A pest and his pests…
I used to have this classmate, Ritchie, in high school. He was a very large boy, always wearing long sleeves. Very quiet. He used to sit right by me in class every day.
Ritchie would stare at me all the time. It was obvious that he was crushing on me, or… at least, fixated. It used to annoy the hell out of me, but I always thought of it as rather innocent when we were in school. Well, maybe not innocent, but I never expected him to do anything crazy, I guess.
Ritchie was a weird, weird dude. He liked to draw, and would regularly bring dead bugs and insects and stuff into class and draw them, even though the teachers would tell him to put them away. He’d just put the paper on his book beneath his desk and keep going. This annoyed the teacher, obviously, but it was impossible for him to get him to stop, so after a few months, the teacher gave up and let him do his weird drawings.
These weren’t normal still-life type drawings, though. He would give every insect a human-like expression, like a smile with teeth or human eyes. Always incredibly creepy stuff, sometimes bordering on vile. It was creepy because he wouldn’t make them cartoons, but incredibly realistic. Just try and picture a preying mantis glaring angrily at you with human eyes… it’s unnerving, especially because he was so talented and able to make it look so real.
One time, I had gone to the bathroom, and left my backpack hanging over the back of my chair. When I came back, Ritchie had set it on my desk–he smiled at me when I went to sit down, and told me that my phone had fallen out of my pack when someone brushed against it and that he, (what a hero), had set it back on top of my desk for me. It was pretty weird, considering my phone had been in a zipped pocket, but I smiled politely and thanked him anyway.
…
Halfway through the school year, the teacher decided to shuffle our assigned seats. I was no longer next to Ritchie, but now was three rows apart. Almost as far as I could get! I thought this would make me feel better, but it only made things worse.
The staring had turned into a borderline glare. Where before, i had gotten used to him staring, now there was a whole new shade of shady behind that stare. He was clearly angry about the new seating arrangement, and potentially, in his head, taking it out on me. Luckily, the school year passed without further incident with Ritchie, but he never stopped staring, and I never confronted him because I am historically afraid of confrontation. When I graduated, I even remember a passing thought where I said to myself “thank goodness I won’t have those creepy eyes watching me anymore.”
…
A few years later, I started noticing that the Webcam light on my laptop was randomly turning on–and the same with the location on my cell phone. I’m not very tech savvy, so I had a friend take a look at it. He was unable to find anything wrong with my laptop or my cell phone, so we agreed to factory reset it in the hopes of stopping who or whatever mightve been causing the light (and the camera) to switch on.
The problem went away… for a couple of days. And then it started happening again.
Someone was accessing my technology remotely, somehow. But every time I factory reset, the unknown entity would return, enabling my camera light and turning on my location. After a while, I gave up from frustration. I can’t exactly afford to hire anyone to figure it out, so I just started taping over my cameras and stuff.
That’s when things started to get really… bizarre. Apparently, I pissed off my stalker, because I began to receive things in the mail. The first thing that I received was a postal package with a fake return address. It was addressed directly to me, so… well, curiosity killed the cat, and I opened it. I’m glad I did, or I never would’ve figured out what was going on. When I opened it, I found a USB drive. I was immediately suspicious, but decided I was going to have a look. After backing up all the data on my laptop, I factory reset it again, and plugged in the USB drive. When I opened the drive, there was only one single piece of data on it.
A video.
Now I had to see it. Something weird was happening, and potentially really creepy. I had to watch the video.
I saw myself. Typing on my laptop, laughing, responding out loud to old messages between myself and some friends, probably–I talk to myself often because I’m always home alone. The video went on for thirty-two minutes. Nothing vulgar happened, I didn’t take my clothes off or anything… but this footage was recent. Like, right before I taped the cams, recent. At the end, the screen paused on my face, and began to zoom in really close into the top of my hair, where apparently a tiny moth had landed, and paused. Then the camera zoom panned down, until it was aiming at my nostril, and that is where it stayed for a few seconds before text appeared on the screen. “Game Over”. I felt sick.
Obviously I brought it to the police, and it was taken as evidence, but I haven’t heard anything at all. I don’t think they were able to find any helpful data on it. Meanwhile, my Webcam light still turns on, even though the tape covers the camera.
A week went by. Another weird package arrived, with another USB inside. Another video. This time, it was from my cell phone camera. Apparently they had accessed it when I removed the tape to take a picture with my friend one night, and I hadn’t been able to get home to change the tape. We had gone out drinking, and a lot of this footage was recorded in my pocket. Some of it was aimed at the roof of the bar, but my face would occasionally drift into frame, and you could hear everything we were talking about. You could see me lift beer bottles to my face. I had to keep adjusting the volume because it had been edited to be much louder, I think. This video was five and a half hours long, and pretty much timelined my whole night out with my friend until I went home, covered the camera and went to sleep. When the camera was covered, text appeared in the same font as before that said “Breaking the Rules”. This one went to the police as well, and yet again, I’ve heard nothing about them.
…
I came home about a week after that to two more packages. This time, it wasn’t any sort of data, but… bugs. It had to be bugs. Because of course it did.
The first package I opened contained a huge luna moth that had been laminated. The second was a large spider, flattened and laminated. Both packages made me want to cry–I hate bugs so much. I immediately threw them away, and immediately regretted it–that was evidence. But I couldn’t bring myself to dig them back out of the trash. They were so disgusting.
Over the next couple weeks, I kept getting package after package, each one with some new horrifying thing in it. Videos and videos of myself, more and more bugs. One package had a vacuum-sealed swarm of cockroaches. That one made me puke. By now, I had figured out what was going on and who was probably behind it, so I took my theory to the police and named Ritchie as my prime suspect. But they weren’t able to get a fix on his location anywhere, apparently. They didn’t even know if he was still living in the same state. And of course, they couldn’t find a single fingerprint. Not even an arm hair.
…
Finally, I get a letter, not a package. The return address just said “From the heart”. When I opened it, I knew I’d been right. Inside was a typed-out “love-hate” letter with a photoshopped image printed on the back.
The letter, which is now also in police custody, said something along the lines of “im writing what i feel. you’re driving me insane. Take off the tape, I love you, you **ing **, don’t you understand anything?! You’re a ** **** If you think I’m going to let you get away. Stop. You’re mine, I love you so much. I just want to protect you. I’ve given you so many gifts, and you keep giving them away. I swear I’ll leave you alone if you just keep my gifts, I love you so much, please don’t shut me out. Stop Stop Stop Stop stop. Take off the tape. Take off the tape. I need to see you. Please.” The photoshopped image on the back was a macro image of a preying mantis–with *my eyes photoshopped into its.
…yeah… very… contradicting. Like the words of an unhinged, crazy person. A coveting psycho. Someone who wanted to convey their own emotion through typing, but knew, deep down, that he wasn’t being appropriate, so he hid behind a screen.
It was definitely Ritchie. Who else could it be? Who else was obsessed with bugs like that? And his artwork? This was the same thing, just in digital form. He wants me to know it’s him. But nobody can do anything about it.
…
Now I’m scared. I came home a couple days after that to find a large box sitting on the coffee table in my living room. I keep all my doors locked. I even had to unlock it when I got home.
There were holes drilled into the box.
Come on, with the bugs already! I really didn’t want to open it. But I did. There was a screen attached–it’s hard to explain, but it opened when I lifted it, and thousands of German cockroaches poured out and infested my home. I called the police immediately and they told me I should stay with a relative for a few days. So I did.
And… that’s where we’re currently at… I’m bunking with my friend for two weeks, but the truth is that I really don’t feel safe anywhere anymore.