When Linda got on the subway, she noticed something frightening: a strange man kept staring at her. No matter what she did to get him to stop, he continued unabated. However, when she found out the reason, she wept.
The first time Linda noticed something out of the ordinary, she had just finished work and was on her way home. She made her way through the crowds, trying her best to avoid bumping into others as she clutched her purse tightly, as if her life depended on it.
Linda made her way to the subway and got on the train. She took her seat at the top of the line and arranged herself in a way that she wouldn’t be in anyone’s path. As the subway car picked up speed, she looked out the window, distracting herself with the view of the city sweeping by. She would have loved to make use of her phone and distract herself with social media, but the subway was a bad place to try that. It was notorious for thieves and snatchers.
As she continued staring out the window, she suddenly became self-conscious. It was out of the blue and totally unexpected. One minute she was enjoying the rolling scenery, and the next she could feel eyes boring into her back. She had the eerie feeling that someone was staring at her.
She rearranged herself in her seat and casually turned around, trying her best not to draw attention. She studied the faces of people around her and realized that they were all minding their own business and none of them were concerned about her. She was about to dismiss her feelings when she finally saw him.
He was a strange fellow, dressed in ripped jeans—both trousers and jacket. He didn’t have a seat, so he was standing close to the door, leaning against the pole as he held onto it for support—and he was staring at her. He did it unashamedly, staring at her as if she had stolen his favorite toy.
When she noticed it, she immediately looked away. She was certain that he saw her notice him and that it would make him stop being so creepy and look away. She was wrong. Even after she turned away, she could still feel the intensity of his gaze on her back. And when she turned again, the man was still staring at her, leaning against the pole and not taking his eyes off her for even a second.
To force him to stop, Linda locked his gaze, hoping it would make him look away. She was wrong again. He held her gaze and didn’t even blink until she was the one to look away. At this point, she felt her heartbeat increase and fear pumped into her veins.
The strange man was weird and everything about him was creeping her out. She held her purse closer to her chest, almost hugging it, as she prayed for the train to get to her stop quickly. The train got there soon enough, and as if she had been burned, she jumped off her seat and almost raced out the door.
To her shock, though, she watched as the strange man stepped out of the train right after her. A gasp of shock seeped through her lips as she noticed this, and then she turned and began to walk hurriedly toward her home. When she got out of the subway and into the major road, she looked around once more, but the strange man was gone. He had simply vanished in the crowd of people that filled up the subway. However, Linda didn’t feel any better. She was still feeling the eyes on her, so she hurried home.
She wasn’t sure that he was still following her because now that they were outside, he had more hiding places available. So she decided to take an alternative route to the one she was used to. It was longer and more stressful, but it was more populated and better lit. She knew she would be safer if she used the route, so she hurried on toward her home.
She refused to acknowledge anyone and ignored the greetings that came her way. Then, she hurried into her house and locked the door behind her. It was only then that her rapidly beating heart managed to subside a little. Once she had calmed herself somewhat, she made her way through the house, locking up the windows and all the doors. She was doing everything to make sure that no unwanted entity made its way into her house. By the time she was done, the gnawing feeling was gone. She finally felt like she was alone and safe.
Soon, she got into bed and tried to sleep, but it didn’t come as easy as she would have hoped. Her entire body system was still charged from the terrifying experience, and with every little sound that occurred in her room, her eyes flew open at once. And what would turn out to be a long night ensued.
Linda had not always been such a scared fellow, but things that had happened in her life recently had changed a lot of things about her in a way she would have never seen coming. Just three months ago, she had believed that she had the perfect life, and now she was trying to recover from a messy divorce.
Linda believed that she had her life in order and everything was going great for her. She had the perfect husband, Amos, in her life. She had a great job that she loved, and she lived with Amos in their dream house right in the heart of the city. Life was perfect for them, and nothing could go wrong. But sadly, she was about to learn otherwise.
The cracks in her perfect life began to appear when she started suspecting Amos of cheating on her. She had come across a message on his phone reminding him to come to a hotel later that night. The message also stated the room he was to come to. This had hurt Linda greatly because she couldn’t believe that he would cheat on her. He made her happy, and she believed with all of her heart that she made him happy as well. This was a huge blow to her, and she decided that she wasn’t going to take it lightly. She decided to investigate.
