The Presence: PART3

A Year later after the lady incident ...

College again ...

It was a year of many bad things on campus–a suicide. A gang-rape at a Frat house Toga Party just-before Summer break. The fraternity was not involved. Some Walk-ins from town had joined the party and had followed a young girl from the house. The bathroom had been occupied. So she had wandered outside and around the side of the Frat house to throw up in the bushes. The walk-ins jumped her.

School started up again and ...

We'd had trouble almost as soon as fall semester began .. Three female college students had been attacked on Campus. A suspicious figure was spied entering my dorm of residence from one of the upper floor balconies. The cops and security had been called. All us girls had been evacuated. We stood outside the building waiting for 2 hours, in pjs, gowns long night shirts, t-s and boxers, as the dorm was searched.

The fear we felt was real. Not much chatter went on ... I kept hoping they would find the guy in there ... and haul him in and at the same I was afraid they would find him in there. Afraid because of what it would mean ... that a stranger had invaded our safe-haven with the intention of hurting one of us ... It made it more personal than just acknowledging that three girls had been attacked. Because now it made more of a 'it could have been one of us. It could have been me. It could be me next.'

They didn't find him.

We all laughed it off as we headed back inside, joking that one of the girls had probably tried to sneak in her boyfriend. And that's what the caller had probably witnessed.

Still the fear remained.

Someone had seen a stranger sneaking into our dorm on one of the upper floor balconies. Where had this stranger gone? How had he gotten out of the building and past security and the police? Past all us girls who had stood in a circle around the building?

Because of my own past, I was on edge by the time I returned to my room. Frightened. Angry and resentful that a stranger had given me reason to feel such a terrible fear. Things that I had constantly tried to keep buried were rising to the surface. I was a automaton by the time I'd reached my room. I'd grabbed a small dagger I'd kept hidden in my room and slipped it under my pillow.

I'd kept the light on and tried to sleep but I couldn't. My hand had held onto the dagger handle under my pillow and I kept asking myself ... can you use it? could you really use it to protect yourself?

So I heard something outside my door. My eyes went immediately to the doorknob and my stomach plummeted--I'd gotten a weapon to defend myself with and here I am ... the great genius who'd forgotten to lock her own door. I saw the shadow of shoes at the crack at the bottom of the door. I think I stopped breathing.

I couldn't move.

My hand was paralyzed around the dagger hilt and yet I couldn't make my arm move to pull it from underneath the pillow. The doorknob gave a soft clink ... you know the sound it makes when you try to be quiet and you first put your hand around the doorknob before slowly turning it.

I couldn't even scream.

But finally, I sat up as the knob turned. I slid the dagger from under the pillow ... I decided then that I wasn't going to be a helpless victim again. I wasn't that little child anymore.

The door opened just a crack. And I nearly let loose a stream of piss. My heart was in my throat, beating so fast it hurt and it pounded in my gut like that was an alternative escape route.

But I was on my feet –

It happened fast.

The door flung open wide. As though it had been yanked out of the man's hands.

And then it slammed shut, loud ... so loud it echoed. I heard a man's panicked hiss of "oh Shit!" A couple of girls screamed ... from down the hall.

I heard running. And I just stared at that closed door until a form began to take shape. He turned and looked at me, dark haired but I couldn't make out his face too clearly only a sense that he was handsome and maybe had a beard but it was the amusement in the eyes and vague smile that was so startlingly familiar. He looked at the dagger in my hand and just smiled, bowed and then disappeared.

Anyway the guy ran right into the police who were already there ... after having gotten several calls from frightened girls about someone trying to get into their rooms. Thankfully their door had been locked.