Hello, I’m very, very new to Reddit and sorry if this is not written/formatted too well. I’m still trying to work things out smile emoticon And sorry that this is so long, I promise though that the last paragraphs are scary as hell.
As a little background for this story I’m seventeen, female and Australian. I’m often the only one home in the afternoons as my father works away a lot and my mother works until late a night. Luckily I have my lovely dog keeping me company. We rent our house and it is very old and it shows.
When we first moved in my parents made a complaint to the realtors that the kitchen was falling apart and they said that they would send someone over. A month later it was about 2:00pm and there was a knock on the door and a man told me that he was here to take a look at the kitchen and that he had tried to call both my parents but neither had answered. He looked to be in his 40’s and seemed to have an Italian accent but spoke English very well so I understood him fine. I unlocked the screen and allowed him in while trying to cling to the dog’s collar as she was losing her shit.
The handyman came in and told me his name, which I’ve since forgotten. He then asked for mine and I told him, he asked what I was doing home so early and I explained that sometimes my classes at school finished earlier than most and so I was able to be at home. Something about him made my hair stand on end but I ignored it blaming it on just being tired and paranoid. He went and fossicked around the kitchen measuring and doing the standard stuff and then left.
When my parents came home I told them about him and they said that neither of their phones had missed calls. We all shrugged it off and decided that maybe he had the wrong numbers or something but I did tell my mum that he creeped me out and she told me to be careful around him if they weren’t home.
A couple months later more stuff broke and my parents again told the real estate. The handy man came again twice when I was alone and he had the same story of my parents not answering the phone and I let him in since I had my dog and I wanted to get the stuff fixed. He still made my skin crawl so I tended to go into my room with the dog and call my best friend and talk to her while he worked.
He was scared of the dog and on the 3rd time he came to the house mustn’t have realised that she was in my room with me and tried to force the door open. The doors in this house are original and so have strange locks that even I can force open if I want to so he easily got it after about a minute. My dog threw herself off my bed and at him and I just grabbed her before she managed to bite.
I was in shock because she had never tried to really hurt someone and some guy just forced open my door. He told me that he had finished the work and wanted me to know so that’s why he opened it… because he just couldn’t knock, right? I told him that he should leave in a tone that was way calmer than I felt and off he went. I called my dad and he told me to never let him back in if I was on my own.
The fourth time he came my mum was home with me and he spoke to her in an accent that I believe had to be Turkish and you could barely understand a word. As my mum was home I stayed with her as she talked to him. A door in our house leading to the back garden often gets badly stuck but on that day we thought my dad had locked it on his way out as he sometimes does.
The handyman somehow got it open and we assumed that it must’ve been stuck after all. He made both my mother and I extremely uncomfortable as he stared at me the entire time. She then refused to answer the door and told me to never answer it again if it was the handyman. My dad would be dealing with all interactions from then on. That was the last time I saw him for about eight months, until two months ago.
My dog was at the groomer and as usual I was home alone. I was in the kitchen-starting diner as it was about 6:00pm and the sun was almost gone. There was a loud cry from the timber floors behind me that I ignored as they often made noises when my dog was walking about. I can honestly tell you that it was the most horrific moment of realisation for me when I remembered that my dog wasn’t here and that there was someone behind me.
I tightened my grip on the massive knife that I’d been using to cut up some onion and whipped around. Handyman was there with the sickest smile on his face and a hammer in his hand. I yelled at him to get out before I called the cops and held up the knife. I was shaking. He stepped forward.
I went to run past him but he grabbed me by the hair and in a struggle I sliced his face open and kneed him where it really hurts and while he was in shock and or agony, I ran into my bedroom, which is right next door to the kitchen, and slammed the door shut, locked it, grabbed my phone and forced the windows behind my bed open and jumped onto the rotting roof of the deck which was attached to the outside wall directly below my window.
The handyman was bashing on the door and made it in just as I jumped down onto the concrete and took off running across the street to a neighbouring house. I called 000 crying and telling the operator what happened and that I needed the police. I banged on the neighbour’s door begging to be let in but no-one was home so ran to another house with the operator still on the phone asking for details. This neighbour was home but before she could even open the door I hear police sirens hurtling down the street and ran to the officers the second they stepped out of the car.
A report was made, my parents were called, the media turned up, the knife was taken from me for DNA evidence, and the house was searched for him, any evidence and how he had got in. I was taken to hospital for a sprained ankle, whip lash from him yanking on my hair and lots of cuts and bruises. The police found no evidence of how he had broken in so it was assumed that he had acquired a key at some point and neither his DNA nor fingerprints were on record.
When the police contacted the real estate agent they provided his name and phone number and claimed that he had a Swedish accent. The name was not true and no records were found and the number was disconnected and untraceable. They had found him on a site where he had advertised himself as a cheap handyman who could fix any and all problems but the ad has since been removed. The police only had his description to work with and as such he hasn’t been found.
It’s terrifying to think about what he would have done to me if I hadn’t fought back or if my window hadn’t opened, I keep thinking about all of the what if’s that could have changed my life so much or even ended it.
So creepy Swedish/Turkish/Italian Handyman, let’s not meet ever again and I hope that the next girl you go after hurts you way more than I did.
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via: reddit.com/r/LetsNotMeet
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