00:00Welcome to English practice stories.
00:08Hi, my dear friends. How are you?
00:12Let's start the story.
00:14On the night this happened, I had been in town,
00:18and I had agreed to go home with my friend,
00:22mostly because I'm a bit of a weirdo
00:26and don't like getting taxis on my own.
00:29But on this particular night, my plan backfired,
00:34as it turned out she had brought her bike to the party.
00:39So rather than manning up and just enduring
00:43a ten-minute social interaction with a stranger,
00:47I ended up having to walk my ass home with her,
00:51which takes about an hour-ish.
00:54Now, she lives at the very bottom of a hilly area,
01:00so whenever I'd end up walking home with her,
01:04I'd usually try to puppy-dog-ize my way
01:08into a sleepover for three main reasons.
01:12A. I was tired-lazy and didn't want to have to walk
01:18all the way up to mine,
01:20which was at the very top of the biggest hill.
01:24B. Sleepovers are fun.
01:27And C. The further up my hill you go,
01:31the weirder people tend to get.
01:34Down where she lives is pretty nice and well-off mostly,
01:40but up around my house things can get a bit rougher,
01:44so walking up there alone at night
01:47wasn't my favorite thing to do.
01:50Unfortunately, for whatever reason,
01:54either I wasn't able to stay
01:56or I decided that I just needed to get home
01:59to my own bed that night,
02:01I ended up not staying
02:03and I set off on my journey back to my house.
02:07The first half of the hill isn't that bad, really.
02:12The street lamps illuminate pretty much everything,
02:16albeit in an off-putting orange glow,
02:20and the roads are wide.
02:23There aren't many places where people could hide,
02:27and although there are almost never any cars around
02:31that late at night,
02:33the presence of the main roads gives a sense of security.
02:38You could almost convince yourself
02:40that someone would miraculously drive
02:43by right in your hour of need.
02:46Failing that,
02:48at least if you were to be stabbed
02:51or beaten to a pulp,
02:53there'd be a CCTV camera
02:56catching all the action from nearby,
02:59hopefully catching your good side in the process.
03:03All this means that
03:05when I walked through this section that night,
03:08I didn't feel particularly on edge.
03:12I zoned out while I walked,
03:15aided by the white noise of the wind,
03:18the buzzing of the old street lamps,
03:22and the soft roar of the cars in the city far away.
03:27This ambience carried me all the way to the foot of my hill.
03:33Here, walls and houses close in on the road,
03:39making it feel narrower
03:41and muffling the sounds of the night.
03:44There are far fewer street lamps
03:47to give off that comforting buzzing sound,
03:51and the wind doesn't make it down to street level.
03:55The tall trees along the paths on either side
03:59create dark passageways
04:01that you can barely see into from outside,
04:04and there are numerous dark alleyways
04:07that run off into other estates along the road.
04:11The silence always forces me out of my thoughts
04:15and focuses me on my walk.
04:18It's just completely quiet,
04:21you can barely hear the wind,
04:24and something about that silence
04:27always feels off-putting to me,
04:30almost predatory in nature somehow.
04:34My mind always circles back
04:37to the feeling that something is there,
04:40that something could hear me if it were listening.
04:44To that end, I always find myself
04:48focusing on my footsteps,
04:51which sound heavy in the quiet.
04:54I chose to walk on the right-hand side of the road,
04:58along the path most heavily shaded by trees.
05:03There's a section of the path that dips down a bit,
05:07bringing your head just a bit above road level,
05:11and it was right as I reached that point
05:14that I turned my head to the left and saw him.
05:18There was a man standing right in the middle
05:22of one of the side roads, facing me.
05:25My shoes made a scuffing noise against the ground
05:30as I stopped almost involuntarily,
05:33like a startled animal.
05:36It was so odd that I was more intrigued
05:40than anything else.
05:43I mean, a person standing in the middle of the road
05:47is excusable enough.
05:50We've all done it, but he was standing
05:53in the exact middle of the road,
05:56on his own, and he wasn't moving.
06:00I looked at him for a while,
06:03and he just did not move at all.
06:07He was completely still,
06:10and the way he was standing was strange as well.
06:14He was ever so slightly hunched,
06:17his legs just a tiny bit bent,
06:21his shoulders forward, his elbows out,
06:25and his hands in.
06:27It seemed an unnatural way to be standing.
06:31I tried to make out his face
06:34or any other details about him,
06:37but he was backlit by the lights
06:40in the estate behind him,
06:43and he appeared to me as just a black silhouette,
06:48just the outline of a perfectly average-looking person,
06:53a bit broad-shouldered,
06:55but really nothing out of the ordinary.
06:59I realized that my position within the darkness
07:03of the trees might be preventing him from seeing me.
07:08I mean, surely if you were a normal person
07:13with any normal reason to be doing what he was doing
07:17and somebody walked up,
07:19you would stop and move on.
07:22And if he was looking for somebody to jump,
07:25then he probably would have called out or come over,
07:30but he just stood there.
07:33I didn't feel like he could see me,
07:37but the longer I looked,
07:39the less sure I became of that,
07:42and the more I felt like it really didn't matter.
07:46Any normal person,
07:49whether they were aware they were being observed or not,
07:53would have given some sort of clue
07:56as to what they were doing by now.
07:59I was sure of that.
