I was hesitant to call the police after that crazy whatever-she-was left my apartment, but my girlfriend wouldn’t have it. Police were at our place in about 20 minutes. Took our statements, woman’s description, and told us to immediately call should anything else happen.
But my mind was set on something else. My commander. He told me not to talk to her. And I did. And now I’m waking up in bed with her, and how the fuck did she even get into my flat, shit man, too many thoughts.
The next day I went to my commander’s office.
“Sir,” I said very carefully – you need to understand that losing this job, no matter how shitty it was, definitely wasn’t on my to-do list - “Sir, we need to talk.”
He looked up at me from his desk and I swear to you, I swear he already knew. His face lost all the emotion. He didn’t even ask what was happening. “Sit,” he said as he leaned back in his chair.
“Sir, I…” I was having a hard time confessing to breaking the rules of the Guard.
“You spoke to her. You responded.” He said as he leaned towards me. “Didn’t you.”
“Well, I just asked her to move, that’s all.”
“No, not the Queen’s Guard command. Did you say anything else to her?”
“I did.” ** If you remember, besides me yelling “MAKE WAY FOR THE QUEEN’S GUARD”, I did say “Ma’m, will you please…”**
“God damn it, son. God fucking damn it.”
This was the first time I heard my commander curse.
“Sir, who is this woman?”
“I’m going to file for your immediate removal from the guard,” he brushed me off as he opened his desk to look for something.
“Sir?” I asked, not believing I was about to lose my job.
“Don’t worry, I’ll find you something else to do. But your days in the Guard are over. Expect the transfer within a week.”
“Sir, but I was just…”
“That is all, son, you can leave now.” He said, not even looking at me.
I was pissed. But then again, if I was going to keep the paycheck without having to stand in the street and deal with tourists/crazy fucking creatures, I was fine.
The new schedule came out and, what do you know, I was only scheduled to work one shift that week. That was really handy because I was supposed to babysit my 7 year old niece visiting from Birmingham, and I had already planned out the whole weekend with her.
Thursday came with no further incidents with the mouth-wide-open bitch. My girlfriend had finally calmed down. She left back to Amsterdam that morning and in a good mood. Life was getting back on track.
My shift that day was 6-10pm in front of St. James Palace. There are usually two of us working there, but for some reason, I was scheduled to work alone from 9-10. Here’s how the spot where I worked looks. The little wooden post is where we’d stand in case of a storm. “Ok, buddy, hang in there, almost done,” my fellow guard said at 9:02 pm, as he marched back inside.
“One more hour. One last hour of this damn job and I am free. God, it feels good…” I thought as I stood still in front of my post. Night was unusually quiet, but it was starting to rain, so I guess it was to be expected. 9:30pm. Still light rain, still boring as fuck. Almost there. 9:45pm. Rain was picking up, so I decided to spend my last few minutes in the post.
I turned around.
I shouldn’t have.
There she was.
If I were a writer, I’d use all these descriptive tools to paint a picture of how horrifying that woman looked that night. Let me tell you, this was the single most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a child getting killed by a land mine.
The woman was standing at the door of the post. She wore a white dress that was nearly shining in the dark. But her face, fuck man, her face. She wasn’t looking at me, which somehow made it even fucking worst. She was looking at the sky or whatever the hell was up there, and her eyes went so far up I could only see bottom of her pupils. Her mouth was so wide open, I was now nearly sure it wasn’t possible for a human to do this.
There is something surreal about standing in front of someone who doesn’t act rationally. Like, if you’re getting mugged, you know they want your money. Shit, if you’re getting shot at, you know they want to kill you. But the true mental horror is in not knowing what in the fuck she wanted from me.
9:49. Ok, 11 minutes of this and I can finally…
She took a step towards me. Then another one. At about two feet from me, she stopped.
She started leaning. That fucking lean. Her face stopped just short of mine. At first her head started shaking slowly, but started to move increasingly fast. It was a small kind of shaking, as I said before, kinda like when you get out of the shower into an air-conditioned room and start shaking. The pupils were so high up, I could barely see them. Her head was now trembling so fast I was wondering how it was possible. And that mouth, man, that mouth was so unnaturally, un-fucking-humanly open. I swear I saw corners of her lips starting to bleed because her skin wasn’t able to support the opening.
