don't get into strangers' cars no matter how much it would piss off your sister. And to the stranger who was fully ready to store three kids in the backseat of his car, let's never meet again.

[00:25:56] This creepy situation happened to me a while ago. For context, I live in Germany and I'm currently 23 but I was 20 at the time. I was on my way home from a party in the city since I had been drinking. I took the tram and unfortunately, I had to get off at a stop because the tram I had gone on only went so far at that time, about three stops from my actual destination. Since it was dark and around 1 or 2 a.m., I didn't feel like

[00:26:26] walking through the forest to get home so I decided to wait 45 minutes for the next tram to arrive to take me closer to home. There were a few houses nearby, a public swimming pool and the forest, but at the tram stop, nobody was around. A woman then approached me. She appeared to be around 50 years old and she seemed quite confused but not threatening. She was wearing slightly ripped jeans and a backpack. She randomly asked me what my name was and I told her

[00:26:56] it was Tom. This was a fake name. She asked if I was also taking the tram and I let her know that I was. She then sat down on the ground and started telling me this story, warning me to be careful. She said she had some problems with some Bulgarians that involved pimping. It was so random that I couldn't really process what she was saying. She seemed intoxicated and also gave off the vibe that she might have had some kind of mental illness. Still,

[00:27:25] I felt like she needed someone to talk to and people like that can be unpredictable so I listened even though it didn't feel right. She kept talking about her daughter and her son and then later claimed that she didn't have a son even though I asked her how old he was when she initially mentioned him. She kept circling back to these Bulgarians like it was some kind of fixation. She mentioned that her daughter was a sex worker. She said that

[00:27:55] she didn't want that for her and she repeated that sentiment a lot. She asked if I had a girlfriend but before I could answer she immediately went back to talking about her daughter again. This went on for about 30 minutes until she finally asked me if I had a cigarette. I said I didn't have any so she started shaking her backpack out thinking that she might find one in there. Tissues and chains came out and then suddenly a knife fell out of the bag.

[00:28:24] It was like a small dagger. I was shocked to see it so I froze. However she kept rummaging around for those cigarettes while I was thinking this is getting way too creepy and the fact that she seemed unpredictable didn't help at all. She didn't find any cigarettes so she sat back down on the ground and said well I guess we're not smoking then. The knife that fell out of her bag was lying on the ground the whole time and I tried my best to ignore it.

[00:28:53] My instinct was to run but I didn't think that it would be a good idea. I didn't know what might happen if I tried so I tried to stay calm and kept the conversation going asking her random questions. She didn't answer any of them directly though she just kept rambling. Eventually she gathered her stuff and picked up the knife. She asked me if I thought it was cool so I just said yeah I think it's cool or something like that

[00:29:23] I had no idea what else to say. Then she said something that I'll never forget. I've only used it on the Bulgarian. No one touches my daughter. She said this in a serious tone and then laughed and said it was a joke. I forced a laugh but by then I was very creeped out. Thank God the tram arrived shortly thereafter. My goal was to sit at the very front near the driver just in case

[00:29:52] anything happened. But as I boarded the tram she stayed behind even though she was waiting for this same tram. I have no idea why but she just stood up and said goodbye to me and told me to stay the way that I am. When the tram doors opened I quickly boarded and she waved at me before disappearing behind a hedge. When I got home I thought about the interaction a bit more. This woman definitely had something going on with her.

[00:30:22] It was like she had two personalities. Sometimes she was serious and other times she was really warm and nice. I still don't know what her whole deal was with this Bulgarian. Maybe he didn't exist. Maybe she lost her daughter and made up this whole story as a way of coping. Or maybe her daughter really had been trapped in sex work and she was planning something.

