volume one hundred and forty-six
this is a story about being followed home so you might choose not to read it
📍Written from Vancouver Island in 2022 and revisited this week from Naarm (Melbourne) because to be honest, I was sick of it sitting in my Google Drive, hiding.
It was six-thirty in the morning and I was determined to go out despite the pouring rain. I grabbed my plastic disposable poncho, still folded in its packet after it was gifted to me seven years ago as part of my “moving to Canada” care package from my Mum. Twelve moves and numerous shedding of items, but I still kept that plastic poncho, thinking one day I would need it. I decided to place it in my small suitcase for this weekend. A weekend of writing. A weekend calling for rain. A weekend spent close to nature and trees and large parks made for walking. A weekend where the weather although wet, would be too warm for protection any heavier. A weekend of island spring blooms ready to snap photos and text them back to my Mum who always loved seeing the colours from abroad. A weekend of taking someone else’s home into my care and feeling blessed by a change of scenery.
A weekend of escaping the city and everything I was when I was there because I didn’t know how to be the new version of myself in a place that knew the old one so well.
I pulled the poncho from its plastic sleeve, unfolding it over and over, taking it from the small square shape and morphing it gradually into a large sheet. I stretched it out, replacing the fold lines with wrinkles as I struggled to find the place I was supposed to squeeze my head into, before realising I held it sideways. Using my licked fingers to divide it open, I was eventually able to wriggle through, but not before putting on a plastic poncho interpretive dance for the very curious cat in my care.
I was ready for my walk.
I cupped her chin in my hand and scratched the side of her face with my fingers that cradled it, her eyes closed with calm and comfort, purring. Less than twenty-four hours had been spent together and this cat who I was told would take time to warm to strangers, felt safe with me.
There with her in the dry comfort of a plant-filled home, a cosy couch with a hand-made throw blanket, a bookshelf stacked, the kitchen island welcoming romanticising every meal, the record collection well-loved, infused with natural light despite the rain outside, I told her I would be back soon. I requested that she keep the couch warm until then.
“Take this. It is an alarm you can hold in your hand. I’d prefer you never to walk alone at night but if you have to, carry this. You can hold it to his ear and it’ll hurt his ears enough that you’ll have time to run.”
“Mum, this is just like when you got me to carry my Spice Girls Impulse in my hand when I was younger.”
“Exactly. You spray that in someone’s eyes, it’s going to hurt.”
As soon as I stepped outside, the hood of the poncho gave me anguish. With every few steps, it slipped off, exposing my head and the back of my neck to feel the cold rain trickle into my jumper, taking over my spine. Despite my wanting to keep dry, the cool was welcome against the humid air that had gathered to live inside the poncho with me.
The hood was shaped as something mass-manufactured without much thought of how it would sit on the human body. The front was too big and caused me to lose my peripheral vision and the opening was too small making it tuck awkwardly under my chin. Every few steps, I yanked it back over my head, exposing my lower back as I attempted to tuck it behind my ears and into my cap to keep it in one place. I played this game of “Where on my body would I rather the rain soak me?” until, at last, it stayed still, perfectly fine, exactly as it should. All it took was me pulling the opening and tearing it to make it larger. I was being kept dry finally, too late for the parts of me that had been dampened in my struggle. My eyes veered up and I noticed the hood was folded slightly inside out at the front, the lip turned up. My obsessed fingers that poked out of the rain-soaked ends of my jumper sleeves automatically reached up and fixed the fold, unable to ignore it. This fix infuriatingly led it to go back to sliding off my head over and over and over. Why couldn’t I have just left it?
I guess it was with all of that fussing about — combined with my every stepping movement creating a swishing sound in my head of the plastic adjusting to my body’s motion, and the volume of the calming music in my ears at just the right level, and the persistent rain that hit the curtain covering me, and the sound of traffic gliding on wet tar, and my old joggers that squeaked with every step — that I didn’t notice I was being followed.
