4x21: She Tried To Drown Me

[00:00:00] This podcast contains adult language and content. If you have a story to share, send it to letsnotmeetstories at gmail.com. Enjoy the show. Hello, I'm French so I apologize in advance if I make any mistakes.

[00:00:28] As I just said, I live in France and this story happened in the summer, just after lockdown ended. I was and am still 19. After the lockdown ended, I went to my grandparents to spend a few weeks.

[00:00:44] I got tested before and there were no problems. My grandparents live in a small city in the north of France and they have a dog who is quite a big dog. When I was really young, I lived with my

[00:00:58] grandparents for a year and at that time the dog was only a puppy. Her name was Chippy in French, which means little devil in English but in an affectionate way. When I was living there,

[00:01:09] I played with her a lot. We're both really close and that will have its importance later. Two of my hobbies are having long walks and running. Thus, every evening I was going out

[00:01:23] for a long walk with the dog. There's a track that follows a path through the forest, then there's a small hill and on top of that, a big place with lots of fields there. I run

[00:01:35] there a lot so I know the place. The air is fresh and the view is quite beautiful. I went there every day. The first time we went, nothing special happened. It's about a 6-7

[00:01:45] kilometer walk so it's basically an hour. The next day when we arrived at the top of the hill and the field, it was probably around 10pm but there was still some light because it was summer.

[00:01:56] There were three other people walking in the fields. They were younger than me, probably about 15 or 16. I also noticed that they were smoking so my guess was that they used to

[00:02:07] come here so that they wouldn't be seen by their parents. We just went past them. I greeted them and they greeted back. Once again, nothing special. For a whole week, I did this walk around

[00:02:21] the same time, 10pm and passed by those same three guys with nothing special happening. The second week, as usual, I went for the walk with the dog and we arrived at the fields. There

[00:02:35] was only one of those three boys. He wasn't smoking this time though. When he saw me, I was at the entrance of the field just after the little hill climb so the entrance of the forest

[00:02:49] was just behind me. He did a sign with his hand to catch my attention and asked if I had a lighter, which I actually had in my pocket so I told him yeah sure. So he walked over to me with hands in

[00:03:02] the pockets of his hoodie. When he came near, for some reason I felt a shiver. It's crazy how sometimes your instincts, they just know that there is a problem. But you don't listen to it

[00:03:15] because nothing looks weird to you. I handed over the lighter when he passed by. At that moment, my dog was just staring at him. Then everything happened really fast. He made some movement with

[00:03:31] his hand coming out of his hoodie. The only thing I saw was something shiny. I had this reflex movement of throwing myself back, so hard that I fell down actually. I realized that it was a knife

[00:03:44] that he was holding and he tried to stab me. What saved me is my dog. When she saw the guy trying to stab me, she jumped up on him and he fell down. As I said before, it's a very big dog. I immediately

[00:04:02] got up to my feet and heard something behind me. From the entrance of the forest, I saw two guys wearing animal masks running for me. They were probably the two friends. I looked down at the

[00:04:15] dog and told her, run. I started running and she followed. But I heard the worst possible thing from the guy who got up. He said, catch him. Don't let him go. At this moment, I was completely terrified,

[00:04:32] running and hearing them running behind me. I was only thinking, how long will they follow me? Who the hell are they? This was the first time in my life I was happy that I was a runner. I was

[00:04:45] clearly better than those guys. That totally saved me because they chased me for what felt like an eternity. Fortunately, at the end of the field, there's another entrance to the forest. It meets

[00:04:57] at a road. I heard the steps of the three guys vanish just as I arrived at the end of the forest, though I didn't stop running until I arrived at my grandparents' house and locked myself in.

[00:05:10] I caught a big breath and gave a huge hug to my dog. I saw in her eyes that she totally understood what happened and I've never been so happy to have her in my life. After that,

[00:05:23] I told everything to my grandparents. We called the police, but they didn't find anyone. I don't really know what these guys wanted, but the animal masks kind of made me think about Satanists. I don't really know. I still do long walks with Chippy,

[00:05:36] the hero dog, but now I go earlier and to places with a lot more people. I hope you enjoyed this story and I apologize again if I made any mistakes. And to the three guys in the forest, let's not ever meet again.

[00:06:04] When I was about 9 years old, 6 years ago, I would go to the local park with my friends to hang out and mess around. You know, typical things that 9 year olds would do.

