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Authors: Kris Radish
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were plunged into the city/university life and when they were not complaining about missing their friends they were busy making new ones. They may have known something was amiss. They may have known that their mother began staying up too late, making too many quiet phone calls, had too many male friends sleep over on the couch just so someone would guard the door. They may have known she looked too tired all of the time.
They may have known something but no one knew everything.
No one knew how he watched her and followed her. No one knew he sat in the back seat of her car the days she forgot to lock it. The nights when she did not work late he was often in the unlocked office down the hall listening, waiting, thinking, wondering and hoping. Sometimes he slept in the bushes underneath her bathroom window. He knew exactly how long she stayed in the shower almost every morning.
Annie was no fool. She eventually called the campus police and they called the Chicago police. The police took the notes and the slippers and the rubber knives and then they made their own notes and said—as if they were simply warning someone about crossing a street—“Be careful.”
Then they left and then one night he came.
Even with this man—whom she came to call the Cat Man because he often mentioned during his late night phone calls how he would love to touch her pussy—stalking her nights and days and mornings, Annie often became lost in her work. She was desperately trying to write a high school counseling book and she was teaching writing classes at the university, and raising her two sons. Sometimes in the middle of all that living, she completely forgot about how she needed to be guarding her pussy.
But he never forgot.
He came for her at a strange angle, and lost in her life thoughts, Annie G. Freeman was taken off-guard. His arms shot out at her at 37 minutes after 6 P.M . when the campus was strangely quiet and on a Friday when no one was coming in, everyone had left and only Annie on sabbatical was determined to work.
When he pulled her down in the deserted hallway that led to her office, she went willingly because she was so startled and unsuspecting. He wore no mask. There was no disguise and as he climbed on top of her and worked to push her into the restroom she studied his face in that moment, the moment when something horrible is just beginning and you do not yet realize it, you are simply curious, you are just on the early side of not yet knowing enough to be terrified.
His eyes were blue, not black. He was handsome, not grotesque. He smelled of musk and soft soap, not sweat and danger. He had on a denim shirt, jeans, a belt with a silver buckle. When she looked at him for those five seconds, before she noticed how large his pupils were, that his face twitched endlessly, that he rolled his neck every few seconds, she had no idea she was about to fight for her life. Five quick seconds. Seconds that fled faster than any seconds she had ever before held or seen or dared to imagine.
It took her a while to fight because she was not sure what he wanted. Rape? To simply see her pussy? To put his hands around her neck and watch her slip from one world to the next? To beat her senseless? To make small cuts on her writing fingers and across the ancient scar on her wrist that already marked her as a survivor?
Suddenly it was all of the above and all she could see were the tiny fingers of her boys when they were babies. An image that came from nowhere like a mysterious stranger in a dark hallway. The tiny fingers all lined up on the piano keys in their living room in California feeling the smooth top of the ivory keyboard as if they were playing in the sand on the beach back at Grandma’s cabin on Lake Superior.
“Oh,” she screamed. Then again. “Oh.”
The sight of those invisible fingers made Annie do something strange and remarkable. Not unlike the woman near Omaha who lifted the car off her eleven-year-old daughter who
They may have known something but no one knew everything.
No one knew how he watched her and followed her. No one knew he sat in the back seat of her car the days she forgot to lock it. The nights when she did not work late he was often in the unlocked office down the hall listening, waiting, thinking, wondering and hoping. Sometimes he slept in the bushes underneath her bathroom window. He knew exactly how long she stayed in the shower almost every morning.
Annie was no fool. She eventually called the campus police and they called the Chicago police. The police took the notes and the slippers and the rubber knives and then they made their own notes and said—as if they were simply warning someone about crossing a street—“Be careful.”
Then they left and then one night he came.
Even with this man—whom she came to call the Cat Man because he often mentioned during his late night phone calls how he would love to touch her pussy—stalking her nights and days and mornings, Annie often became lost in her work. She was desperately trying to write a high school counseling book and she was teaching writing classes at the university, and raising her two sons. Sometimes in the middle of all that living, she completely forgot about how she needed to be guarding her pussy.
But he never forgot.
He came for her at a strange angle, and lost in her life thoughts, Annie G. Freeman was taken off-guard. His arms shot out at her at 37 minutes after 6 P.M . when the campus was strangely quiet and on a Friday when no one was coming in, everyone had left and only Annie on sabbatical was determined to work.
When he pulled her down in the deserted hallway that led to her office, she went willingly because she was so startled and unsuspecting. He wore no mask. There was no disguise and as he climbed on top of her and worked to push her into the restroom she studied his face in that moment, the moment when something horrible is just beginning and you do not yet realize it, you are simply curious, you are just on the early side of not yet knowing enough to be terrified.
His eyes were blue, not black. He was handsome, not grotesque. He smelled of musk and soft soap, not sweat and danger. He had on a denim shirt, jeans, a belt with a silver buckle. When she looked at him for those five seconds, before she noticed how large his pupils were, that his face twitched endlessly, that he rolled his neck every few seconds, she had no idea she was about to fight for her life. Five quick seconds. Seconds that fled faster than any seconds she had ever before held or seen or dared to imagine.
It took her a while to fight because she was not sure what he wanted. Rape? To simply see her pussy? To put his hands around her neck and watch her slip from one world to the next? To beat her senseless? To make small cuts on her writing fingers and across the ancient scar on her wrist that already marked her as a survivor?
Suddenly it was all of the above and all she could see were the tiny fingers of her boys when they were babies. An image that came from nowhere like a mysterious stranger in a dark hallway. The tiny fingers all lined up on the piano keys in their living room in California feeling the smooth top of the ivory keyboard as if they were playing in the sand on the beach back at Grandma’s cabin on Lake Superior.
“Oh,” she screamed. Then again. “Oh.”
The sight of those invisible fingers made Annie do something strange and remarkable. Not unlike the woman near Omaha who lifted the car off her eleven-year-old daughter who
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