[00:31:04] For some background the time and our daughter was two. We were on a road trip to go see family and about twenty minutes outside of the town that we lived in was a big gas station with a convenience store that had a wide variety of snacks. Whenever we would go on a trip we would always stop there for gas drinks and snacks. It was the middle of the day in the middle of the summer and we pulled in and my husband found

[00:31:34] a vacant pump to fill up our car at. We had all gone to the bathroom before leaving the house so I left our daughter in the car since he was right there filling it up. I went inside to fill up our water bottles and grab some snacks. This gas station was fairly large for the area. The bathrooms and water fountains were located off a fairly secluded highway. There was only one cashier and the line was kind of long so I decided to buy the snacks before going into the

[00:32:04] hallway to fill the water bottles on the way out to avoid having to stand in a longer line. Meanwhile, my husband had finished pumping gas and pulled into a parking spot in front of the building to wait for me. But all of the windows were covered with posters and stuff so I didn't even notice that he had moved. Anyway, while I was in line holding our snacks and water bottles in my arms, a couple of guys immediately got in line behind me. They were

[00:32:34] tall, I'd say probably 6 feet. For reference, I'm 5'10". I'm pretty tall myself. These guys were wearing very nondescript clothes, just some khaki shorts and plain grey t-shirts. I didn't hear them speak any English, I'm unsure of what language they were speaking. I didn't do because

[00:33:04] I had my daughter, I don't like it when there's someone directly behind me, even if it's family. So, I turned in a way to have those guys in my peripheral vision as I looked at a display of kids' toys while waiting for the cashier. One of the guys behind me was staring at me, and his expression was unsettling. He hadn't done anything though, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt and smiled, gave a half nod, and looked away while

[00:33:34] keeping them in my field of view. They were whispering among themselves, even though nobody could understand what their language was, and it wasn't exactly quiet in there. But I had this feeling that they were talking about me, because they both kept staring at me, and nobody else, even though the store was pretty busy. Then they shifted so that they were directly behind me again, I was uncomfortable with this, so I started looking at my phone. Every time I moved a bit,

[00:34:04] they'd move as well to ensure that they'd stay directly behind me. Every time, they would act like they were looking at something on a display. It seemed so forced. It was hard for me to believe that two grown men were genuinely interested in the unicorn toys right behind me. This kept happening over and over, a couple of times every minute, while we were waiting in line. They even went back and looked at something that they had already looked at. They went back to the same unicorn

[00:34:33] toy at least four times. I felt like I was crazy. I figured maybe one of them had a daughter or a niece who would like it, but every time I looked close enough, they were just staring at me and watching. I was very freaked out. But I kept telling myself that I had to be mistaken. But just to be safe, I decided not to fill the water bottles and just go straight to the car. It wasn't worth going to a secluded part of the store. I didn't want to risk it. I was

[00:35:03] still three people away from the front of the line. There was some sort of issue with the membership card that held up the line. more people had lined up behind the men. One of them was a middle-aged woman and her teenager who seemed to be about 13 or 14. The woman saw my discomfort and saw how they kept getting behind me over and over again. So, she sent her teenager over to see if the self-checkouts were open. At this particular gas station, there was only a

[00:35:33] 50-50 chance that they were. They were down a lot. Anyways, these men kept getting closer and closer. I had already gotten as close to the person in front of me as socially allowed, but these guys were breathing down my neck and even brushing up against me while they looked at the displays of candy and unicorns. I was contemplating leaving the snacks on the counter and walking out. The teenager then came back and must have whispered to the

[00:36:02] woman saying that the self-checkout was open. That woman then walked up to me, took me by the arm and led me to the self-checkout. From there, we watched each other's back while we checked out. I looked up and were still staring at me, and this time, they looked angry. They were about to come and talk to me when she grabbed my bag and my receipt for me and pulled me out of the store to walk me to my car. Somehow she was so smooth with everything, I

[00:36:32] don't even think her teenager knew what was going on. Once we were outside, I saw my car in front of the store with my husband and my kid inside. Before we parted ways, I gave her a hug and thanked her for helping me get out of there. I told my husband about everything, trying not to get too emotional about it. I stayed as calm as I could as I stated the facts about what those two guys were doing and how sketchy their behavior was. My husband was equally creeped out by my description of the events and wished that he had the chance to properly

[00:37:02] thank the woman who helped me. I filled our water bottles at the next gas station and we moved out of that area about six months later. If that woman happens to hear this podcast, you are a hero. Thank you. I don't think I can fully describe how deeply uncomfortable I was in that situation. I was genuinely scared that those men were going to follow me to my car.