[00:06:15] One day, when we were at the park, we met a kid named Ronin. Ronin had dirty blonde hair, slightly darker skin than the rest of us and claimed that he was Russian.

[00:06:26] We believed him because his mother would speak to him in Russian. At first, we didn't believe him. My friends and I became quick friends with Ronin because he was a pretty sound guy and we shared a

[00:06:38] lot of the same hobbies such as climbing trees, soccer, etc. This went on for a couple of weeks and it was all good. Then, things got weird. Ronin would begin to brag about how he knew

[00:06:52] how to use weapons and how he could beat anyone who was older than him up. We all thought that he was just trying to impress us but as our friendship progressed, he started to say more

[00:07:04] graphic things to us like how back in Russia, his dad owned a shotgun and would take care of anyone who wronged him with it. When Ronin said take care, we didn't know what he meant but I know now

[00:07:20] that it meant killing a person. One such story was how back when he was living in Russia, some bullies from his school found him alone in a park and proceeded to peel all his skin off by

[00:07:33] hand. He then said that when his teacher found him, he was nothing but a bloody mess. Ronin then explained how he got out of the hospital and he had bandages all over and he looked like a mummy.

[00:07:47] The story ends with Ronin's dad tracking down the teenagers who skinned him and executing them with his shotgun. My friend and I called bullshit on it but at the time, we were disturbed that he could come up with such a gruesome and violent story.

[00:08:02] Eventually, my friends began telling their parents about the stories and needless to say, the parents would now accompany us to the park. The last time I hung out with Ronin, it was when I was 11 years old. My friend and I were hanging out at the park

[00:08:18] when Ronin walked up to us. Ronin told us that he had something to show us and to follow him into the wooded area of the park. Now, being 11 years old, we were supposed to be more mature

[00:08:30] than when we were 9, right? Unfortunately, that's not the answer and we followed him into the wooded section of the park. Ronin led us to a lone tree stump in the center of the woods

[00:08:42] and gestured for us to come to him. Ronin was looking at something behind the stump, so we all looked as well and what we saw disgusted us. Ronin was showing us a dead fox that looked

[00:08:56] like it had been dead for days. Its fur was falling off and you could see its rotting flesh. My friend shouted, what the fuck? At Ronin and asked why he would be showing us that. Ronin simply replied with, because it's cool to look at.

[00:09:16] This is when we figured out Ronin wasn't all there in the head and we promptly walked out of the woods, leaving Ronin behind. From that day forward, we began to see Ronin less and less.

[00:09:30] We would see him walking alone by himself but we wouldn't go over to him. By the time we were 12, he had stopped coming to the park. When we all finally went into secondary school, we'd forgotten Ronin and we were focused on our school life instead.

[00:09:46] One day during the Easter holidays, my friend and I decided to meet up at the local park which we hadn't been to since primary school. It was there that we finally learned what happened to

[00:09:58] Ronin. We encountered a student that was from the local public school. My friends and I are in private school 20 minutes away from our homes. We had a chat with the student and I brought up Ronin. The instant I brought Ronin into the conversation, the student's face turned very

[00:10:17] solemn. I asked what happened to Ronin and the student told me that he had moved to a different neighborhood because he had been kicked out of school for savagely beating up a classmate.

[00:10:29] When I asked why he had beaten up his classmate, the student said that it was because Ronin's classmate had pissed him off by constantly calling bullshit on his gory stories. I still wonder

[00:10:41] sometimes how Ronin is managing out there and they hope he gets the help that he needs but until then, Ronin let's not meet. The story happened around 4 years ago when I was 15 and we moved into this

[00:11:06] house. It was in a very small tourist town. The school was K-12 and in one building and the population was 700 when it wasn't tourist season. There was a weird druggie that everyone knew and

[00:11:20] hated. He lived in one of his parents' houses and didn't pay rent so they decided to kick him out. My parents were friends with the family and helped take care of his kids when he couldn't so we were

[00:11:33] on pretty good terms. They gave the druggie who I'll call D for short 30 days to move out for failing to pay a single rent check. We weren't doing very well at all financially and needed

[00:11:45] somewhere to stay or rent. We began talking to D's parents about the house and they said that we could begin renting to buy as soon as he moves out. The 30 day mark came around and we asked D if he was

[00:12:01] ready and he acted like he knew nothing about what we were talking about. His parents said that they were just going to give him some extra days and help him move his stuff so we waited another month.