No sound.
The street was silent, probably the most silent I’ve ever seen it. And the worst part is, it was night time. I know I do this a lot, but just imagine it one more time – you’re standing motionlessly in the middle of the street, and there is this bleeding-wide-open mouth woman an inch from your face, doing whatever the fuck she’s doing, and not a soul in sight. And no sound, whatsoever.
9:54pm.
Come the fuck on.
And then, as if she heard my thought, her pupils dropped back and looked straight at me. I nearly jumped back. She closed her mouth, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’d rather she kept it open. Her jaw started rapidly opening and closing, as if she were biting something invisible. Her teeth were hitting each other so hard, I was sure they’d break.
That was it for me, I couldn’t take it anymore.
I took a step back and screamed “JUST FUCKING STOP ALREADY!”
And she did. Teeth stopped clenching, mouth closed, and she stood back up from the leaning. She took a step towards me and, for the first time ever, smiled.
“4, 3, 2, 1, 4, 3, 2, 1, 4 ,3 ,2 ,1” she started whispering, never losing the smile.
“What is that, what the fuck is that?” I begged. I was ready to grab her, shake, her, anything, just for an answer. What the fuck did she want from me, right?
9:58pm.
“What the fuck!” came from behind me.
My commander.
He ran up to me, disregarding the crazy bitch in front.
“Did you talk to her?”
“I…”
“DID YOU FUCKING TALK TO HER?” he yelled, louder and while grabbing my uniform. He didn’t even pay attention to the woman.
“Yes.”
“Jesus Christ… What number?” he said while finally letting me out of his fists.
“Sir?” I answered confused as you can imagine.
“What was the last number she said? What was it? Was it a zero?”
“No, I think she stopped at a 1… But why…?”
All this time, the woman just stood still and looked at us with a smile. Then, she took a step towards us. She slowly walked in between my commander and me.
“Don’t say a thing to her, not a fucking thing,” the commander said with obvious fear on his face.
The woman turned from me and towards him. She got into his face, and even from behind, I could see her mouth being wide open.
“Go, just go,” the commander said as he looked at me. He was avoiding acknowledging her. I heard her teeth clenching.
“I can’t just leave you,” I said.
“Go, and don’t come back here. I’ll take care of this.”
You know, I like to think of myself as brave, but at that moment, all I wanted to do is leave. I hope you can’t blame me for that. So I started running away.
“And never talk to her again!” the commander yelled as I got away.
Now, I know a lot this stuff sounds like bullshit, and you’re right, it really does. Sure, looking back at it now, I could’ve arrested her, hell I could’ve even killed the bitch, and so could’ve the commander. But you know what? When you find yourself in a situation as impossible and as unreal as that one, you don’t act rationally, you don’t think logically as you would in a normal situation. I went home, took a cold shower (after making sure my doors were locked) and I collapsed on the bed.
In the morning I texted my shift buddy to see if commander was ok and his “Yeah, why wouldn’t he be?” text back meant he made it. That’s all I needed to know, I was out of that life.
My niece came in town on Friday and I had her for the weekend. Running around a seven year old will make you lose your mind, let alone leave time to think about some crazy woman harassing you. Besides, I was done with that job – that morning I got transfer papers.
I spent the whole day taking the kid different places she liked. Shit was exhausting. Saturday morning I made us some breakfast as we watched cartoons for the good part of it. Then we put in a Catwoman movie and my niece dressed as her – she loved her for some reason (movie was a complete trash). I guess I wasn’t used to having to take care of the kids because I fell asleep on the couch, already exhausted.
My niece woke me up.
“Uki,” she said, that’s what she calls me, “Uki, let’s play.” She was holding my old pair of walkie-talkies. I used to love those as a kid, so I couldn’t say no to her.
“Sure, let’s see if these old things work. Go outside of the house, I want to check the range on these babies.”
