It was our annual work Christmas party. It was a blast. I worked it and tended bar, but I was graciously allowed to drink as I did so. I overindulged, sure, but only because the turnout was relatively low compared to last year and I didn’t have to do too much. The party filed out around 11 or 11:30 pm. I can’t remember exactly. By the time I was done cleaning up, I was out a little after midnight.
Call this therapy for me right now. I haven’t told anyone about this and I’ve wanted to get this off of my chest for a long time now. I’ve kept it quiet simply for the fact that nobody would’ve believed me anyway.
Now, I was still jazzed up and ready to go have some fun. So on top of the many drinks I had that night, I went out for more. I stopped at a bar a few blocks down the road that I thought would’ve been hopping – unfortunately not. I did have some cocktails there, though, and I made the bad decision of leaving to go to my favorite local craft beer bar.
I want to say right now that part of the reason why I didn’t share this with anyone was because I drove that night. I would’ve had to explain how I got to the bars, how I got so piss-drunk and how I got my car back home. If I were to have called the cops on someone else’s phone, I feel like too many questions would’ve been asked and I would’ve been an unreliable witness. So I sucked it up and didn’t say a damn word until now.
Craft beers, at least the kind that I drink, are notoriously high in their alcohol content. After two or three, I was lit. I kept dropping my phone. I kept on making the bad decisions to try and dial up a work friend that I was highly disappointed didn’t show that night. This is where the proof is, this guy could vouch for my story. If any of my co-workers are reading this (I doubt you are), talk to Josh.
Here’s what you need to know about my apartment – it’s a second story, one-bedroom whose only view is a tractor-trailer yard that stretches for at least a mile and a half behind my apartment. Cars are absolutely littered in that lot, along with trucks, trailer hitches, and two rows of what look like warehouse style garages going the entire length of the lot on opposite sides. It’s a sketchy place. Cars come and go throughout all times of the night. It is gated off, however. You do need a keycard to enter. That is, unless you live in the complex. The back door of the building leads directly out into the lot.
I got back to my apartment complex and stumbled inside, as I was talking to Josh. Josh was more than a little drunk as well – I don’t remember the conversation, but I feel like we were having a rather deep and profound bonding session. I’ve known the guy for at least 9 years it feels like – he’s worked with me at my first restaurant job and has seen me grow into the man I am now.
There’s a small patio outside my apartment complex that’s directly accessible from my apartment door. I was out there on the patio ‘till 2:30 am, at least, chatting with Josh and then I finally get the not-so brilliant idea to finally do something I had been wanting to do since I moved in two years ago.
I was going to walk back into that lot and explore it.
I told Josh of my plans. He was on the phone with me the entire time. It was relatively warm out for the time of year. We were having a string of days that were in the 50s, so it wasn’t too cold out. I was nervous, but the liquid courage that was still flowing through me told me everything was going to be okay. Like a fool, I listened.
As I made my way back towards the very back of the lot, I couldn’t help but feel like I was being watched. Maybe it was my overactive imagination, but all I could think about was what if there was someone hiding in one of the at least hundreds of cars surrounding me. I’m guessing most of them were scrap and didn’t work, or at least have been gutted. The warehouse garages were huge, and could’ve offered shelter to many a homeless if necessary. Shit, if it was so easy for me to sneak back there, someone else could’ve been back there too.
I kept joking with Josh about getting murdered. I kept dropping my phone too. Fuck, was I drunk. I could barely keep that straight line going. At one point, I had noticed that most of the cars were getting replaced by bigger trucks. It wasn’t unusual to have these trucks leave the lot sometimes. I assumed that the property owner had allowed truckers to maybe pull in, sleep it off, and hit the road the next day.
I got back to the very back edge of the lot and checked my phone. It was around 3:30. I kept on losing my cell signal. It was that, or Josh and I both had hit the point of no return and just couldn’t understand each other. Here’s what I can remember.
I had dropped my phone, into what I thought was a puddle. I let out a loud “Fuck!” without even thinking. I went to go pick it up, and as I bent over, clear as day, I heard something pounding on a car window. It was rapid, the pounding, it sounded frantic. I had told Josh to hold on a second. I kept hearing the pounding, but you have to remember that I surrounded by cars on all sides and it was almost pitch black out. I could barely see, and my senses weren’t operating at full capacity to begin with.
It sounded to me like a car door got kicked open and a glass bottle fall. I KNOW what I heard next was some whimpering – I keep trying to convince myself that it was a dog or a cat or some sort of animal that was scared and cold, that didn’t want to be out there in the middle of the night in December. I keep trying, to this day, but I know what I heard.