[00:12:12] We only had a few days to move out of the current place we were staying. We went to the house and went inside. All of D's stuff was still there. We decided that we couldn't wait and just bagged up

[00:12:24] his stuff and told him to pick it up. Fast forward about a year, we always heard scurrying like mice and stuff in the ceiling. But we do have a lot of strange animals like mice,

[00:12:37] snakes, lizards, chinchillas, etc. One of our four snakes went missing from its closed tank with clips holding the lid down. There were no holes anywhere to be found. We didn't think anything

[00:12:52] of it but it was a bit strange. Eventually we started hearing louder sounds and our dad said that it was just the house settling. Stuff was disappearing from the fridge, electrical bills

[00:13:04] went up, we smelled smoke, etc. Us kids got blamed for all of it and we got our phones and my pc taken away. But the power bill was still up and I also got blamed for smoking in the house. So I was

[00:13:20] grounded until graduation. I was mad because I did not smoke in our house. Well, I was unbelievably bored one day not being able to do anything so I decided to explore the attic. I opened the door.

[00:13:35] Holy shit! I yelled. My mom then came right up the ladder ready to beat me and saw it too. A bed, microwave, mini fridge, cigarettes, unsmoked blunts, etc. Guess who? It's D.

[00:13:53] He then came back that night. It was through my little sister's window. He was higher than I had ever seen a person and admitted to a bunch of stuff and we recorded it. He took a snake and let it

[00:14:11] loose to get rid of the mice. He smoked in our house. He snuck in through my little sister's room every night. In court, he admitted to making a small hole in the floor of the attic

[00:14:23] to watch my 11-year-old sister sleep at night. We changed all the locks, got a ring doorbell, placed higher security locks on all the windows, and more. The worst part of all, this creep only

[00:14:37] got 6 months probation for marijuana possession which wasn't yet legal in my state. He only got 1 year of prison for breaking and entering. For an entire year almost every single day.

[00:14:53] What kind of bullshit system is that? He did have to pay a pretty heavy fine for damages and had to pay us back for years worth of our electrical bill. We are now out of debt and my parents

[00:15:05] are living steadily because he finally finished paying all the fines to us. My sister has to go to a therapist though, twice a week. And she might never get another good night's sleep.

[00:15:26] This happened when I was a child so some of the details are pretty hazy. Like my exact age. Also English isn't my first language so apologies in advance for any mistakes. Not far from where I

[00:15:38] lived as a child, there's a place where one of the local rivers cascades over an old weir. And it's a really beautiful spot to bathe or swim during the summer.

[00:15:50] The water upstream from the weir is nice and calm. The river has a lot of fish and lots of pretty flowers on the riverbanks. There's even a small kiosk and a place where you can rent paddle boats.

[00:16:04] If the weather is nice, there are usually a lot of people of all ages picnicking, sunbathing, swimming, fishing and just hanging out. Families, couples, teenagers, seniors, everybody likes to

[00:16:16] go there. When I was a kid, my mom would take me there pretty often and it was always a lot of fun. Usually I wanted to play in the water for hours and my mom would quickly retire to our picnic

[00:16:30] blanket and pick up a book. I could already swim fairly well at the age of six but she still watched me closely when I was younger. So I would estimate that I was at least eight when this

[00:16:41] happened but not older than 11. It was a beautiful warm summer day at the river. My mom was reading her book and she let me explore the area and go swimming on my own. As was normal on days like

[00:16:56] these, there were a lot of people and especially a lot of teenagers up at the crest of the weir where most people entered the water. I'm afraid I don't remember the details of how it happened but

[00:17:08] I sort of befriended one of the teenage girls there. She was there on her own and since I still was very young, I thought she was so mature and cool basically just for being an older girl who

[00:17:21] was doing things on her own. No idea how old she really was. As for everybody who was older than you at that age, they're just old but looking back I would guess between 14 or 16. She was really nice

[00:17:34] to me and seemed to enjoy hanging out with me and I started to feel like she was kind of an older sister for a while which was nice. We spent some time exploring the riverbanks, diving, watching fish

[00:17:46] and chasing each other around. At one point we ended up at a spot where the water was about chest high for my friend and neck high for me and we were close to a group of other teenage girls who

[00:17:58] were probably about the same age as my new friend. I noticed one of them seemed very reluctant to get into the water and complained that it was freezing. I was still a pretty loud mouth and rash child at

[00:18:12] the time, a far cry from how I am now and also very proud of my clearly superior swimming skills so I turned to my friend and said something pretty harmless about the girl being a big wuss or

[00:18:26] something like that. That wasn't loud but she heard. Her head snapped up and she immediately jumped into the water and came at me shouting, what did you say? What did you say about me?

