I guess I should preface this by saying that we’ve never spoken or even greeted each other, not officially. I just thought I should share this here before it gets any worse.
I am a 25 year old woman, and I work at a bar on 6th street. This is a very average neighborhood. Not much crime, and if there is, its usually just the occasional minor disturbance or something related to drug usage. Recently though, there have been worse and worse things happening. I’l give the best example.
There was a murder across the street from my house around a week ago - Old Theresa shot her husband in his sleep. Now, he was a regular at my job and constantly needed rides from her in the middle of the night, and we were all pretty sure she had dementia, but Theresa was the most patient woman I’ve ever met. It just isn’t like her to do this. That’s why I’m worried.
This happened only a day before I first saw the 6th street stranger.
I first saw him after a night shift at my job. I was exhausted, and as I was locking up, there was only one other person on the street when I started walking. He caught my attention immediately. He was tall, and walked with grace as if he were simply floating along down the street. His steps made no noise at all, and he looked over at me, almost in slow motion. Then, with a gentle smile, he just looked away again.
In my entire life, I have never seen a man so good looking. His face is burned into my brain permanently. I am not kidding when I say I cannot think about anything else. His eyes are dark and amber, and his hair frames his face perfectly. He has no flaws, not a single one - he is utterly angelic. The second I saw him, I felt my stomach leap into my throat. The reaction was absolutely violent on my end. I watched him walk until he was completely out of my view, frozen in place.
I thought about him the entire walk home. A literal stranger. We had to walk the same way, but I didn’t see him again, and I was so entranced that I just walked thoughtlessly the whole way home. I relied on muscle memory, just one foot in front of the other, until it was time to stop walking.
But here’s the thing - when I snapped out of my trance, I wasn’t even home. I had totally missed my turn, and instead I was standing in front of a random house on 6th street.
It took all of my willpower not to break into this house. He was in there. I knew it. I wanted to go in so badly that I actually gagged audibly at the idea of going home. There was nowhere I wanted to be more than inside that house.
But I summoned the composure to turn around, and I cried the entire way home. My walk took me an entire 40 minutes longer than usual, because I kept getting turned around, and the brain fog was so intense that I forgot what my house looked like.
When I finally got home I kicked off my shoes, still crying, and stepped through the boot room into the den, where I promptly got the shit scared out of me. There was a random guy just lounging on my couch, watching my TV and eating chips. He raised his eyebrow when he saw me, and I was just frozen in place, unsure of what to do. Then he spoke.
“You okay, Rita?” He sounded confused.
“What are you doing in here?” How did he know my name? I backed up a little, ready to make a run for it. I was forming a plan.
“I got off work at 10,” said the guy. “You said I could hang out here until you got home. What’s going on? You okay?”
Then it hit me, and I relaxed a little, because I remembered I had a boyfriend.
“Um, yeah. All good,” I lied. “I think I’ll go take a bath.”
“…I mean- okay, I’ll be here. If you want to talk, let me know. Was it a bad shift or something? Ran late?”
“…yeah,” I mumbled. I was staring at the floor, still standing in the doorway like an idiot, and I was trying to remember what his damn name was. Problem is, the only thing that was coming up was the stranger’s face. It controlled me. I couldn’t remember my boyfriend’s name.
“Rita?”
“Right,” I said, snapping out of it. “What were we talking about?”
“…maybe you should go take that bath.” My nameless boyfriend turned on the TV again, his bag of chips crumpling under his arm.
I walked into the kitchen, setting my things down, and as I watched the mystery man eat his chips, I felt an unmistakable feeling wash over me. Not love, not disgust. I was angry. So angry. I hated him, as he scarfed down his chips like a Neanderthal, not even bothering to wipe the dust off his spindly fingers. He didn’t even look like a person anymore, just a sad wet blob smearing shit all over my couch. He was absolutely putrid, loathesome. I would rather jump into a volcano than willingly touch him again. He didn’t care about me. He didn’t even know who I was.
The stranger knew who I was. His eyes told me he knew. He had such deep, gorgeous eyes, so gentle. I hated the man on my couch. I wanted to jump out the window and just run and run to the stranger on 6th street.
So I took a bath.
And when I say this was the coldest, most unsatisfying bath I’d ever taken, I mean it. I desperately refilled it, over and over, trying to make it as hot as I could, but it was so cold. Everything was so fucking cold and dark and depressing. I felt like I would never be warm again, crying in the bath, shivering so violently it took my breath away. My blood, my bones, my brain, everything was just so cold.
And in the forefront of my brain, the details of the stranger’s face were etched, and they weren’t going away. They were everywhere I looked.
I needed to see him again. I needed to see him so bad, I almost didn’t make it to work the next morning. I couldn’t understand why this man was so enchanting to me, but I felt like he was the only thing in the world that could possibly make me feel happy and warm again. My chest hurt like hell, all the time, and my stomach felt like lead.
And then I saw the stranger again.
I passed his house, admittedly on purpose, on the way home from a shift. The sun was setting, and it dyed the sky orange. It dyed everything orange. I stopped in front of the house on 6th street, and I looked up on the porch, and there he was.
He was just standing there, but he was fucking majestic. I couldn’t even see the sunset anymore, because he easily outdid the Sun. He was brighter, more important, more powerful. He looked at me, and I could have died right then and been perfectly content. And then he gave me another gentle smile. He smiled like he knew something, like he was having fun looking at me, too.
In an instant, all of my pain and sadness vanished. It was the most satisfying release of my life. I felt weightless, light as a feather and brand new, my worries floating away in the breeze. My heart swelled so intensely I thought it might burst out of my chest, and I felt it beating everywhere in my body. I felt warm, so much warmer than I’d ever felt, like I was being hugged by a star. I felt my cheeks glow with the heat and my eyes stinging as tears fell from them, and I found myself unable to walk, unable to speak or rip my eyes from the stranger on 6th street.
And his eyes told me what I had to do if I wanted to be happy and fulfilled and warm again. His eyes told me everything without ever needing to speak, but most of all, they told me how much they cared. They cared so much, so fucking much, and I had to care too, because I would rather die than betray him and his amber eyes.
So here I am, typing this out at 2 in the damn morning, shivering and holding my steak knife while this random guy sleeps in my bed. I’ve been crying for hours. I’m inexplicably disgusted by my boyfriend, who’s too ignorant to even notice what’s happening to me.
Everything is so blue and dark and gloomy, and I’ve never felt colder in my entire life. I just want to be warm again. I want to feel what the 6th street stranger makes me feel. But I guess there was some miniscule element of me that felt this was insane, so here I am, asking you guys what you think I should do.
I hate my boyfriend so much now, but I really don’t think I should get rid of him without asking for an outside perspective. I don’t think I’ve ever been violent or even had thoughts of hurting him in the past, and I’m pretty sure we’ve been together a long time. Maybe a few years. I don’t understand why I suddenly feel this uncontrollable urge to get rid of him. Wasn’t he disgusting before? Why haven’t I done it already?
Is this all crazy? I feel crazy even asking for advice. It’s clear he’s in the way of me and the stranger on 6th street, but… I don’t know. There’s something stopping me. There’s a reason I haven’t just stabbed Peter, or Paul or whatever his name is. I should, right? I don’t know anymore. I don’t know anything at all. I barely know my own name.
Please help. I think I’ve lost my mind. I will update.