Yesterdays incident was the scariest moment of my life. Hands down. My friend (who I will name Steven for the sake of this story) and I had went to the park down the street from my house. I had always visited the park since I was a small bean child and it was in a fairly nice part of the neighborhood when it comes to safety and crime. We went ice skating for a little bit and it was super fun!
We ended up going to the lake in the center of the park to hang out and look at the birds and such. The lake had a secret island in the center, which you can reach if you jump over the fence, on a few rocks or off the path of the board walk. I had found this “secret” place the day before and I thought it was crazy. The whole thicket was gutted out into a maze with corridors and a few rooms (one of which was the bathroom… gross.) We had found a spot that was nice where we could chill in peace and it seemed like a good deal at the time.
I did notice there were some children toys lying around which was raising a few red flags in my mind. I eventually brushed them off.
An hour or so later sitting together on a towel outside of a cute burrow over the boggy marsh and we see a man. I felt my heart drop and never had I ever felt so emotionless in my life. He had a knife. I big one. A 12" machete. Steven and I freeze into Popsicle, watching this tall dark figure inch closer, swatting at the dead grass and breaking branches in one hack as if to show off his strength. I’m lucky that I was with Steven at the time because honestly how well they handled the situation is why I’m not dead and can still write this message right now.
The man eventually spoke and asked: “Do you want to buy this knife?” which was definitely code for: “Do you want to fucking die?”
The knife was raised up in the air as if he was about to strike. In that moment Steven gently replied: “No thank you. I don’t want this.”
The man then proceeded to shove the knife down the front of his pants, to bare skin, which was fucking creeping and weird (not to mention he probably stabbed himself in the dick.)
We both knew he did that just to get a reaction out of us and our quick response of “Ew?” most likely signified to him that we were still minors and that he would not want to do any kind of “business” with us.
The trauma from what had happened made me forget and blank out on a lot of specific details. Though, I remember snippets. He went up to Steven and threatened him, roughly speaking out, “You better watch your back. ALWAYS watch your back.” He tapped his index finger to his temple, pointing out that we had fucked up in the street smarts department.
A fist bump, a “respect” and a “I’ll let you off this one time,” and he left.
I remember croaking out a barely audible, “thank you,” to his back as he wobbled away. Thank you for not murdering us.
After taking a moment to stomach the situation that had just nearly cost us our lives, we scrambled to collect all our belongings and darted away from the location as fast as we could.
Up the hill, on the winding road cutting through the park was a cop car. Debating to approach, we ran towards it and had told the man everything that had happened, giving a detailed description of what the man looked like. (Spoiler alert: a young man, maybe in his 20’s, just like any other guy you could find on the street.)
Apparently we weren’t the only ones who tried calling 911. There had been reports of the man harassing people in the park and a load of police cars driving down every road and path of the park. I was like blood traveling through veins. If my life hadn’t been at stake– If the blood in veins hadn’t come to close to spill, I would have never approached a police car. Maybe because of nerves, maybe because I didn’t want the children in the playground adjacent to the lake to experience the trauma that we went through.
We left the officer to his duties, holding each other close, walking all the way back to my house, thankful we still had our heads.
Nothing compares to the feeling where all you can do is contemplate what it must feel like to have a blade ripped deep in your chest and how bad the pain will feel. I feel like I value my life a little more now and I’m thankful that I have amazingly lovely friends who have my back in life or death situations