I wasn’t alone on my walk. Not just because of my huntsman. I passed many other morning walkers who made their presence known, braving the pouring rain for reasons different to my own. They were out without a choice, with a dog in tow, or in some cases leading the way. They had a leash in one hand and an umbrella in the other. They were, I perceived to be, on my side, to have my best interests in mind, from whom I took their morning greetings and small talk as genuine gestures of kindness and want for me to have a good day.
Perhaps it is because I greeted their dogs before I greeted them, the way that I have always done, that not one of them told me I was being followed.
She didn’t know at first she was being followed. He said goodbye to her when she said goodbye to everyone else as she left. It was time for her to get to bed. He waited until she was out of sight of the bar window where her friends remained before he caught up to her.
He didn’t need to wait. He chose to.
Why didn’t anyone alert me? Why didn’t anyone pretend they knew me and wanted to chat, keeping their dog close? Why did I only get smiles and nods and waves as morning niceties beyond our passing words? Did I miss cues? Were the words I read from the movement of their lips over the sounds overwhelming me — the sounds only amplified when I got closer to them as rain pummeled onto their umbrellas — actually words of warning? Had I lip-read “Have a nice day” when it was actually “Are you okay?” or is that wishful thinking to think they would care or notice that a complete stranger was in danger?
I wanted them to be the best versions of them I had created. I wanted them to be the version I imagined of small-town folk, living a slower life, with not a care in the world but care for every person they passed. I wanted them all to be like the one who stopped to watch an owl with me on my last visit and told me moving here was the best decision they ever made.
It wasn’t until I was ready to take off the poncho and throw it away and give in to being drenched, that I paused my music. The same way you turn down the radio when you are lost in your car to help you concentrate. It was only then I heard my follower.
It wasn’t like they tried to hide it. I just hadn’t been listening.
A friend walking the same way to get to their train felt like a good thing. Especially a taller, stronger, male friend who could protect her from strangers.
The traffic was loud on the main road. The few other on-foot citygoers trickled around.
None of them seemed to notice when she paused at her street and said goodnight, that he didn’t keep going the way he should and instead trapped her between him and the shop window.
They’d tried to tell me. They’d tried to warn me to stay away, the kind of predator that liked to put on a show before launching their attack, a power play on their part and me the willing prey.
As I stood there — with my headphones out of my ears, the hood sliding off for the last time, in the middle of an emerald park slowly turning into a pool, with the sudden and almost unreal departure of dog walkers in every direction — I heard them.
Their announcement was a commanding screech, telling me to get the hell out of there or they would make sure I did. Telling me I never should have come to this park. Telling me that if I knew what was good for me, I would return to the comfort of my accommodations or they would be forced to handle things their way. They offered me a choice. A chance. However, it felt like the choice was decided for me.
I was going to run.
They had accomplished what they thrived on and that was to scare me. Knowing of their presence was enough for the sweat to come to the surface and increase the feeling of humidity suffocating me. Panicked and running. But not too fast. I had to avoid slipping in the rain. I had to avoid being a cliche of falling before my attacker just so that they could stand over me and laugh.
They played with me knowing they were ready to swoop on me whenever they chose, perhaps not even sure yet if they would.
Their friends likely alerted the predators that I was an easy target. I wonder if the conspirators on the mainland got the message to the island that I was afraid. I wondered if they got the word that I was the one they could knock from behind and I would run into oncoming traffic just to get away. I wondered if they had alerted each other this was the person who would take a different route for over a year if you mess with them just to avoid bumping into you again or revisiting the scene. This was the person whose entire life and feeling of safety could change with one grab of their hair unexpectedly from behind.
I wished I had an umbrella like the other walkers to use as a weapon.
She said “Goodnight” over and over but every time she did, he would grab her hand and pull her in. Every time she would get away and get ahead, they got a few steps closer to her house.