That night, she tracked down the hotel. It was a five-star hotel located on the outskirts of the city, perfect for people who wanted to have an affair. As she drove to the hotel, all Linda could do was cry from the hurt. She was crying so badly that it was almost hard for her to see clearly. Thankfully, she got to the hotel in one piece.
Since she already knew the room to find them, Linda didn’t bother going to the receptionist. She went straight to the elevator and hurried up. She finally got to the room, but just as she was about to knock on the door, she was grabbed from behind and a hand was placed over her mouth to keep her from screaming. Then, she was pulled away and held down.
Her eyes widened in shock as she saw SWAT officials use a battering ram to tear down the door. Then, armed men stormed the room, screaming orders for the occupants of the room to get down on the floor. In a daze, she watched as seven people were arrested, including Amos. They were led out in handcuffs toward the van that had come to pick them up.
When Amos saw her, his eyes widened in shock, then he looked away as if he was embarrassed for her to see him in this way. They were taken to the nearest police station. Linda went along with them because she also had to
give a statement. However, she demanded to know what was going on. She was still clueless about why Amos had been arrested with six other people—four men and two women.
She wanted to know what had been so horrible that it had to involve not just the police, but the SWAT team. Then they told her everything, and she heard a chilling story that made her blood run cold. Amos had never cheated on her. It was way worse. He was part of a criminal organization that defrauded people and institutions.
They had defrauded up to millions of dollars from so many people that the FBI had to get involved. However, Amos and his cohorts had been careful. They never met in their homes; it was always in random hotels so that they wouldn’t be traced by the cops. Eventually, though, the cops learned their trick and used it against them.
They managed to put a tracker on the car of one of the members, and that led them to the secret location of the mass arrest that took place. So Linda had come there just in time to watch them lead her husband and his cohorts away in cuffs. News of what happened made headlines, and her life as she knew it was shattered.
For a long time, she couldn’t step out of the house, and it only got worse since news of the arrest broke. Victims of Amos and his cohorts began to come out, speaking up about how they lost their hard-earned money to their fraudulent scams and had their lives ruined. Everywhere she went, people stared at her and treated her as if she had also been a part of the ring.
Everything that happened made her love for Amos fade away like smoke. It was almost as if it never existed. Two weeks after his arrest, she filed for divorce, and he couldn’t contest it. She wanted nothing more to do with him, and he was happy to grant it to her. He apologized to her for dragging her into his mess, but she was not having it.
Her life had been ruined simply because her husband had chosen to live a life of crime. She tried to move on with her life, but that didn’t come easy for her. Everyone knew that Linda had been married to Amos, and since he was incarcerated, they chose to take out their frustrations on her.
They blamed her for his actions, even though she had no idea what he had been involved in. She got lots of hate mail and insults. There were so many threats to her life, but she tried to ignore all of them. For her, she saw it as a price she had to pay for allowing such a thing to happen right under her nose.
But through it all, she had been able to cope because they had been simply insults, threats, and hate mails. For the first time, they were getting physical with her. The moment she saw the man in the subway staring at her, she believed at once that he was one of Amos’s many victims and that he was coming at her to take his pound of flesh.
And that night, as she tried to sleep through the nightmare, she felt infuriated and helpless about her condition, and for a long time, she wept deep into the night. When she woke up the next morning, she felt groggy and tired. She had so little sleep, and it affected her composure as she prepared for work.
She prayed hard within herself that she wouldn’t come across the strange man again. Then she went off to work. She would have loved to remain at home, but she couldn’t just take time off. And since her ex-husband’s scandal, she had been walking on eggshells because she knew that the management was only looking for an excuse to let her go, and she couldn’t allow that.
She hurried over to the subway station so she wouldn’t be late. She got onto the train and lowered herself into the seat. The minute the doors closed and the train started to move, she saw the creepy man again. He was still dressed in ripped jeans, and he was leaning against the pole as he stared at her. It was just as unnerving as it was the day before, and it made Linda feel terrified and exposed.
She picked up her phone and considered calling the cops, but her fingers hovered over the screen. She couldn’t think of a viable reason to call them. She had no idea what she would report if she did call them. She couldn’t report the man for staring at her; as far as she knew, that wasn’t illegal. And even though she suspected he was following her, she had not seen him with her own eyes in the vicinity of her home.