[00:18:41] I was freaked out because her reaction was so sudden and she seemed so enraged in a way that was way disproportionate to what I had said. I opened my mouth to defend myself somehow

[00:18:55] and maybe deescalate but before I even knew what was happening she grabbed me and pushed me under the water. I struggled for a moment and she let me come up again. I think I heard my friend

[00:19:08] protest in the background but I was mostly concerned with the girl who still had a death grip on both of my shoulders. She stared at me with a look that made me very uncomfortable like she was fighting

[00:19:21] with herself or trying to control herself. What did you say to me? She screamed at me again. As scared as I was, I resented how helpless I felt and that I was being humiliated in front of this

[00:19:35] cool girl that I had just befriended so I resolved not to show any weakness. You know this obnoxious thing that kids do when someone tells them off and they just start giggling and laughing? Like

[00:19:47] they're laughing at you because they don't want anyone to see that they feel bad? I did that. I laughed right in her face and right away she forced me underwater again and held me down for quite a

[00:19:59] bit longer than the first time. When I was able to come up again, she screamed right in my face. You think this is funny? You like that? You want to laugh at me, you little bitch?

[00:20:13] I was coughing up water by this point and drooling all over myself but I didn't know what else to do or say to make her stop and the only thought that I had left in my head was that I couldn't show

[00:20:25] weakness. So I laughed at her again and I may or may not have made another remark to the effect that unlike her I didn't mind a little water. I'm not sure anymore. What I distinctly remember

[00:20:38] though and I'll always remember is her eyes in that moment. It's hard to describe but the closest I can get is by telling you that something seemed to leave her eyes. Some spark or whatever you want

[00:20:55] to call it that normal sane people have. It just flickered and went out. It suddenly looked like her eyes were just two pieces of hard painted glass stuck inside her face and there was nothing behind

[00:21:10] them. I would have apologized then and begged her to leave me alone but it was too late. She grabbed me by the throat and by the hair and pushed me underwater again. I struggled as hard as I could

[00:21:26] swirling up mud from the riverbed, grabbing at pebbles but it didn't help. I thought surely, surely she will let me up any minute. She just wants to scare me really bad but I was running

[00:21:42] out of air quickly and her grip on my throat did not ease up even a little bit. I tried scratching her arm but I was starting to lose any sense of where up or down was or what I was grabbing at.

[00:21:57] When I opened my eyes everything was just muddy brown and full of bubbles. I realized I was going to drown right here. I was actually being killed by this complete stranger while the sun was shining

[00:22:10] peacefully and we were surrounded by happy families and nobody realized what was happening. I'm grateful that I don't remember fully what that felt like. When I try to think back at that moment I just get this feeling of utter helplessness and loneliness and then suddenly I was breathing

[00:22:31] air. I was completely disoriented coughing and puking up water but there was a lot of shouting around me. My friend was holding me above water and shouting in the direction of the group of

[00:22:43] girls who were forcefully leading my attacker away while she was screaming at me and my friend while her friends were screaming at her. Just a whole lot of noise in general and I have no recollection of what anyone was saying. I was busy enjoying the air again.

[00:23:02] After I had calmed down somewhat my friend apologized for stepping in so late saying that she and the other girls took a moment to process what was actually happening before they started

[00:23:11] to pull my attacker off of me. It took all of their effort combined to get her to let me go. I was deeply shaken because I was entirely sure she had attempted to murder me then and there.

[00:23:25] I just knew from the look in her eyes but still trying to save face for my friend I tried to laugh it off. I did a lousy job though because I was shivering all over and my voice was trembling.

[00:23:41] I don't know if my friend had realized at any point how serious the situation actually was or if she thought that she was just stopping some bullying but whatever she thought she brought me

[00:23:52] ice cream and rented us a paddle boat to cheer me up and we watched some birds and I'm grateful to her for that. And you know for saving my life. But to be very honest my day was kind of ruined.

[00:24:08] I never saw the attacker or the nice teenage girl again after that. I said nothing to my mom because I was so embarrassed about what had happened to me but that and some other things that happened

[00:24:20] to me later cost me most of my confident attitude that I had as a child and I'm very shy and cautious nowadays. So to the girl who was willing to murder a child over some harmless teasing let's never meet again please.

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