Hitting dead-end streets and losing my bearings, I tried to get back quickly to my temporary home — the place that was warm and safe — without going the way I came because I was known there now. And unwelcome. The hood of my poncho trailed behind me and my eyes filled with pouring rain and salty tears, blurring everything in front of me.
On a walk intended for enjoying flora, I now wished there wasn’t any. I wanted an opening, a clearing in the trees. They gained on me and gained on me. There was more than one of them but I was too afraid to waste a moment of lead time looking back to see how many. Their knowledge of the area was already an advantage to my slow legs and muddled memory of the way back.
I heard them follow me one tree at a time, pausing at each one, on my tail, letting me know they were right behind me, letting me know they were after me, letting me know they were in control and the only reason they hadn’t caught me was because they had decided not to, yet. This was a game for them, my fear feeding their amusement.
Her street was a lot quieter. There was no traffic like on the main one. No other people around.
As she got closer to her house she realised he was soon going to know where she lived. So she stopped walking. His hands were inside her jumper, taking over her spine.
A weekend of enjoying nature and writing became one of just writing. I intended to walk every morning of the retreat, getting lost in my thoughts and dreaming up the next chapters, stories, and ideas. But I didn’t walk again.
Crows never forget a face. Especially not of the person in the poncho that rustled and wrinkled and creased and whispered and made them furious. I am the one who they would stalk again if I ventured out. An easy target. A quiet one who doesn’t fight back.
Sometimes she finds herself there by accident, out running an errand and not paying attention to where she is, and she crosses the street to avoid walking past the shop.
She triple-checks all the windows and doors when she is home and over her shoulder when she is out. She keeps her headphones in so she can ignore catcalls but has nothing playing in them so she doesn’t miss any threats.
My friend was followed on his run this week. Two crows circled above him while he ran his usual route, never falling behind, never letting him out of their sight.
He felt safe with them above, knowing they were warning him of danger — scaring off a predator that also takes the skies — the hawk that had been sighted in his neighbourhood.
Crows never forget a face, and they know him as the man with lovely tomatoes in his garden who says hello whenever they come by.
“Crows are always a good sign to me. They have never bothered me at all. They’re good birds who would never harm anyone.”
“He is my friend. He would never do anything to hurt someone on purpose. He didn’t even follow you into your house. He left eventually. You misread it.”
One year later, the sun shining, my head held high, I walked through the park again unscathed, saying hello to others as I passed them, snapping photos of spring flowers to send to my Mum.
One sqwark as I exited, prompted me to remove an earbud. I was alone.
Lovely reader, head into the comments and tell me are crows your friend or your foe?
here are three things i struggled with this week:
🧛 For some reason cannot stop thinking about my tour guide in New Orleans who bumped into me in the fog hours after the tour ended. He was for sure a vampire and I missed my chance. Fuck it.
🪞 Comparison.
✨ Constantly finding distraction.
here are three blessings from this week:
☀️ It is warmer in the house than it was last week even though we are getting closer to winter and that could also just be because of my new slippers.
📱 More phone calls, less texts.
🧄 Market produce. Market clothes. Market snacks. Market roasted nuts. Market stall owners.
here are three goals for the coming week:
🏳️🌈 Queer venue artist dates.
🖼️ Gallery artist dates.
🏛️ Museum artist dates.
pics or it didn’t happen:
I love you. Now I am off to sob some more because my Cooler Younger Cousin married the love of her life this week while travelling overseas and the updates are filling my heart more than anything ever has.
Yeah, I reckon my cat would have a go at taking down a crow! 😳
Also, I love this:
“I didn’t know how to be the new version of myself in a place that knew the old one so well.”
🙏🏾🥰
I love what you have done with this story. As a lucky one who got to read earlier drafts, I was intrigued to re-read it. I LOVE how you have woven it with the other stories. It works so well and makes for some important questions. Thank you for sharing it!