08:01I suddenly thought that maybe he might be a mannequin
08:05or a cardboard cutout left there to scare people
08:09or something like that.
08:12I looked a bit closer and focused on his shoulders,
08:17but sure enough, they were perceptibly heaving.
08:22He was taking deep, heavy breaths.
08:26At this point, I started to get a bit disturbed,
08:31so I started walking again and continued up the hill.
08:36The interaction made me nervous,
08:39and I kept looking back over my shoulders the whole way up.
08:44I'd look over my right shoulder, then my left,
08:49then turn around fully and scan for a second,
08:53then continue walking.
08:56I continued this routine for a while,
08:59but by the time I reached the top of the hill
09:03and started into the estate where I lived,
09:06I had mostly calmed down.
09:09There were plenty of weird people around,
09:12and he hadn't actually done anything wrong.
09:17A bit strange, sure, but not really a big deal.
09:23Something about being on my estate always makes me feel safer,
09:28like nothing could happen to me on my home turf,
09:32so I settled back into my thoughts as I walked this last stretch.
09:39I was still always aware of places that could be hiding potential danger,
09:46so as I approached one of the small, darkened alleyways,
09:51I was about to turn my head to look into it,
09:55as I always did every time I passed.
09:59But I was stopped by the sound of heavy, labored breathing coming from within it.
10:07I didn't look, but I could see the same shape from down the hill in the corner of my eye.
10:15He hunched the same way, facing me again.
10:20My heart skipped a beat. How could he be there?
10:24If I had left him behind me on the hill,
10:28he would have had to walk right past me in order to get here.
10:33There just wasn't any other way to get here.
10:37I was so shocked and scared that I just kept walking,
10:42as if my body didn't even register what had happened.
10:47After I had passed him, I sped up, walking at an almost comically fast speed.
10:57My ears were on overdrive, attuned to every single sound around me.
11:04If I heard anything behind me, I was going to start sprinting back to my house.
11:11I had reached my limit for weird occurrences for the night.
11:16I just wanted to get home without any further incidents.
11:21And I almost did.
11:24I made it to the very final stretch,
11:28a maybe 100 meter section of road with houses all around it,
11:34my house at the end,
11:36and the same figure standing right in the middle of the road between me and it.
11:43I felt a cold feeling creeping through my veins like syrup,
11:48and the sweat on my body suddenly began to chill me.
11:53I simply stood there, staring at him,
11:58just like when we first met maybe 15 minutes ago.
12:03I was utterly terrified.
12:06I couldn't think of any possible rational explanation for what was going on.
12:13I had passed him twice now.
12:16He hadn't moved, hadn't passed me,
12:20and yet here he was again,
12:23standing just as before, breathing just as before,
12:28and looking right back at me.
12:31I was there for quite a while, thinking about what to do.
12:36I would begin to approach, back up, and try again,
12:42only to become too scared and retreat once more.
12:47I paced back and forth, and all the while, he watched me.
12:53He never made any attempt to move towards me, speak,
12:59or do anything other than simply breathe and watch.
13:04I decided I would simply walk past him.
13:08I had no other choice, really.
13:12So I started towards him,
13:15but I couldn't bring myself to come that close to him,
13:20to come within arm's reach of him.
13:23More than that, I didn't want to see his face
13:27or be able to make out his features.
13:30Every time I had seen him,
13:33the lights behind him had made him appear pitch black,
13:38his features indistinguishable,
13:41and I had begun to feel like that was merciful on the part of the lights.
13:47So I walked to my right,
13:50into the gardens of the houses alongside the road.
13:55I clung as close as I could to the houses,
13:59being careful not to crush any plants or flowers growing there,
14:05stepping up onto doorsteps to squeeze past the cars
14:10parked in the driveways at points.
14:13As I came up alongside him,
14:16it took a great deal of willpower to stop myself
14:20from turning to look at him and see him in greater detail.
14:26But I turned my head only enough to keep him in my peripheral vision.
14:32Every muscle in my body was ready for him to suddenly break
14:37from his near motionlessness and run at me,
14:41but he didn't, and suddenly I was past him.
14:46I continued on with my walk through the gardens for another few meters,
14:52and then I broke and ran all the way to my door.
14:56I wrenched my keys from my pocket and shoved them into the lock.
15:02I heard the click, and I burst through at top speed,
15:07slamming the door shut behind me and locking it again.
15:12After a few moments, I slowly made my way to my bedroom,
15:18got ready for bed, and went to sleep.
15:22The experience had made me, above all else, bone tired,
15:29and I quickly fell asleep.
15:32Shockingly, I had no dreams that I remember,
15:37and I woke feeling pretty much fine.
15:40I wasn't bothered by my experience at all, really.
15:46As quickly as he had entered my life, he had left.
15:51I had gotten an angry text from my mom about slamming the door the night before,
15:58but neither she nor anybody else ever asked me why I did it,
16:03and I really never felt any immense desire to tell them or anyone else.
16:11Until recently.
16:13I somehow felt that I should recount this story,
16:17as I've been thinking about this encounter more and more often,
16:22and it disturbs me a little bit more each time.
16:27I wish for happiness in your family.
16:30Thank you for listening to the story.
16:33Be sure to subscribe to this channel and click on the bell icon to meet us again
16:40and hear more stories like this.
16:43Bye for now.
16:45If you like our story, subscribe English Practice Stories channel and click the bell icon.
Comments