He starts spanking me really hard and fast then. I guess he doesn’t like being called a crazy stalker. Truth hurts. Both of us, in this case. Before long I am squealing and kicking my feet and telling him I’m sorry just so he fucking stops.
“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! Thank you!”
He pauses and slows down, mollified by hearing what he wants, because that’s a stupid man thing. I don’t like being punished by an asshole who is completely in the wrong.
I’m glad I sold the car. I’m worried he’s going to take the money from the sale, but he doesn’t make any obvious moves toward my bag. Probably thinks I’m not stupid enough to keep thirty grand in there.
“Laura!”
Oh, fuck. Things are about to get…
The front door slams open as Dave comes running in with a baseball bat and takes a wild swing at my stalker. My stalker dips his head just in time to avoid his skull being crushed.
“Run, Laura!” Dave shouts.
This is the bravest Dave has ever been. I didn’t know he was actually capable of doing anything useful. He just found a masked man beating my ass and his instinct was to go to his shitty truck, pull out his trusty solid wood baseball bat, and go to town. Good for Dave.
My coffeemaker explodes with his next wild swing. The stalker jumps up, grabs the chair, and takes a swing at Dave. Chair beats bat, I think. The chair crashes into the wall, putting a hole in it. I am not getting my security deposit back, that’s for sure. Right now I’m not even sure I’m going to survive. I could easily be hit by one or both of these animals trying to kill each other.
“Fucking asshole!” Dave curses, offended the man he’s trying to hit with a bat tried to hit him with a chair.
I don’t know who is going to win in this battle. The stalker is obviously strong, but Dave isn’t a small guy either and you never really know what’s going to happen in a fight.
I know one thing, though. I am going to get the hell out of here.
I grab my bag and run.
Adrenaline is coursing through my body as I rush down the stairs, trying not to fall down them. Seeing Dave has knocked me out of whatever weird headspace I was in, letting that man, whoever the hell he is, manhandle me and fuck me and punish me.
This shit has gotten way out of hand. I have to go to the police. My neighbors will probably call anyway, given two men are beating the shit out of each other in my apartment.
The department nearest me is kind of dilapidated and overworked. The officer behind the counter is occupied by another person when I walk in, so I’m forced to awkwardly wait a few seconds before I realize I should be interrupting.
“Um, excuse me? There’s sort of an emergency?”
“Call 911 if you’re having an emergency,” the officer says. He’s a big man with a thick graying mustache and world-weary eyes. He looks like he’s seen some shit and it’s stuck to his soul. “Now here’s the thing, Mr. Smith. You don’t have a permit for a lemonade stand, and that’s why it was confiscated.”
“You steal a kid’s lemonade stand?” Mr. Smith insists. “I thought this was a free country!”
“Common misconception,” the officer deadpans.
Mr. Smith is furious, and not prepared to give up on the matter. He argues for a further ten minutes about the lemonade stand his kid was running, demanding the return of the pitcher and cups, and compensation for the lost sales. He gets none of these things.
“There’s a fight happening!” I interject. “Someone could be dead!”
My concerns are not taken particularly seriously. Mr. Smith doesn’t care who dies. I can kind of respect that.
“You want to tell my wife that she’s not getting her grandmother’s lemonade pitcher back because it’s in evidence? When’s the trial going to be?”
“I’m going to need you to move along and fill out a complaint form, sir,” the officer finally says. “You can argue this in front of a judge.”
“When would that be?”
“Well, right now, murder is taking about three years to be heard, so I’d say your pitcher request should be handled some time before the heat death of the universe.”
Mr. Smith balls up the paper and throws it at the cop’s chest.
“I could book you for assault on an officer,” the officer says.