There was a girl in the lot somewhere, and she was crying.
I told Josh to shut up, and to stay on the line. He mumbled something, I couldn’t understand what. I was scanning, trying to find the source of the cry. I don’t know why I didn’t just book it back. I guess part of me wanted to make sure and find out that it was a dog or animal, and that some seriously fucked up shit wasn’t happening a mile and a half outside of my apartment.
I want to say that a dog limped out between the cars with a broken leg. I want to say that I took the dog back to the animal hospital, safe and sound, and that he was adopted and that the family took great care of him and nothing shady had been happening in the truck lot behind my apartment.
I can’t say that.
I can say that I heard someone get punched. Or slapped. It was the sound of skin-on-skin, that’s for certain, and the whimpering stopped almost immediately. I heard the sound of boots on the gravel, big, thick boots. I couldn’t move. I held the phone up to my head, and I could still hear Josh mumbling incoherently. A glass bottle broke to my left. I spun around. I heard the boots move quicker – whump, whump, whump, whumpwhumpwhump. Followed by the unmistakable sound of a switchblade opening.
Before you roll your eyes, lest you forget that I bought marijuana from a variety of dealers in my youth. Some were incredibly sketchy and never conducted business without either a firearm or a blade on the table – and that’s dealing with me, for fuck’s sake. I know what a switchblade sounds like. I’m not one, but I’ve hung around degenerates in my time.
I pinpointed the sound of the boots on the gravel to my left, almost directly towards the back corner of the lot, and all I made out was the shadow of a man wearing some sort of brimmed hat. I heard him cough loudly, he sounded sick. I said “n-n-n-n-no” loud enough for Josh to have heard me, and I ran as fast as I could back to my apartment. I had speed on the man, I knew that, thank God for my cardio. What I didn’t have on him was a weapon. My own strength was suspect at the point.
What really scared me was the bottle. He fucking threw a liquor bottle at me. I knew it was a liquor bottle, it had to be a heavy one too – I tend bar. I know the sound of a beer bottle breaking versus a bottle of liquor. He had an arm on him too because that bottle nearly hit me square on the back of my head. When I heard the bottle break, that’s when I dropped my phone. I kept running.
That was my first fuck-up of the night.
Remember how I said that there’s a patio outside my apartment? There’s a staircase on the outside attached to it. Like a damn fool, I ran up that outside staircase and into my apartment. Even more stupid, I turned on the light as soon as I got in.
Second fuck-up.
I realized that I had no phone to call the cops. I had no land line in the apartment. I had made it in though. I was alive.
I stayed up that night until at least 5 am, wondering what I should do. Partly because I couldn’t sleep, and partly because there’s some nutjob with a girl hidden in one of those cars in that truck lot.
I had no phone. I couldn’t do anything. My brain was mush from the booze. I had some rum that one of the other bartenders had gifted me for Christmas. I took at least four shots of it and passed out on my couch. Yeah, that was my solution.
I decided not to tell anyone what really happened the next morning. Yeah, I know – there’s a girl that probably isn’t there anymore thanks to me, and I have to live with that for the rest of my life. I like to blame the lack of sleep I get now to me having just recently quit smoking pot. I know that’s not to blame.
I opened my apartment door the next morning. My phone was there. My phone was sitting directly outside my apartment door, with two single cracks on the screen. It works perfectly still, but my phone was outside my apartment door. Can you imagine what that would feel like? Because no matter how terrified I was the night before, nothing matched the realization of what having that phone at my front door meant.
Josh had asked me the next day what happened. He had told me that I had gone silent for at least 3 minutes, before he heard what he thought was my voice on the line.
“Josh? Josh? It’s me. Are you still there?” It had asked.
He told me that he didn’t really answer. He said it didn’t sound like me. He said that I had tried to talk more to him, but I just hung up the phone when I realized he wasn’t talking back. I joked about it with him, blaming the lack of cell service.
There’s a guy that lives on the first floor. His apartment is right next to the laundry machines. As much as I like the place, the walls are paper thin. I was doing laundry one day since, and I don’t know what it was; maybe my brain just fired on the right synapses or I’m putting connections together where there are none, but it sounded just like that fucking cough that night.
I’ve passed him on the way to the parking lot more than a few times since. He always grins and smiles. It’s the smile of a god-damn shark, I know it is. And what’s even more disturbing?
I’ve never seen him without his big, brimmed cowboy hat on.
I’m not renewing my lease this year.