This story takes place when I was 14 years old.
My friend Kyle called me one Saturday night and said that his parents were going to be gone until Monday to attend a funeral, and he was going to be home alone. He asked if I wanted to come over and spend the night. I said sure, and then started walking to his house, he only lived a few minutes away so it didn’t take long to get there.
When I got there, Kyle was in the middle of watching a movie downstairs, so we watched that for a while before we got bored. After that, we started to play Xbox, we played pretty much every game that Kyle owned, only stopping when we finally got hungry.
We went to the kitchen and Kyle rummaged through his fridge looking for something to eat. He said there wasn’t anything good, so we should probably just order something from the pizza place in town. We picked up the phone and ordered a large pepperoni pizza. The guy on the other end of the line said it would only be about 20 minutes.
After we hung up, we went outside to the driveway to shoot some hoops before the pizza arrived. I have asthma, so I had to stop about halfway through to take a puff of my inhaler before we could keep playing.
20 minutes later, a car pulled into the driveway. It was dark out now, and the only lights were coming from the floodlight that shone on the driveway, and the headlights from the delivery guy’s car.
We put the basketball down and waited for the guy to get out of the car, but he didn’t. The car just idled there, shining its headlights into our faces. After a minute of this, Kyle asked me if we should just go up to the car and see what was taking so long. I said yeah, and we approached the driver’s door.
The guy inside looked at us with a horrified expression, he didn’t take his hands off the steering wheel or say anything when we asked if everything was OK. He just kept staring at us with the most terrified look on his face.
“Uh, are you alright man?” I asked. It was just then that I noticed the man laying across the backseat, and the gun he was holding pointed directly at the driver’s back.
Before I could do or say anything, the back door flung open and a large man wearing a ski mask ordered the driver to get out of the car. Kyle was standing there, visibly confused as the two men exited the vehicle. Then he noticed the gun that the masked man was carrying, and Kyle decided to run.
He didn’t even make it halfway up the driveway before the masked man fired a warning shot into the air. Kyle stood frozen to the spot, not moving a muscle. The man ordered all three of us to get into the car. Kyle slowly walked back with his hands up in the air.
I tried to think of what to do. I didn’t have any weapons on me, and the man could easily shoot us if we tried to run. As Kyle slowly made his way to the backseat, an idea came to me.
I collapsed on the ground and started pretending that I couldn’t breathe. The man turned and aimed his gun at me.
“What the hell is his problem?” The man asked Kyle.
Kyle told him that I was having an asthma attack and I needed my inhaler, the man told Kyle to help me with the inhaler, and then we both needed to get into the car. When Kyle knelt down next to me and grabbed my inhaler, I whispered to him to get ready to run. He nodded, not knowing what I meant.
I pretended to take a puff, and then slowly made my way to my feet.
The man again yelled at us to get in the car, and I started to make my way to the back seat. The moment I was close enough, I yelled at Kyle and the delivery driver to run, as I sprayed the masked man in the eyes with my inhaler.
The man screamed and fell backwards against the car, grabbing at his eyes.
All three of us ran back into the house, locking the door behind us. Kyle grabbed his phone and dialed 911. I looked out the window to see the man still grabbing his eyes while running down the road.
The police showed up a minute later, and told us that they found the man hobbling down the street, still wearing the ski mask.
The delivery driver thanked me profusely, and said that he had stopped to get gas on his way over to Kyle’s house, not noticing the man get into the backseat when he went inside to pay.
None of us know what the man’s intentions were, but I’m glad we will never have to find out.