I’m the sort of person one would describe as “boring.” You may have walked by me sometime in your life and never even knew because of how forgettable I am. I’m not particularly attractive, and I’m not particularly unattractive either. My features don’t really stand out and my personality was never the type to draw people near me. You probably wouldn’t even expect me to have gone through what I did all those years ago.
I used to work at a local restaurant about twenty minutes from my home. The restaurant was kind of popular among the locals because of how much larger it was than all the others. We didn’t really have any of the massively sized restaurants you’ll find in large cities. This one was probably smaller than the majority of those, but it was the largest our town had ever seen.
My job at the restaurant was as a dishwasher. I came to work every morning and hauled the dishes onto a rack and into the machine. Nobody really spoke to me as I quietly worked in my corner. The only good part about that job was that I got to work when everybody else was gone at night. I was in charge of cleaning dishes and cleaning the place once my coworkers left.
The job was far from glamorous and I often daydreamed about leaving for something better.
There was a one night where I had the unfortunate pleasure of taking out the trash and then having to fix the dishwasher because it broke near the end of my shift. All the repairmen had gone home and I was stuck with a broken machine and piles of dishes. I hated having to wash them all by hand, especially since I had forty-five minutes left in my shift.
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
My head jerked up at the sound of someone knocking from outside. I normally couldn’t hear from the dishing area, but whoever it was had been knocking extremely hard. I quietly peeked through a door crack and saw the doors to the entrance shaking. I opened the door a little wider and squinted my eyes.
Whoever was behind those doors had something covering his face. It looked like a silicone mask. The person wearing it appeared to be a woman dressed in overly feminine clothes. I was already disturbed enough by what I was seeing and waited a little longer, hoping that this person would give up.
The slamming continued and I questioned whether it would be a smart idea to call the police. This person wasn’t really threatening anybody, at least not that I knew of. I closed the door again and looked over my shoulder. There was a back door for me to go through if I found myself in danger. My boss would understand if I told him all about this happening. One hand was on my phone just in case this person took their behavior a step further.
I was halfway to the back door when I noticed that the knocking had stopped. There was a tinge of hope as I turned around to see if the person had left. I made sure to open the door just enough to see what was going on. The person had given up on knocking and was now just standing there, staring blankly through the windows. Her mask was convincing enough in the dark, but even I could see its abnormally large eyes staring at me. It was the sort of sight that may look a little funny in daylight while appearing to be absolutely terrifying at night.
She pressed her “face” against the window and looked right in my direction. I went behind the door in a frenzied panic and ran to the back door. My boss could be as mad as he wanted. I wasn’t going to stay around while whatever that was continued to scare me.
I ran our the back door and sprinted to my car with the key fob firmly in my hand. My body froze once again as I noticed another person wearing a silicone mask. This one looked a lot more realistic and that only added to the horror I felt. She had these painted eyes the expression of a corpse. My heart was pounding faster and harder than it ever had in my lifetime.
The woman started to walk in a brisk pace towards me. My brain must have been overtaken by adrenaline because I ran straight to my car and past the woman as she reached out for me. I jumped into the car seat and locked the doors twice just to be safe. The woman from the front had now joined her friend and they were both quickly approaching my car. I turned the engine on with a press of my fob and drove as fast as I could. Before leaving, one of the masked women slammed her body against my window and struck at it with a screwdriver. The attack was strong enough to leave a solid crack in my window. I responded by pressing the gas pedal with all the force I had and sped out. They chased me for a little and then disappeared as I drove away.
I told my boss what had happened the next day and showed him the crack on my car as proof. He asked me if I had left any of the lights on that night. I thought about it a bit and remembered that I always left the dining room lights on at night because I hated how creepy the room looked with them off. He then told me that there had been reported attacks and two murders by a pair of killers. They usually attacked at night and probably saw the lights as a sign that someone was inside.
My heart felt like it stopped beating for a second when I heard that. I had been that close to being another headline.
I quit the job shortly after and ended up working at a packaging company. It wasn’t any better, but I was just happy to be alive at that point. Those two went on to kill eight more people and became notorious throughout the town for their crimes. Nobody ever caught them and they’re probably still living to this day. Sometimes I’ll think back to that night and wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t been so lucky.
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