Her face lit up as she ran out.
I turned the walkie-talkie on and started playing with it. Static noise was there, meaning the batteries worked, it was only a matter of finding the right frequency.
“Ashley? Ashley, do you copy, over?” I tried a few times.
I finally heard something.
“Ashley, do you copy, I repeat, do you copy, over?”
“Hero” was all I heard at a low volume.
“Ashely, you punk, you need to say over when you’re done.”
“H…e..ro” I heard again.
“This damn thing,” I thought. Too lazy to go out, I took the batteries out, blew at them, as if that ever does anything, and put them back in.
“Ok, Catwoman hero, do you copy now, over?”
“ZERO”
I dropped the walkie-talkie.
That wasn’t Ashley’s voice. That wasn’t “Hero” I thought I heard.
Ashley.
I ran outside and immediately started fucking hating myself for letting the child go out on its own. Ashley stood in the yard, holding a radio, squeezing it hard. In front of her stood that same woman, bent over and all the way down to my kid’s face.
“Zero, zero, zero, zero, zero” was what woman frantically repeated in Ashley’s traumatized face.
Yeah, when some freak harasses me, I can control myself. But a child, my cousin?
I lost it. I ran towards the woman and tackled her with enough force I was sure I’d hurt her. As soon as I hit the ground, I got up and grabbed Ashley. “Are you alright?” I yelled, “Did she touch you?!” I didn’t even realize how hard I was shaking her, probably scaring her even more.
Ashely was now crying so hard, she couldn’t even answer.
“Let’s go in,” I said as I turned towards the woman. She was still lying on the ground, facing down.
As soon as we got into the house, we went to the window. The woman started standing up. She turned towards us.
“I’m calling the police,” I told terrified Ashely as I picked up my cell. “Don’t worry baby, it’s going to be alright.”
The woman took a step towards the window. Then another one. Her nose was bleeding and she was visibly hurt as she was limping, but it didn’t seem to matter to her.
I’ll admit, I was nearly frozen from the rush of adrenaline I had. We just stood there at the window, watching this freak approaching us.
“Police are on the way,” I told my niece who was still crying.
The woman walked up to the window.
She… She wasn’t looking at me anymore. She leaned towards Ashley’s face. Poor little thing grabbed my hand and was squeezing it way too hard for a 7 year old. That fucking thing, bitch, woman, whatever she was, leaned all the way to the window. Only a piece of glass was separating her from Ashley. As I was about to take my niece into another room, far from this thing, the woman opened her mouth, but immediately closed it into a smile. Then again. It was fucking impossibly strange. As she’d open her mouth, her pupils would shoot up towards the back of her head, only to immediately come back followed with a smile. She was now alternating inhumanely fast in between a smile and a gaping mouth paired with nearly pupil-less eyes.
“Let’s get out of here,” I told Ashley as I picked her up and took her to my room.
Police arrived about 15 minutes later. They started scanning the neighborhood and actually caught a woman who matched my description. I was due at the police station for identification, but first I had to drop Ashley off at the train station. Her mum wanted her back immediately after what happened, and I couldn’t blame her. I took her to the station, where I arranged for the staff to watch her until her destination.
A very pleasant conductor promised he’d watch her whole trip. He took Ashley’s hand and promised to show her all the cool parts of the train. Finally, the kid smiled.
As train was getting ready to leave, conductor put my niece on the stairs. “Say bye to your uncle,” he said, “we’re about to leave.”
“Bye Ashley, tell your mum to call me when you arrive, ok?”
She didn’t respond to me, which was understandable. The kid was probably still fucking terrified, hell, I was still terrified.
As the announcer said all boarding was complete, conductor opened the door for them to get inside the train.
Ashley didn’t move, though. She looked up at the conductor.
“Let’s go now,” he said.
Ashley opened her mouth, looking up at the man.
“We have to get in now, we’re about to start moving honey,” he said again. “Let’s go.”
As he entered the train and Ashely followed, I heard her say “10 9 8.”
I am planning to write about what happened to Ashley at some point, though her family prefers it is kept private.
===
Credits
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