[00:37:38] It was about four in the morning on one of those cold, damp London days when the air felt so heavy that it felt like it was clinging to you. It was then that I realized I had fallen down a video game rabbit hole. When I surfaced hours later, I noticed it was very late and I had completely forgotten to eat dinner. After a quick desperate scan of the kitchen, the worst was confirmed. There was nothing to eat. My only hope was for the

[00:38:07] 24-hour McDonald's down the road. It was about maybe a ten-minute walk away, mostly through quiet suburban streets that felt almost unnervingly still at that hour. So, I put a coat on and headed out into the pre-dawn gloom. I habitually stuck my earbuds in as I started scrolling through my phone to catch up on the messages and notifications I had blissfully ignored for the past several hours. In hindsight,

[00:38:36] I know exactly how this looks. Headphones in, plus having my face lit up by a phone screen. This equals being completely oblivious to the world around me. I was essentially making myself a prime target. I was about halfway to McDonald's when I registered movement just behind me. I glanced back and there was a guy, swallowed by an oversized hoodie, riding a bicycle. Except, it wasn't a normal bike.

[00:39:05] It was a pink children's bicycle. The tiny frame looked ridiculous underneath him. He wasn't going anywhere specific, just doing slow, wide loops in the empty street, always ending up just slightly behind me. Now, I've lived in London for about three years, definitely long enough to know that when you see weird stuff often enough, it becomes part of the background noise. So with that, my default programming kicked in.

[00:39:35] Keep your head down, keep walking, and don't make eye contact. He'll get bored. This is my standard operating procedure for navigating the city's low level strangeness. But then, he wasn't behind me anymore. He smoothly cycled up right alongside me, matching my pace. My ignore it strategy suddenly felt very thin as he then started muttering something.

[00:40:04] It was clear he wanted my attention. I reluctantly pulled out one of my earbuds, still walking, trying to convey casual indifference. My automatic defense mechanism fired off before I even properly heard him, and I said, I'm sorry, I don't have any change. That was when I made the mistake of actually looking at him. He wasn't asking for change. His eyes were locked onto mine, and there

[00:40:33] was a hard focused intensity there that immediately set off alarm bells. As my gaze flickered down, I noticed his right hand shoved deep into his front pocket of his hoodie, and he was now pushing the fabric outwards. It wasn't a slow, dawning realization, more like a sudden plunge into ice water. The casual weirdness evaporated, and was replaced by a cold, sharp-edged fear. That was when I properly registered

[00:41:03] what he was saying. He spoke low, but clear, and said, give me your phone. My feet kept moving, seemingly on autopilot, but the rest of me felt frozen. My brain felt like it was buffering, trying to process the demand against the very real possibility of what was in that pocket. Was he bluffing? Did he have a knife? Was this phone that I literally just got and definitely could not afford to replace, worth getting stabbed over?

[00:41:33] The mental calculus was going on in my head, and it was frantic and frightening. We were still moving forward, side by side, in this bizarre, terrifying standoff. I was staring straight ahead, hyper-aware that he was right beside me, and my mind was racing. And then we heard a sound. The distinct rumble of a car engine. After a brief moment of blinding light, headlights swept across the end of the street illuminating the junction just yards ahead.

[00:42:03] I shot a look back at the guy on the tiny pink bike. Then a thought flashed in my head. Run, make a break for the car, for the light. Before the thought could even translate into actions, the man on the bike abruptly swerved. He pushed off hard on the tiny pedals, cycling away rapidly down the street, disappearing back into the shadows as quickly as he initially appeared. I stood there for a second, heart

[00:42:33] hammering against my ribs. Then my next thought hit me. Shit, I still have to walk home. Needless to say, the McDonald's craving vanished instantly. On my way back home, the headphones stayed off, and my phone stayed deep in my pocket, clutched in my hand. I also gave the quiet suburban streets a wide berth. I took the long way around, sticking to the main road. It was noisy and chock-full

[00:43:02] of fumes, even during this 4am hour. The pavement was a narrow, neglected strip inches from speeding traffic. I felt horrible walking there, but it was definitely safer. The constant stream of headlights and the drone of the engines, they were unpleasant, but it meant presence. It meant I had company of some sort. Thankfully, the rest of the walk was uneventful, and no more unexpected cyclists emerged from the shadows.