If the strange man was playing with her, then he was doing it smartly, boxing her in so she would suffer and be unable to report it. She slowly returned her phone to the bag. She didn’t know what else to do. When she got to work, she felt happy and safe once again. She almost dreaded having to go back home because she was terrified of seeing the strange man once again.
However, she hit the road the moment her shift ended. She walked fast, hoping to get there before the man, but she was wrong. Like before, the moment the train began to move, the man materialized as if out of thin air and began to stare at her. When she got to her stop, she almost jumped out of the train. She clutched her purse close to her chest as she ran through the streets.
Her feet pounded into the asphalt as she hurried on, trying to get as much distance as she could between her and the creepy man. She ran into her house and locked her doors, just like the previous night. She went all over the place, checking and double-checking to see that every opening was properly locked.
However, by the time she was done with everything, she still didn’t feel safe. Linda could still feel the eyes on her; it was even more intense than before, and she didn’t feel safe in her own house anymore. She grabbed her torchlight and began going from room to room, trying to find the source of her unease.
When she got to her bedroom, it looked exactly as she had left it in the morning. She could find nothing, but she was still feeling watched. At that point, she no longer cared about what the police would think. She was ready to call them and tell them everything that was happening to her.
Just as she approached the bed to pick up her phone, the door to her closet flew open, and armed men jumped out, waving weapons at her. With a scream of terror, she ran to the living room and was about to run out of the house, but she was surrounded. All exit points were blocked, and she was backed into a corner.
Then, just as they were about to pounce on her, the door to the living room was kicked open, and the strange man ran in. But he was not alone. Right on his heels were armed SWAT agents who filed into the house, pointing their guns at Linda’s attackers.
It was over in mere seconds. The attackers surrendered, and Linda was finally safe. But she was still very much confused about the turn of events. The cop was only happy to clear it all up for her. He introduced himself as Elias and told her that he was the one in charge of Amos’s case.
He had been watching her for her protection ever since he got word that some of her husband
‘s victims were planning an attack on her. They wanted to check if they could get back some of their lost money from her by any means necessary. Elias had known of the attack, but he didn’t know when it was going to happen, and he knew that he couldn’t act like he knew it because that would only make them postpone it to another time.
That was why he decided to watch her until they made their move. He had made himself so obvious so she would recognize him at once. He had also needed her to be on guard and wary of her surroundings. That was the reason he acted so creepy toward her; he made sure that she found his staring unnerving enough that she was frightened, and it worked out.
Thanks to the fact that she had changed her route from the previous night, she managed to avoid their attack. They had lain in ambush at a regular route and would have attacked her if she had not made that split-second decision. Elias’s story sent chills down Linda’s core. She couldn’t believe that even with Amos in prison, his actions were still haunting her.
She had tried so much to be strong and to keep fighting, but with every day that passed, it felt like a lost cause. This was becoming bigger than her. Right there in her living room, her legs gave way beneath her, and she fell to her knees and began to weep profusely.
Elias comforted her and told her that she was not alone. He told her that she had the entire force at her back. She was just a victim as well, and she also deserved to be safe. At that moment, Linda realized that she owed her life to Elias. He was the one who took interest and chose to save her, or things would have ended horribly.
She asked him why he was so interested in her case, and he told her that she reminded him of someone he lost. His wife had died from a fatal heart attack while he had been off at work. Elias blamed himself for his wife’s death and found it hard to move on. Five years had gone by, and he was still bearing the pain of it all.
That was why he had been drawn to Linda’s case. Like his wife, she was also a victim of the foolish actions of her husband, and he decided to make sure that she survived it. Now he gently helped her back to her feet. She had cried so much her eyes were red and puffy.
He told her to pick only the things she needed from the house and that they were taking her somewhere else. They knew that people would always come after her, and the only way to protect her was to set her up in a new place under a new identity. Everything was provided for her, and she tried to start up her new life.
Elias was the only one who knew her location, and he visited her a lot. One time, she gave him a rare and expensive flower and told him to put it on his wife’s grave. She told him that he was her hero, and she was sure his wife would be so proud of him. Her words warmed his heart a lot, and he told her that it was her bravery that had seen her through the toughest storms.
Yet, he kept on visiting her, and soon they weren’t just meeting in the house but also going out on dates. Linda was rebuilding her life, and from the looks of it, Elias had a place in it. What a beautiful story. Who would have thought the creepy man was only there to rescue her? What would you have done in Linda’s shoes? Let us know in the comments.