[00:43:32] But let's just say to the guy on the tiny pink bike who was demanding my phone at 4am, let's definitely not meet again. Let me preface this by saying that I can be a paranoid person, but I knew this

[00:44:02] went a little too far. Growing up as an awkward teenager in a small town made it particularly challenging to make friends, at least any who had the same interests as I did. When my school got a new student, most people wanted to be his friend. He was a decently attractive guy who was artsy and pretty introverted. He never really talked to anyone, and I never thought that this was weird because, I mean, most teenagers

[00:44:32] are naturally that way. Most of the girls who took an interest in him were trying to hit on him, but I just wanted to be his friend. And we did end up being friends, but doing so led me to do some semi-risky things for about two years. I found myself going to places where I shouldn't have gone, shoplifting, dabbling with substances, and other stupid stuff. This guy was into all this spooky stuff.

[00:45:01] He liked all things spooky, artwork, animations, music, etc. I thought it was kind of cool. It was all dark and mysterious to me, which makes sense, as this type of media is meant to be ominous. He kept a bunch of journals of random things, but it was nothing that I was allowed to see. The one thing that he did share with me was that he had drawn some random cult-like figures, and he said that he wanted to create his own

[00:45:31] fake cult. After a while, I started to realize he wasn't in a good headspace. He was in and out of meetings with mental health specialists, and he had distant parents. Now, I was also a teen who struggled, but something about him was just a bit different. After I had this realization, he started making sketchy requests. He would beg me to go five hours out of town with him in the middle of the night. He was

[00:46:00] always trying to get me to sneak out with him. He tried to tell me that we would be back by morning, but I always said no since I could tell that he was getting more and more reckless. He did get me to agree to go with him to a shed that he said was abandoned once. But when we got there, it definitely was not abandoned. In that shed, we found pictures of dead animals and hunting gear. He seemed a little too fascinated by all of it,

[00:46:30] while I just wanted to get the hell out of there. Things got even stranger after that. He asked me to help him collect dead animals off of the roads. I wasn't down to do that, but I tried to keep an open mind. I remember thinking, maybe he's trying to get into taxidermy. But after a while, I had a feeling that his interest in this was a bit more sinister. This was confirmed when I was over at his house one day and I found multiple beach blankets

[00:46:59] containing dead animals that had been on his property for weeks on end. It smelled so bad. It was so gross and frankly terrifying. I stopped speaking to him after that. Eventually, he reached back out to me and asked to be friends again, but I said no. After that, the only thing I've heard about him was that he was going to a mental hospital. So to my former shady teenage best friend, I hope you got better.

[00:47:29] However, let's not meet again. Thanks for listening and stick around after the music if you're a patron for your extended version of this week's episode. If you'd like to get access, head over to patreon.com forward slash let's not let's not meet podcast to sign up and support the show today, where you'll get access to ad free versions of all of our episodes at a higher bit rate, plus bonus

[00:47:59] content every week with stories you won't hear anywhere else. And be sure to check out the new episodes of my other podcasts like Odd Trails, Cryptic Encounters in the Old Time Radio Cast at crypticcountypodcasts.com and follow me on Twitch at twitch.tv slash crypticcountypodcasts.com for my live streams. This week you have heard He Was Outside My Window by Miko, The Guy Who Took Pictures of Me at Work by Conventional Boss Phoenix, Almost Goddess Kidnapped by Illustrious Cry

[00:48:29] 2952, Strange Lady with a Knife by Epic 76, Two Creeps in a Gas Station by Musician Waste 2959, Nearly Mugged at 4am by Will 11600, And finally, Shady Teenage Best Friend by HXVS BXBS BXBZBS There, I said it. All of the stories you've heard this week were narrated and produced with the permission of their

[00:48:58] respective authors. Let's Not Meet, a true horror podcast is not associated with Reddit or any other message boards online. Send your stories to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com to hear them on the show. We are currently working on booking some more live dates for Let's Not Meet this year. Probably sometime later in the year. I'm thinking November or December at this point. I'd love to hit some of the states in the Midwest or the East Coast, as I know a lot of you have been requesting that we come that way.

[00:49:27] So keep your ear to the ground for some updates there. You can follow me on Instagram at letsnotmeetcast. The link is also in the show notes. I usually get all of my updates out there first thing. Thank you all so much. We'll see you next week. Everybody stay safe.

[00:50:11] This happened to me in 2016 when I was in Turkey for the summer with my friend. We'll see you next week.